Yooralla’s crisis

by Frances Ward ON 31 August 2012

The Yooralla tragedy involving abuse by a casual carer has been popping up in the media since June. What we know now hasn’t really changed from what we were told in the original reports. But what we do know is that a very disturbing set of circumstances has taken place under the roof of one of our most recognised not-for-profit organisations and it has been handled very, very poorly.

Inflaming the issues further is the fact that families of victims were not (a) alerted to the allegations and charges laid against the carer and (b) given advanced warning of police interviews. It was only on the following day that the families were given details about the situation and it was not from Yooralla, but from the police.

Naturally, a situation like this will always be extremely difficult to manage. But what Yooralla has demonstrated is that when you don’t set up the right strategy from the beginning, issues management can tumble out of control and you can hurt infinitely more than your brand.

Issues management at every stage requires the sensitivity, experience and finesse of professional, dedicated communicators who take stakeholder relations seriously. As professionals in the marketing and public relations fields we have a unique set of skills that, with judicious and considered application, can prevent the sky from falling in on an organisation and its stakeholders when something of this magnitude goes wrong.

Yooralla clearly failed to plan for effective issues management and the fall out was bad for them and devastating for their stakeholders. I’m not saying that organisations should have a plan in place to play doctor to their brand when sensitive, organisational issues rear their heads. What I am saying is that establishing and carrying out a sound communications strategy can do more than resurrect a damaged profile – it can help heal the organisation and stakeholders.

So, for a moment, let’s take a closer look at what we can do to become exceptional communicators, to protect and inform stakeholders, through a strategic lens:

Think carefully about who your stakeholders are. Whether they’re involved at the heart of the event or issue, or whether they’re on the periphery, all your stakeholders must be identified. Regardless of how important they are to the bottom line you must put them on your list of people who need to be considered in your communications strategy.

Get inside stakeholders’ minds. Make sure you clearly and calmly think through what they would want to know, how they’d like to receive updates and news and when they would like to receive it. Do what is right for them.

Appoint a key stakeholder team. During times of crisis, leaked information (whether it’s right or wrong) will spread like wildfire and is damaging for all parties. Make sure the entire process is managed carefully by a tight-knit and trusted team, and make sure they keep the details to themselves.

Be considered when executing your plan. The planning stage is paramount, but so is the execution stage. Make sure everyone involved in stakeholder relations is informed of the strategy and their roles within it. Consistency is key and tasks must be well defined.

Assign one spokesperson to the task of publicly speaking about the issues at hand. It is very important to inspire confidence and consistency in how an issue is being managed. A good way to do this is to have an appointed spokesperson – intimately familiar with the communication strategy – to publicly communicate with stakeholders, whether it be via media, enewsletters, blogs, in-person meetings/briefings or videos.

Assign someone to take incoming queries. Make sure this person or persons are well-briefed on the process for handling enquiries. Anticipate all the different types of enquiries and complaints you might get and marry them to efficient, well-defined processes. Make sure each stakeholder receives a timely response.

These are just a few tactics relevant to effective issues management. Nonetheless, they are often overlooked, to the detriment of stakeholders and organisations alike. From the outside it seems that Yooralla forgot one of their most important and sensitive stakeholders directly involved in their business and their issue handling: the families of the victims. (Not to mention that there are also dark clouds hovering over their handling of the actual complaints of the abuse from both victims and other carers.) That the organisation is now viewed in a terrible light, one of selfish secrecy and incompetence, is entirely its own fault for the utter mismanagement of its communication and stakeholder relations processes.

Your marketing strategy in the media spotlight

by Frances Ward ON 31 July 2012

There’s often one thing that gets left out of the publicity conversation: the importance of a prepared spokesperson. Having a good spokesperson on hand is a key component of almost any media opportunity, from radio interviews to feature stories in magazines. A successful interview outcome requires succinct, insightful answers. It also requires the ability to lead the discussion towards interesting topics and company messages, phrased carefully for the occasion and seamlessly delivered. So, it’s no surprise that being the chosen spokesperson for your business can be overwhelming, for newbie and experienced spokespeople alike.

Today, I’d like to address two assumptions that can undermine even the most experienced and prepared of spokespeople.

The first of these is that it is up to the journalist to ask all the right questions to draw the best story from the spokesperson. It is true that the journalist plays a key role here, but there are mitigating circumstances that can prevent them from helping you get your story across. Journalists are often time poor and pulled in various directions across multiple topics. So, to ensure the best possible result from your interaction with a journalist you need to identify your messages, collate them and prepare yourself to use them flexibly throughout the conversation. Practice is really important, not just to memorise the messages but to ensure flow and direction – yes, a practised spokesperson can play a role in the direction of the conversation.

The second assumption is that the spokesperson is doing the journalist a favour by being available for the interview. It is true that a good interview will be of mutual benefit to spokesperson and journalist alike. However, a lot of groundwork can go into securing an interview on any platform. Busy executives disconnected from the publicity process sometimes miss this groundwork and don’t realise how precious the opportunity is. It’s important that he or she realises that it is a fabulous opportunity to have one-on-one attention from a journalist, and that approaching the opportunity properly prepared is essential to the outcome of the story and the opportunity.

To navigate these issues and to ensure an exceptional outcome from the media opportunity, a spokesperson often needs a little guidance. Media training allows the spokesperson to run through how the interview will work, which messages will resonate with the audience and rehearse potential questions. Practice really does make perfect when it comes to interviews.

