When Disaster Strikes

By now everyone with access to a news media outlet or a social media platform is well aware of the devastating storm that recently wreaked havoc across the country, especially on the east coast. And if you’re not learning about the storm second hand, then you’re probably one of the more than a million people that personally felt the storm’s wrath (myself included).Today, there are an alarming number of people and businesses still without power.

Whenever a natural disaster such as this occurs and it negatively impacts people’s lives on a large scale, the target of the most public ire is usually the local utility company, followed by the local government. Most of the people’s angst and anger can be directly attributed to the loss of electricity that typically follows a storm of this magnitude. Without power, food spoils, temperatures rise or fall, entertainment is extinguished, business is lost, and everyday life-functions that we normally take for granted come to a screeching halt.

In the area where I live and work – the DMV (DC, Maryland, and Virginia) – the two dominate energy providers are PEPCO and the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE).Because I live within BGE’s coverage area and my home was without power for roughly 24 hours, I’ll just focus on their handling of storm’s aftermath…from a public relations standpoint.

Nobody likes a bad storm, especially when it involves the loss of electricity. But what people hate even more than the storm is the company responsible for returning life back to normal when that storm is over. With a total of 1.24 million customers in the DMV and a large portion of them without power, BGE faced a daunting challenge of restoring everyone’s electricity without sustaining a crushing blow to consumer confidence or its public image (think BP Gulf oil spill).

While the storm itself wasn’t BGE’s doing (or any other energy company for that matter), it was perceived as their fault that people had to go days without power. And with 100 degree temperature days being the norm, one can understand if people are a little pissed. No A/C on a very hot day is more than the inconvenience of not being able to watch the latest installment of HBO’s True Blood, it can mean the difference between life and death.

So how did BGE do in terms of their PR and crisis communications efforts? In my opinion, they did outstanding. I give them a grade of an “A minus.” I watched them closely to see how they would handle this delicate situation of communicating with a fragmented audience residing in a 3.0 world.

Measuring the return on a PR initiative can be, at times, subjective, but how you respond and communicate during a crisis situation is pretty straightforward – you either did a good job or a bad job. Fail at crisis communications as a company and it can cost you your business, or at minimum brand equity. People have a tendency to remember how badly an organization handles a crisis (think Hurricane Katrina and Waco).

Because of how I receive a large portion of information these days, I decided to see what BGE was up to via Twitter. In checking their Twitter feed, I saw not only good information about what was happening and what they were currently doing to alleviate the problem, but I also saw that they were engaging with, in some cases, irate customers via Twitter. As such, I decided to tweet them with my observations (FYI, they didn’t directly respond back to me).

Overall, I liked BGE’s messaging and use of Twitter, especially the additions of the images via their Flickr account. But while I thought it was beneficial to show the visuals of the damage that was done so that people could grasp the scope of the problem and understand why they had no electricity, I thought it would be even better to incorporate visuals of the BGE technicians working tireless to fix the problems. I’d like to think that my suggestion was heeded, because on July 1^st, the photos on Flickr switched from disaster porn to nothing but images of BGE workers solving the problems.

In addition to what was happening on Twitter, BGE implemented a full court social media press, also communicating and responding via Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Most of the relevant social media touch points were covered (sorry Google +). BGE also made excellent use of its website’s homepage. For what they were doing in the digital space, in light of the circumstances, I gave them high marks. It just goes to show that if you don’t have a social media crisis plan, you need to develop one immediately.

I also thought that BGE did a solid job on the traditional media relations component of their crisis communications. Whether it was with TV, radio or print media outlets BGE consistently got the message out as to what they were doing to solve the problem or provide solutions. They even drafted and placed that magical position missive known as the Op-Ed (it ran in both the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Business Journal). And even the company’s online media center stayed current with the latest news releases and company blog posts.

As a PR Pro, watching the BGE Comm Team at work was somewhat exciting, taking me back to my crisis communications days at the Maryland Transit Administration. While the circumstances surrounding why they had to test the readiness of their communications apparatus in the first place was due to an unfortunate nature, and by no means does this glowing review of their PR efforts mean that they’ve fixed all the power problems, it was refreshing to see a company execute a crisis communication effort in an effective manner.

Oh by the way, I gave BGE an A minus for the response rates or in some minor cases a lack of a response via social media, and for what appears to be non sanctioned spokes people going on camera and/or talking to the media.

So how does your company/organization’s crisis communication plan stack up?

