247: Under Pressure: OceanGate's Titanic Struggles with Media and Public Perception

Last week it seemed as if everyone was gripped by the missing Titanic submersible story. I was one of those people. Not only was I following it just for the drama and for the ticking clock, how much oxygen was going to be left for these five souls on board this submersible, but I was also interested in the news coverage and how people were following the story and based on the facts, what they were told and what they weren't told. It was supposed to be a 10 hour journey to see the Titanic shipwreck, but it ended in tragedy. After a four day search for the Titan submersible, the US Navy came to the conclusion that the vessel in all likelihood had a catastrophic implosion and killed all five people on board. Welcome to the Indestructible PR podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestruct respectable reputation. In this episode, Oceangate, the company behind the missing Titanic tourists submersible. It faced a significant PR crisis, but so did other brands and agencies and the people tied to this disaster. Let's examine the Titanic submersible from a media point of view. So public relations is a critical aspect of any company's success or their downfall, especially during a challenging time. So Oceangate, the company behind the missing Titanic tourist submersible, they were named that most people had never heard of before until last week when the news reports started to leak out on Monday about the missing sub. Now, I had posted a video to TikTok. Soon after I heard the news, I happened to be at a college orientation session listening to information about my kids at college. I've been to this rodeo a few times. So I may have been on my phone and a notification came up about a missing sub. I don't know how you can turn away from a story like that. So I was actively paying attention while I was scrolling my phone and, and the story, the, the news alerts coming out did not mention really any of the details other than a tourist sub was missing, you know, on its way to see the Titanic. Many people are familiar with the Titanic Many people are familiar with the Titanic because the movie, it's been romanticized, you know, by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio by the director James Cameron. Does he play a part in the story? Of course. Course he plays a part in this story. But in this episode I want to look at a number of the elements that I was looking at. Of course it's under the umbrella of public relations because public relations is all about the public perception, the public perception as related to Oceangate, a fairly unknown company unless you were familiar with Titanic Exploration and also all the brands that were involved. Now I don't need to go too deep into the facts here. We all, I mean we were all following it. Even if you weren't actively following it, you couldn't help but hear about it because people were talking about it. What we found out last week after a number of days of really wall to wall coverage on this, that there was a catastrophic implosion. So this was a Titanic bound submersible. So it was smaller. They said it was the size of a minivan that was lost in a search area that was the size of Connecticut. There were five people on board, killing everyone from what we can tell. Instantly now this press conference was on Thursday at 3:00 clock Eastern Daylight Time. It took place at the Coast Guard station at the first District. Now some people, when I had posted four posts, I think about, about this sub, this sub incident and a lot of people were asking, you know, why more people weren't involved, why weren't there more search and rescue efforts. I mean there are a lot of opinions out there because of social media, just to get this, you know, piece of it out of the way. I mean the reason why the US Coast Guard was, was responsible for the search. So even though that the wreckage took place. So they're exploring the wreckage, the titanic wreckage is 900 miles east of Cape Cod, 13,000ft below sea level. So now the Coast Guard isn't out there patrolling, but that area is part of the Boston Search and Rescue region. So this is, you know, through international treaty with the imo, there's, there's International Maritime Organization, there's just a lot of details there. But in short, the reason why it belonged to the Coast Guard, the U.S. coast Guard and not Canada, everyone was there to support it, but it was a, it was a Coast Guard search and rescue effort. So they were responsible for the response. Now what is interesting if you were following the story so when the news started to break on Monday, so if I were, I was in the central time zone. And so it was in the early afternoon that the story was starting to leak out. But now that we've learned, you know, a couple days later since that final press conference, that people knew when something happened on Sunday. We know now that it was, as I mentioned, a catastrophic implosion and that implosion happened on Sunday. But I was following how the news was being parsed out. You know, the timing of the news like, when did we hear everything and when was it reported? It really did seem like it's a meta moment, right? It is. The coverage felt like a movie. It felt like we were watching a scripted drama about a scripted drama that was in a movie that was based on facts, you