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So what are the limits of crisis communications?

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So this is a question that comes from one of our regular YouTube viewers. This is from Konstantin Kizzniak. And thanks for writing. Konstantin writes in saying thanks for your lengthy video on crisis communications and wants to know a little more about specifics. He writes, can you tell a little more about how companies are using crisis communications when they're initiating a crisis or against competitors? They're not using crisis communications for defense, but for attack. Nowadays, a lot of companies use this trick. Now, I saw this question, wasn't quite sure where the person was going constantly, so I wrote back and said, can you clarify, which is a general rule of thumb, whether you're communicating at the end of a speech, a presentation, or even a media interview. If you're really not sure what the question is, ask for clarification. I try to practice what I preach, and that's what I did with Constantin. Here's what Konstantin wrote back because I'd asked for an example. An example is Apple's presentation of the iPhone in 2007 where Jobs claimed that phones do not need keyboards or removable batteries and other features. Afterwards, other companies had no answer and a crisis occurred for them. So I think what Konstantin is talking about is Apple introduced their iPhone. It got tremendous attention. Steve Jobs famously was against stylists and also keyboards. He simplified his phone and it became a huge success. The crisis is that other phone businesses quickly went out of business or saw market share plummet. I'll address this in one moment.

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So, Konstantin, I do appreciate you asking this question. It does give us a good starting point for defining terms of what crisis communications is in fact all about. There are crises that occur in business and quite often a crisis attracts media attention. So you have a crisis communications event where you've got to really communicate to the whole world what you're all about. And quite often your reputation can be defined and if you do it poorly, it can destroy your reputation. In the case of bp, when they had all their oil spill problems in the Gulf a number of years ago, their market capitalization dropped by $35 billion in six months. Not just because revenues were down, but in part because they didn't handle themselves and their communication during that period. So that's one issue. This is a slightly different issue. If I'm Reading this correctly, Konstantin, the issue is Steve Jobs introduced a new product boldly, essentially attacked others in the industry, saying, your products are garbage. I have the best product in the world. And it turns out that the marketplace largely adopted his view. So this wasn't a crisis in the sense of Nokia's factory that makes cell phones on fire and attracting a lot of TV reporters. It wasn't that sort of an immediate visual crisis, but it was a crisis in the sense of a very slow moving over the course of many months and a few years where so many other cell phone companies saw the demand for their product go way, way down. I do want to point out there are limits to crisis communication. There's no one simple message point or sound bite or good interview that is going to help BlackBerry or Nokia or someone suddenly regain huge prominence and market share. Crisis communication is not the solution to everything. If you have poor business fundamentals, if other people have created products that are dramatically better than yours or services that are better than yours, you can't necessarily communicate your way out of a box, out of the problem. So that's what I see as a slightly different issue. Now, you can take the perspective that what Steve Jobs did by attacking essentially the oil industry is creating crisis. But that's not how I define crisis communications. Crisis communications is when your specific organization is under threat, your entire reputation is at threat. With what Steve Jobs did, which was smart in hindsight, and I think at the time is he attacked other people in the industry. That's not without controversy. But he wanted to make a clear demarcation of how his product was better and why everyone needed to pay attention to it and why people needed to realize this was a true, groundbreaking, revolutionary product. And he was wildly successful at that. I want to go into some more nuances of crisis communications in just a moment.

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Another aspect of crisis communications involves sort of hopping on to other people's crises. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this or unethical about this, but you have to be careful. I myself often get in the news media because someone else is facing a crisis. A number of years ago, when Tiger woods had his whole situation, as you recall, and crisis to his reputation and the whole fallout with his wife and the car and the police, all that stuff, well, he was under siege for months. He did pretty much everything you could possibly do wrong when it comes to crisis communications. But that also presented opportunities for people like me. And I must have done a hundred different tv, radio, print, online interviews over a few months talking about Tiger woods crisis communications. So it wasn't a crisis to my organization. It was an opportunity for me to talk about my expertise. So it was just essentially a run of the mill Newsday story for me, even though it was about someone else's crisis. Now, other companies can do this too, but you have to be careful. If there is a crisis that affects human beings, human beings injured, dead, maimed, and it looks like you're trying to cash in, especially if you're a large corporation, a consumer goods product, and it looks like you're trying to sell another sandwich or soft drink off of someone's misery, and you're posting something cute on Twitter, trying to be topical, trying to be relevant, you gotta be careful about that. There can be huge, huge backlash. And then unwittingly, you've created a crisis for your own brand. That is not what you want to do. I'll give you a few more ground rules of how I think you should handle other people's crises in a moment.

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So let me give you an example what not to do. Let's say in my own industry, for example, someone from a public relations trade publication called me up and said, tj, I understand your largest competitor has just filed bankruptcy. What do you think? This would be a chance for me to sort of pile on, say, well, they deserve to. Na, na na na na. But I'd be very careful about doing something like that because it could cheapen my brand. It could make me look like I'm kicking a man or a woman when they're down. It also could make me look petty. So if I were to receive a call like that, and I haven't received a call like that, by the way, I would probably respond giving something fairly bland and positive, not because I expect to be quoted, but just because I want to be responsive to the reporter. I don't want to burn that relationship. I don't want the reporter to think I am someone who doesn't get back to them. So I would probably say something like, you know, so&so is highly talented and I'm sure there'll be a huge success in their next act. And they might actually use that because it's a. It's a cliche and it's a sound bite and nobody's offended if you are going to respond to other people's crises and use that as a media hook, then you need to ask yourself, will the people you care about, your customers, your prospects, your voters, your investors, how will they perceive this action? And it can depend. I mean, if you are a spokesperson for one political movement, a particular ideology, and someone who is your complete enemy gets caught in a massive sex scandal, well, then attacking that person at that moment, saying they're unfit for public office may be a good thing, maybe the best thing. Your supporters, your voters, your contributors might love that. So it's not a one size fits all. You can't just say across the board that it's never good to respond or never good to attack. You have to look at it through the lens of your particular environment, the particular situations that affect you and the people you care about. But I do want to stress, one of the best ways you can ever get massive publicity is by reacting to other people's crises. Again, I don't want to sound mean spirited about it, but you look at the rise of so many wildly successful famous people, it's because they were there when some other crisis happened. Greta Van Susteran, Longtime talk show host, Fox news previously on CNN. She was fairly obscure until OJ killed his wife. Dr. Phil was somewhat obscure, a consultant to jury selection. And then Oprah was sued by the beef people and she had to use a consultant. So her crisis presented an opportunity for him. So reacting to other people's crises can be a great way of getting massive, massive amounts of media attention as long as you focus on your message, your expertise and you don't look petty or mean spirited. Follow those rules and regardless of what side you're on in a crisis, you can come out ahead. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations, I keep saying presentations. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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