The Empire Strikes Back

Facebook’s PR Machine is a beast!

(I had to get that out of the way to prove that I’m not a hater despite some of the critical things I may write in the following paragraphs).

Never have I seen a media relations assault like the one I witnessed in the last 3-5 months, nor have I seen this kind of quality cumulative media coverage like that amassed by Facebook’s communication apparatus. The vast majority of the coverage could only be described as positive. One friend on Twitter even remarked that onslaught of coverage dedicated to the social media platform put you in the frame of mind of a new start-up just being introduced to the masses for the first time, not the behemoth that already dominates most people’s internet use.

Last night, before I settled in to watch President Obama do his Rat Rack, Dean Martin governing thing, I happened upon a new CNBC investigative report, “The Facebook Obsession.” I couldn’t help but wonder about the timeliness of this program as well as its central premise.

Surely, with 600 million worldwide subscribers this isn’t going to be news to anybody on this planet. We all pretty much know that it’s a popular site and lots of people can’t do without it, despite the trouble it may get them into. To borrow from an old cable program, it’s “Not Necessarily the News” right?

But then it hit me, that damn Facebook movie is probably driving this or at minimum has something to do with it.

Recently, the Hollywood adaptation of Facebook’s genesis story, “The Social Network” was in the news for owning the top spots at the Golden Globes. And now the likelihood is great that it will do the same at the Academy Awards.

Facebook’s CEO and Founder, Mark Zuckerberg, HATES this movie regardless of his nonchalant posturing and constant pretending that it’s no big deal. In reality, when it comes to this movie, “The Social Network” is like that splinter in the mighty lion’s paw. It won’t kill him, but it smarts like hell.

Originally when news about the making of this movie first began to surface, Facebook appeared to do as most large companies do when faced with something unfavorable, they ignored it, labeled it as a nothing and hoped it would go away. But a funny thing happens when you base your strategy on “hope” and don’t have a workable crisis communications plan in place, eventually you find yourself in a spot where all hope is lost.

Unfortunately, for Facebook, great screenplay + great director = Hollywood smash! “The Social Network” became such a big box office hit that Facebook could no longer ignore it. I’ve seen the movie and I thought it was excellent regardless of the subtle creative liberties the screen writer and director took. By all researchable accounts the vast majority of the film was based on court transcripts and firsthand accounts of people who were there and part of the story.

The real problem Facebook had with the film was that in addition to some of the creative liberties taken, the movie made Zuckerberg come across as some sort of socially inept, douchey dickwad genius. And that was unacceptable. The empire had to strike back.

Now before I get into the dynamics of how Facebook struck back, I’ll offer what my counsel would’ve been, had I been in the PR war room – Control the narrative and own the story! Being on the defensive when it comes to PR is operating from a position of weakness, but deflection…ah.

I wholeheartedly believe that Facebook could’ve mitigated the potential negative attention from the movie through deflection. What would’ve been wrong with Zucks and Facebook “bigging up” the film by indicating to the press that it’s kind of cool to have a movie made about your life and company? They could’ve even talked about all the things the movie got right and fondly reminisced about the good times of the early days during the many interview requests around the launch of the movie.

Team Zucks could’ve even hosted some sort of premiere event for the movie (besides the uneventful renting out of a theater for staff and then going out for Apple-tinis) and then doing a light presser afterwards to playfully point out some of the inaccuracies, all the while praising the writing and performances. Or at a minimum Mark Zuckerberg could’ve showed he was a good sport by attending the actual premiere for “The Social Network.” All of these tactics would’ve gone a long way in killing any negative coverage in its infancy.

Instead, Facebook took the “too cool for school” approach of trying to cast the movie off as being some lame fictional account not worthy of commenting on…that was until it took over the U.S. movie market and hundreds of thousands of Facebookers began to take the story depicted as the absolute gospel. Then Facebook wanted to do something about it.

The best defense is a good offense. - Vince Lombardi.

With every media outlet on God’s green earth writing glowing articles about “The Social Network” Facebook decided to come out swinging. It appeared that they tackled this issue from a two-pronged approach: dispute the accuracy of the movie on the one hand and push out as much news and company stories as humanly possible in a short period on the other. Their mission was crystal clear – dominate the news cycle and make people forget about….what’s the name of that movie again?