know, historical facts of the sinking of the Titanic. It's all quite fascinating, which is, you know, another part of the reason why I think people were gripped by it. Now, a number of people had mentioned, you know, on the Post, and I did two lives. Lives as well. There was some, you know, there's some consternation. There's some, you know, some anger, really, about the fact that there was so much coverage dedicated to this case when, when, you know, there are five people lost at sea and they were, you know, filled with billionaires, when there were hundreds of Pakistanis who were dead in the Mediterranean in a migrant boat disaster, that there was a lot of people and a lot of people on social media had words to say about that and on my lives as well. And I tend to be a defender of the press many times because I work with them. I also was one of them at one time. And it's important to remember someone who also teaches it. You know, I'm an adjunct as well. And I've just been in this business for 30 years. I mean, I started working. I actually started working in. My first media job was in college, you know, my first paid media job. So I'd been in this business for a long, long time. I think what people forget about news coverage is that news is covered by reporters and editors and news teams, right? And they work for a business. They don't work for an agency. It's not a part of the US Government. It's not like Voice of America. It is their businesses. You know, Caitlin, if you think of Fox News, you think of msnbc, you think of cnn, they all have formats and they all, you know, cater their news to certain demographics and psychographics. So that's not to apologize for the press, but I think that's just important to keep in mind. And also the news. News editors oftentimes decide what to. Oftentimes decide what to post and what to report on, you know, based on what people are talking about and what they're watching. If no one watched the sub, this, the sub disaster unfold, CNN would not be covering it. And the New York Times would not have, you know, frequent minute by minute updates of what happened. The reason why they were doing it is because people wanted that information. And it is a Business, and I had also said on a number of lives as well, is the press did cover the migrant disaster. I was watching it. I was, I was familiar with it and I was definitely following it. But the complaints do bring up, you know, an important part of what the press does cover. You know, if there, there are communication theories, there's the agenda setting theory, which involves news and news coverage. It's when an editor decides what is news, do they set an agenda and they can do that? You know, absolutely. An example of an agenda setting theory. This is, this is fictitious. I'm coming up with this. But this would be if the Washington Post, all of a sudden, during the substory, decided to write a re. Decided to write a piece justifying why billionaires want to go to extreme measures for fun, for hobby and for exploration. One might accuse the Washington Post of setting an agenda. There, There'd be agenda setting theory in play. Why? Because Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. So one could think maybe he would come down and say, you have to write a piece. We, you know, we cannot taint this idea of exploration because that is really the topic, you know, of the podcast this week. I want to talk about the pr. I want to talk about the reputation, not really about the facts, because we all know the facts. But watching the names and the brands and the companies that were involved was interesting as well. So quickly, I just want to go through, you know, some of the, some of the good, you know, media strategies that I saw in this and some of the worst ones that I saw for the purpose of people, you know, who work in comms and people who, you know, work in public relations, public affairs, communications, leadership. This, this crisis or this disaster to me was a bit of a throwback. I worked in, worked on the other side, public affairs as well, back in the 90s and the early 2000s. And this story just hearkened back to a time before social media, before we had extra coverage, you know, extra sources to, you know, kind of color and build a story. You know, back in the 90s, we didn't have social media. And I compared it to a time when I was, when I was reporting on JFK Junior's plane that was lost off the waters of Martha's Vineyard just off of Woods Hole. There wasn't social media, there wasn't video, you know, there wasn't someone filming JFK Jr. As he, you know, as he drove into New Jersey to get into his plane. This is the coverage wasn't there. It was a plane that took off when it was sunset. It was foggy, which I absolutely remember the foggy weather that day because I lived in Cape Cod and. And then poof, was gone. So there wasn't any, there wasn't any color, if you will, from a news point of view. There wasn't, there wasn't anything to show. There wasn't B roll, just the only B roll that was out there was just an ocean. And this story, the sub story, was so similar to that. Okay, so some of the strategies that I saw that were interesting to me, so let's look at some of the good ones now. There was transparency and timely communication. One of the things that I did notice right away is when as soon as I found out about the story, I had posted this on social