But media training isn’t just good for a single opportunity – it is the basis for great media relations in the future. Why? Well, media training gives the spokesperson – and by extension the business – an outside perspective on what the most important messages are to their audience, and how they need to be conveyed. It can also really help the spokesperson distil the messages and work out how to frame answers to sticky or complex questions – this isn’t necessarily about ‘spin’ but rather making sure that the conversation flows into interesting, topical areas. Finally, it uncovers the interview introvert in otherwise confident executives who have never had trouble speaking at conferences, but clam up in front of someone with a Dictaphone or a TV camera.

Basically, a little publicity know-how goes a long way when it comes to making sure that your marketing strategy is supported and extended in the public arena.

How to alienate your audience in one easy step

by Frances Ward ON 4 July 2012

Have you ever received a piece of marketing or a solicited newsletter via email that has made you so embarrassed on behalf of the writer that you cannot do anything but blush and cringe? I just got an email like that. From start to finish it was both a visual and intellectual assault that left me feeling both angry as a professional communicator and alienated as a stakeholder.

Let me paint a picture for you. The grammar and spelling was all over the shop; the spacing was inconsistent and bizarre; some of the headings were capitalised; the text was pink, black and blue; and – this is the worst part – it opened with the bruised political view of the writer. Strike that. What I mean to say is that it lambasted the actions of a political party without care as to the politics of the reader, thereby alienating probably half the readership before they even got through the first paragraph to the newsletter content. And it wasn’t a political newsletter. It was a business support network newsletter, designed to engage its collective audience for the greater good of the network. The fact that it wasn’t professionally written, edited and proofed was frustrating enough. But really, they lost me at political.

How on Earth is it possible that in the age of content marketing people still don’t get that they need to handle the content they prepare for their stakeholders with care? When you’re reaching out to your stakeholders it’s absolutely paramount that content is relevant and helpful. What you need to do is make it easy for your readers to review your articles, letters and status updates. The only way to do this is by making sure the content you’re sending, or directing them to, is fabulous. Your aim is to save them time and build your profile as an expert who should be listened to, who can impart relevant, unique knowledge and who has their finger on the pulse of great information to share with the reader.

Unless you’ve been asked to write an article for a political newsletter and you’re happy for your political views to be public knowledge, then keep them to yourself. Especially don’t use your stakeholder communication channels as a platform to set the scene for your view on an issue. How is imparting your unsolicited political views going to engender a desired response in a reader that sits on the opposite side of the fence? In a heartbeat, you’ve alienated them. There are simply no benefits to this approach and it certainly won’t aid any public relations goals you might have to connect with your audience.

Engaging stakeholders to nurture relationships, or as I suggested above, to position yourself as an industry leader, can be a tricky business as it is. That task is only made harder if you alienate your stakeholders by providing them with terrible content, no matter what industry you are actually in. It paints an unprofessional picture of your business and it shows you have no qualms about putting forth unfinished, badly considered communications to your stakeholders. Making your content accessible, inclusive and incisive matters. Send out ill-conceived content and you risk losing your stakeholders. Above all, keep out your own political views unless your political views are the point, and your stakeholders expect them.

SA Tourism’s cash for comment

by Frances Ward ON 24 April 2012

I love Media Watch. Every week it presents a well-researched, entertaining look at a few of the hiccups, lies, blunders and contradictions that took place in our media landscape the week prior. And what a great show it was this week.

Even if you missed Media Watch on Monday night, you almost certainly would have seen the resulting reports in the press about SA Tourism’s ‘cash for tweets’ scandal. In a nutshell, SA Tourism has come under scrutiny for paying celebrities about $750 to tweet about Kangaroo Island. There’s a little more to the story but not too much more than that.

What I found so interesting and poignant about this story is that it’s thrown the spotlight on a PR and advertising issue that’s been lurking in the shadows for some time. The writing has been on the wall since social media blasted into our lives years ago – it was only a matter of time before a prominent organisation offered cash reward for celebrity endorsement via Twitter or Facebook under the guise of it being organic or natural. And in my opinion, all parties involved were always going to come off looking guilty of deceit.

My biggest beef with a communication strategy like this is that it works against what I presume SA Tourism fundamentally wanted to achieve: positive, social media banter about Kangaroo Island amongst as many people as possible. A ‘cash for comment’ type arrangement was never going to go undetected (thanks Media Watch) and so the strategy was flawed from the get-go.

SA Tourism argues that it was just getting the conversation started and that its strategy was product placement. I’d like to suggest that this theory is a little hard to swallow, especially when the PR agency involved in the campaign issues a blatant request for celeb endorsement that should not appear ‘endorsed’ but rather present as an ‘organic’ tweet. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Perhaps there’s a lesson in this for celebrity publicists and celebrities themselves too. The celebs that jumped on board ended up looking rather deceitful too and well, a little hard up for cash. Another negative connotation attached to this campaign, in my view.

But moving on…I think this story serves best as a reminder to be careful about the tactics we choose to embrace during a campaign and whether or not they stay true to our communication and marketing goals. Social media has created a raft of new engagement opportunities but I think it’s easy to become swept up in its ease of accessibility. Just like any other channel of communication there are some important, unwritten rules and considerations to play by if you’re going to make it work for you and your company.

I’d be interested in my peers’ opinions about whether they’d consider this a pure product placement scenario so please come forth and share your views. Perhaps I’m too cynical or altruistic in my outlook? But how do you compare this to Alan Jones’ ‘cash for comment’ scandal?

Regardless of where the truth lies, I come back to the issue of making sure your tactics engender the desired goals and response. Because I’m pretty damn sure that the resulting shroud of grey cloud hanging over this campaign and SA’s Kangaroo Island isn’t the ideal outcome for the tourism body.

Image attribution: Marco Fedele