With “The Social Network” genie out of the bottle, Facebook and an army of third party evangelists took to the offense to challenge the movie’s characterization and push back on the inaccuracies. Of these third party evangelists none were more visible and vocal than resident fan boy and author of the book, The Facebook Effect, David Kirkpatrick. His purpose was simple, tout Zuckerberg's coolness and denounce this movie at every available opportunity.

The strategy seemed to work as Facebook and others took to print and the airwaves countering Zuckerberg’s movie portrayal, by painting the picture of him as a cool confident ladies man that had a lot of friends and was extremely at ease in social settings. Zuckerberg even started doing a bunch of personal interviews (something he normally would’ve been reluctant to do) to show people the “real” him. All of this for some lame fictional movie.

I knew PR was at play when I began to see all this coverage and the same talking points were repeated over and over again:

• Zuckerberg has lots of friends

• Zuckerberg is not an introvert

• Zuckerberg has a hot Asian girlfriend that he’s been with for years

• Women in general like Zuckerberg and he’s never had a problem getting a girlfriend

• People generally like Zuckerberg and they think he’s cool

• Zuckerberg didn’t care about college clubs

• Facebook wasn’t built to meet girls or make money

• Facebook is a passion for Zuckerberg, something bigger than a revenue generator
  

I've never seen someone get so rankled by a "fictional characterization" before and combat it so vehemently (ah shucks Zucks). But it was working.

Additionally, Facebook began to announce a new feature or product almost weekly. And when they weren’t pushing Zuckerberg in front of the media and announcing a new feature or product, they were announcing donations. Facebook bombarded the media with about a year’s worth of positive news stories (for some companies) and squeezing it all into a half of year time frame. But it wasn't easy given all of the energy Facebook had to exert all in the name of reputation management.

Eventually, “The Social Network” was knocked right out of the news cycle and left the public consciousness all together (that was, until it came time for award recognitions). Everything said about Facebook in the media since then has been a positive reflection of the company, its mission and its leadership. From a PR standpoint I had no choice but acknowledge their skills and the combat job they did in the press. Most people, me included, now view Zucks as somebody you’d want to have a beer with.

But much like the villainous Empire in George Lucas’s hit trilogy, the Death Star has a weak point and Facebook’s is user privacy. Stay tuned to see how the vaunted Facebook PR Team handles this rebel challenge.

Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself…

L.A. JONES TAKES TWITTER ACCOUNT “OFF-THE-RECORD” WITH NEW IDENTITY

Former Twitter Account Known as @BMorePRGuy adopts New Moniker, Moves to Differentiate Web Presence

(DMV – DC, Maryland, Virginia) – With so many voices fighting to be heard through the avalanche of messages that is Twitter, PR operative, L.A. Jones takes a step forward to distinguish his online brand by unveiling a new account name – @OffThe_Record.

The new identity, which replaces the now retired @BMorePRGuy, will retain the same humor, information sharing, observations, sports talk and snark that nearly 1,500 followers have come to expect and currently enjoy. The name change comes at a pivotal time when an ever increasing number of up and coming PR pros have launched new Twitter accounts with some variation of the acronym “PR” incorporated into their name.

“Who really gives a $#@% that I did this besides me? But I’m definitely excited about the switch and potential branding possibilities it may bring,” said L.A. Jones, PR Operative, Organizational Storyteller and Relationship Builder. “I’ve told people for years, that what I say is totally off-the-record; it’s time that I reflected that sentiment literally.”

In selecting @OffThe_Record, L.A. Jones is able to cleverly play off the name with the nature of his “Tweets” but also maintain a connection to his chosen profession.

Often when public relations professionals or other sources conduct interviews with reporters or journalists, some aspects of their remarks may be requested to remain “off-the-record” meaning not for quotation, publication or attribution. It is also a tactic some PR pros utilize when trying to introduce a new idea or angle to a reporter during an interview.

Despite a rising popularity and the ever increasing following this Twitter account has generated, L.A. Jones believes that the name change will not diminish momentum. LA. Jones stands firmly behind by projections that the new name will open up new Twitter markets and find him endeared by new followers.

“Besides, my Umi said shine your light on the world,” added Jones.

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About @OffThe_Record

@OffThe_Record is the official Twitter account and online presence for public relations operative, Larry Jones. Also known as an organizational storyteller, Larry Jones has more than a decade of comprehensive public relations/communications experience. He has practiced public relations in four major markets (DC, Chicago, Detroit and Baltimore) and has worked within an agency and internal communications team environment. To learn more, visit online: http://www.linkedin.com/in/theprman.