media, that I immediately went to Twitter to look for real time information from Ocean Gate. They had an older tweet, an older pinned tweet up there, and so that was dated, but they did replace it with updated information. I took, I think that took a day or two to do that. But one of the things that they did do right away that I noticed when I looked at the news coverage and, and CBS News was the first, I believe, that I noticed that had information that they were actually confirmed that there were tourists on that submersible. And they got that information directly from Ocean Gate. So that is one piece of it, that Ocean Gate wasn't hiding anything. They did speak with the press and they put the information out there. It wasn't as timely as it could have been, but there was, there was transparency there right away. So when the story, story hit breaking news, there was an Ocean Gate response right out the gate. Also, the U.S. coast Guard, they were on this as well. I mean, they, they handled the press, the press relations pretty well. Like I said, it was out of the First District, it was not out of headquarters, which is out of Washington D.C. it was out of Boston. Their Twitter page was very active with updates. So everyone knew that that was the agency and that was the District, the first district that was involved. Now another good part of the media strategy is I think through all of this, everyone involved demonstrated, you know, empathy and concern for the five people, you know, on board that submersive, submersible. You know, even though we had billionaires on there, we, you know, this was an extreme exploration hobby at, you know, really at its, I would say its finest or its worst. There. You wouldn't notice in the news coverage that there was any type of bias towards that or commentary. There was definitely commentary on social media, for sure. But there was definitely empathy and care. The coverage for these very wealthy people and one of their sons, a 19 year old son, it felt similar coverage, you know, if, if anyone was, you know, on, on board, you know, not just billionaires. So I thought that piece of it was quite, was quite good. In terms of the coverage, the Coast Guard and their messaging expressed sincere empathy, as did Oceangate in their messaging showing concern for, for the passengers. Though we did not know that one of the passengers at that time was the CEO of Ocean Gate and also the what the husband of the wife who also work for Oceangate, who apparently is the head of communications for the company and was also one of the people on the boat. Now the other piece that I think that was good is in terms of what we saw in terms of the coverage and the press relations on this, the media relations was leveraging social media experts. You noticed that in the press conferences with the Coast Guard. They brought other people in. They had, you know, someone from the UK since we had someone from the UK who was, you know, on board. There was, there was definitely. It was a multi agency effort. We, you never got the sense that it was only one agency that was calling the shots on this. And now that we've learned that the agencies knew more than the public knew, that's going to segue us into the worst media strategies that we saw here now in the environment that we're in in 2023. So much of news coverage happens online. It's just, that's just how it is. We're gone are the days of sitting people just sitting, looking at televisions and you know, waiting for breaking news. Although that happened. But many people I would bet if you're listening to me right now, you are probably following this on your phone or following it on your laptop. And if you were watch and if you watch the press conference with the Coast Guard, you watched it, you know, on your laptop, you watch the online version because a lot of people are covering it. So from a news coverage point of view, what you could take away from this is how critical social media is when it comes to media relations, particularly in a crisis situation. That's where people are. A newspaper, if it comes out once a day, I don't even know does anyone have twice a day editions anymore? An afternoon and you know, an afternoon, a morning and afternoon. I don't think so. But you know, and even cable news, they're watching cable news, but so much of it is driven by social. Now what made that piece somewhat sticky because there was a lot of information out there. There's a lot of people talking, a lot of people asking questions, but we had somewhat of a transparency problem as well. So even though Ocean Gate and the Coast Guard came out right away and they were transparent with information, they were not transparent with. The biggest news in this entire story is that most people affiliated with the company and the agencies and the entities that were involved in the search, they all knew that the, the implosion happened on Sunday. They all knew and they sat on it. They sat on the information. Now, it's not a con, I'm not a conspiracy theorist here. There's many things that could be at play. They needed to determine likely, they needed to determine how it was going to be revealed that there, that the, that there was a catastrophic implosion, even though it was picked up. The implosion was picked up on sonar, apparently. And the Navy had indicated that they were familiar, that they knew that this had happened on, on Sunday. But the fact that so many people knew about it and kept it under wraps, they probably knew from, you know, from a search and recovery aspect what they needed to do to confirm what happened. So when that hovercraft came to put down the sonars, I believe they knew exactly where they were going. They knew exactly where it was, and they knew what they needed to find, and that's where they could find the wreckage. So there was a narrative that was crafted for the public. And I had said on one of my tiktoks, it seemed a little, you know, it seemed a little calculated. It seemed a little calculated. But I don't know who did that. Like, I do not know who would be the mastermind behind that. I mean, certainly the agencies, you know, you have, you know, the Coast Guard and the Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard and, And the entities coming over from France. And imo, you know, everyone is involved in this. There's such a maritime element of it. They had to keep that news under wrap. But what I found so fascinating is the no. 1 in news, at least from what I can tell, and I was looking, no one was coming out with a storyline about people knowing on Sunday. Like, shouldn't we have known on Sunday for the amount of people who knew? So not only do we not have that information, we also had this next. This, this additional narrative of. Banging. I. When that story went live, I happened to see it right away. I was online when I saw it, or I was doing a live, I think when it came out and it was, I quoted it from the Independent that there was banging and then how long did that banging narrative stay out there when, when people already knew it could not be true, it was impossible. And then once we hear begging, I mean talk about a storyline in a movie, is it possible they're all in there in this tank the size of a minivan and someone's banging? And then people said, well, it's the universal sign for distress, for sos, for submariners. It was, it was crazy. But no one, no one who knew stopped that narrative. They let it go. Also the oxygen, they knew that the oxygen was running at a certain time, that it was going to run out at a certain time. News coverage was allowed to continue with that narrative. They had oxygen watch clocks. You know, how much oxygen was left now? I mean, we have to know. And because it wasn't uncovered and because no one reported on it, the Molly me says people knew, you know, like likely even in the, in the media, the press, they knew as well. Like someone had editors had to know. People know nothing gets covered. So maybe they were encouraged to keep, to keep that going. Now what would be the incentive to keep a narrative of, of diminishing depleting oxygen by the hour? So Hollywood, because you're going to get people gripped, people watching, and not only are they just gonna like watch and kind of tune in, they're gonna keep watching, keep watching. So this was quite a boon for, for the press. So there, there was probably some buy in there too, to keep people there. This, this drama as it unfolded, it unfolded over days. So this was days of wall to wall coverage. So think about that now. Think about that from a business point of view. Okay? So that lack of transparency may have been a part of a bigger strategy. So also the second piece of it, you know, there was a lack of media engagement. I mean, certainly with Ocean Gate. I mean they just shut down after they had that statement. Their website even crashed or they took their website down. They didn't want people, you know, going in there and digging, you know, for more facts to find out bad things about these expeditions. So the, there was a lack of media engagement in terms of spokespeople. Now it's understandable why Ocean Gate wouldn't be able to provide a spokesperson person. It, I, I think it's reasonable. Without me, I don't really know this, but that size of the company, probably everyone who could be a spokesperson was probably on that boat or the CEO who, who usually the face of that company, he, he was, he was dead on Sunday. So when you're, when your leader and your primary Spokesperson is, is taken out of the game. Now you're scrambling to find out who's doing it. Now if the director of communication is the wife of Stockton Rush, the CEO who's on the sub, well, she can't be a spokesperson either. So there's probably a lot of scrambling and there's probably not much to say anyway to go on to, you know, because there's so much scrutiny with that company anyway. But that should not be, that should not be a playbook to follow for any company. It's understandable why Ocean Gate for as limited of the resources they likely had. But no other company should ever be that silent. So that would be a, you know, a bad media strategy there. Also the limited social media presence, like I said, their website went down, there weren't tweets, there weren't posts. They did update a pin tweet. I had mentioned the pin tweet earlier. An important aspect of media relations in the social media age is a pin tweet. Pin tweet is what you put at the top of a social media feed. All the social media. Wait, does TikTok. I don't know if TikTok has pinned tweets or pinned pin posts. I don't even know. But I know Facebook does. And the purpose behind it is it's the real estate that everyone looks at first. So if it is a crisis and you are an organization dealing with a crisis, whatever your statement is, you're going to pin that tweet because every time someone replies to something, it might be pushed down. But if someone goes to your page, they're going to see it right there. It took a while for them to remove a pinned tweet, which was thanking their partner Starlink for their successful titanic expedition. Starlink is owned by, run by SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk. So that. And is that interesting that Elon Musk, we never heard about Elon Musk. We never heard about Starlink at all in the story. Yet his company was the one that was involved in the communication. So what we don't want to follow in any type of a crisis is having a website shut down and have it crash. That's where you want to put your statement is on your website and a pin tweet, if you can. You want it in both places. And also by using social media, it's a way where you don't have to deal with reporters directly. I had mentioned on my one of my tiktoks that CBS News clearly was able to get a hold of someone At Ocean Gate. So they, I believe, if I remember correctly, they had a direct source. So they had a direct quote from someone at Ocean Gate where everyone else was quoting off of that. And so really in a crisis, especially for a company like that, they should not be picking up the phone. That's where a website could come in. All right, so quickly some of the things, you know, to highlight in there as well. So I talked about the news. Now think about the station that you went to to watch it. Now me, I went to cnn. I always think that they're right in the middle. They weren't for a bit when Chris Licht was there. But who, What? Who? Who? Chris Licht, Remember him? Only from two weeks ago, the Atlantic profile. And he was gone by Monday. The former CEO and chairman of CNN out. Think about the horrible press that CNN had just two weeks ago. And now baffo ratings. Think anyone is thinking about Chris Lick? Well, other than us right now, no one was a boon for cnn. And also, you know, Washington Post, New York Times, you know, with the running information. So this was a good story for the press. They did move aside. Like I said, the Mediterranean migrant boat disaster was not a leading story anymore. And the substory definitely was. It just was good for the plot as, as they say now. Also some of the other sub threads that were happening in the story. There was the brands that were involved. There was Boeing, Boeing and University of Washington. Both had to come out, deny being involved with this. With the sub. With the sub. The CEO Stockton Rush at one time had bragged about the. Both University of Washington and Boeing's involvement in that sub. And he had said it wasn't MacGyver, which is from the TV show MacGyver where you know, he would take like tape and candy floss and you know, put stuff together. Candy floss, dental floss. Wait, did they call it. They may have called it candy floss at one time. Cotton candy, whatever. I don't know why I was going to that anyway. But they had to come out and deny that and they had to distance themselves. Is it true? Who knows? I mean, he said it, but we don't know if the truth is there. But they became a part of the story also. Part of the story was Logitech. That was the controller that they used in the sub. It was a game controller and he had. Oh, we have a couple of them here. If this one happens to shut down, oh my goodness, they had noodles in there. So all these brands are a part of it. Another brand which is really a band, Blink 182. How did they get involved? The stepson of one of the people on board, Hamish, which I had said on the live, whenever I see, wherever I hear the name Hamish, his name was Hamish Harding, but Heyman, the name Hamish. I asked my TikTok live, does anyone know a movie in the 90s that came out where they had the character Hamish? Someone on the live. A couple did Four Weddings and a funeral and Andy McDowell's character, the old, the older Scottish gentleman, his name was Hamish. It's how Molly's brain works. His stepson, Brian says, was kind of all over the place. So he, he went to a Blink 182 concert and. And then defended himself at the Blink 182 concert. He was posting to Instagram. He was posting to Instagram Stories. So he's audio guy182. So clearly Blink182 is incredibly important to him. So he had said that his dad had wanted him, his stepfather would have wanted him to be at that concert. And also some of the other threads, like there was a writer from the Simpsons who had done numerous trips, several trips, you know, on that sub. And there was of course, a Simpsons episode where they're on a. They're on a sub. It's incredible because on a live, I was finding that out. And the last live that I did was all over the place because we Talked about Blink182. We were talking about the Simpsons and Kathy Griffin was on the live. And she and Rosie o' Donnell was on it briefly too. I mean, it became like this crazy free for all of information. But it was fantastic. I mean, everybody was throwing information there. And that's when I found out too, that the wife of the CEO of Ocean Gate was the director of communication and her grandparents, her great, great, great, great. I think, I think it was four times. They were on the Titanic. They died in the Titanic. They were first class passengers. They were the Ira St. They were on. They were passengers, which could explain this fascination with the Titanic. Also in this. In terms of brands that were tied in, we had. There was the CBS story, David Pogue story, where he went in there in that sub itself. And they, they showed even on film how they had lost contact in there. So that was actually a very good piece to have, you know, for cbs. That was a great news hit. The fact that they had that footage to come in and, and, and discuss that, that was, that was great for cbs. But the other person who chimed in, who probably could not help himself was James Cameron, James Cameron being the director of Titanic and then also he was on an interview in ABC News, interview with Phil Lipoff and also Robert Ballard. So he was the first person to locate the Titanic wreckage. So he's been, you know, forever associated with that. But if you were to listen to James Cameron, I would say this is a clip of James Cameron being a James Cameron. Take a listen. I had deep concerns about the technology that they were using. Composite, composite fiber wound filament hull, which I don't believe has any place in deep submergence. And I know a thing or two about, about, you know, the engineering that goes into subs. I designed and built my own sub and went, you know, at one point, 10 years ago, went three times deeper than Titanic at the, at the Challenger Deep. Wouldn't you just love to sit down with James Cameron and find out exactly how it feels? Guess what? You don't need to because that was definitely coming out. There's a reason why James Cameron has the rap that he has. You could tell he was probably, he probably just wanted to come out and blast that CEO Stockton Rush. He just seems so spiteful in that interview. What it seemed like to me is James Cameron, he was pissed that someone ruined the brand of exploration. Because now if James Cameron ever wants to go down there, any other explorer, this is the story that it's going to be about. It will be forever associated with Ocean Gate. So James Cameron is not happy because of all these people talking about the money and the wealth down there, for what purpose? Doesn't make him look good, but he could not have looked any worse. Anyway. But based on previous, previous thoughts about James Cameron, like this one from Amy Poehler, Katherine Bigelow nominated tonight. Haven't really been following the controversy over Zero Dark Thirty, but when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron. I had to tie it up with a Hollywood clip because really this entire story felt like we were watching a movie, like we were watching a drama. Well, it's 2023, like we were watching a six episode streamer, you know, about this. I mean there was every, you know, every element of a, of a good story, you know, a gripping story, a compelling story, but in the end there it was a tragic story and particularly for the 19 year old, if reports are to be believed that he didn't even want to go on this trip. So, so that's, that's very sad. So still, regardless of how people feel about billionaires and their extreme sports and their hobbies, five Lives were lost. So in the end it was very tragic. But lessons to be learned, particularly if you're a communicator. So every episode I leave an indestructible PR tip and that is one easy to remember takeaway to help you build your indestructible reputation, whether it's you as a person or as a business. Business. And it is this. Any crisis can come with an element of surprise. Many happen that way. That's why it is very, very important that you have some type of crisis communication plan. You can head over to my website if you need a crisis communication plan, because I have one online. I recently conducted a course. It was, it was a live session and then it also came with a, a template like a boilerplate for a crisis communication plan. If you need one, head over to my website, mollymcpherson.com and you can find it there right off of the homepage or there's a link in the show notes as well on the video and in the podcast. Also, I did want to mention I do have a blog post about a minimal crisis plan that you can use. Let's say you don't want to have a full fledged one, you don't have the resources, you don't have a time, you don't have the time. But in one document you can write down a very, very simple plan. Ten steps. And if you want to head over to a new platform that I'm using, it's called five. So if you head over to five.me backslash Molly McPherson links in show notes, you will see my new community. I've switched over from patreon over to 5. 5 is a new company. They just launched in January. They this is a platform that is more for this kind of user generated content. It allows, you know, allows a community to interact. And one of the reasons why I made that switch is because it's driven on questions. If you have any type of question that you want to ask me, something that you've heard in this podcast, head on over to that site. You can log in. There is a free membership there that you can just log in and ask a question. They'll send you a summary each week. If you want, you know via email about some of the questions that were asked. It's just a different look on a community and a different way for me to be able to serve you, the listener and the viewer. So if you want to head over there also, again, the link is in the show notes. That's all for this week on the podcast. Thanks for listening and for watching. Bye for now.