Many of the assumptions held a month ago have vanished in the dust of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. CEOs and network anchors have cried on prime time television and
we empathized with them. Workaholics are skipping work to spend more time with their families, and college students who haven't been home in months suddenly want to come visit.
Things we always thought we wanted don't seem important now, and things we would have fought long and hard for a month ago seem irrelevant today. Giving advice in these times is
not easy, nor is critiquing the efforts of well-meaning business communicators.
With that said, and with those caveats, I analyze the post-September 11th communications of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial investment firm that went from being an object of our
sympathy to an image of malevolent manipulator virtually overnight. No firm suffered the extent of loss that Cantor Fitzgerald did -- more than 700 employees out of 1000. When CEO
Howard Lutnick broke down in his interview with Connie Chung, the nation's collective heart went out to the man. But in the month since the attack, Lutnick has infuriated the
families of lost employees by halting their health benefits and salaries and suggesting that commission and bonuses may not get paid because records were lost. As a result, a
previously undisclosed "dark side" of Lutnick's personality has increasingly been in the news, culminating in a scathing "20/20" report on October 10.
Lesson to learn: in times of crisis, it's not what you say, it's what you do.
(Katharine Delahaye Paine is president of Delahaye Medialink (603/431-0111).
Image Patrol is based on a subjective content analysis of major news sources
covering a crisis. Comments are not intended to criticize the work of the company
in crisis, but rather to illustrate the role the media play in shaping the perceptions
of various stakeholder groups.)
|
Cantor Firzgerald, HQ: Rochelle Park NJ, Founded 1945
|
|||
|
Criteria
|
Grade
|
Comments
|
Advice
|
| Extent of coverage |
B
|
The extent of the favorable coverage was extraordinary. Everyone carried the initial stories of the losses and the emotional CEO. It remains to be seen how many outlets pick up the negatives. |
It's always easier to get good press under tragic circumstances. Once the initial shock wears off, however, reporters tend to go snooping around looking for chinks in your armor. |
| Effectiveness of spokespeople |
C
|
It's hard to doubt a man in tears, but later actions make it hard to reconcile his behaviors. Lutnick is first and foremost a businessman and may well be trying to save his business. But grieving widows aren't necessarily business majors, and he did a lousy job of explaining things to them |
Rule Number One: be consistent in what you say and do. Rule Number Two: make sure everyone understands why you're doing what you're doing. |
| Communication of key messages |
F
|
There is nothing so damaging as mixing messages -saying one thing and doing another. Lutnick had a previous reputation for being a tough character. He then completely changed that reputation by crying with Connie Chung, and then he reversed himself again by cutting off paychecks. No one knows what side is real, and all trust is now gone. |
Trust is the one asset that will get you through a crisis. Do every-thing necessary to preserve and protect your constituency's faith in you. Once that faith is shaken it is nearly impossible to recover. |
| Management of negative messages |
F
|
When your "opponents" are widows who used to come to your company Christmas parties, who is likely to get the media's attention -- an overexposed CEO or the widows? |
Reporting is essentially the business of establishing many close personal and temporary relationships with a great many people. Clearly the widows were better at maintaining that relationship than Lutnick. And Lutnick forgot a basic tenet of PR: reporters will always be more skeptical of CEOs. |
| Impact on customers |
C
|
Given that their customers are an esoteric and elite group of bond issuers and traders, its hard to know what impact CF's damaged reputation will have, but for the many people on Wall Street who knew or were related to victims, it's hard to imagine that cutting off the paychecks of former peers, tragically lost, can make one want to do more business with a firm. |
If your business is entirely based on electronic transactions or commodities, or if your customers truly have no choice, or only buy on price, it is possible that you can ignore your reputation. But scenarios such as those are few and far between. Your employees will always take note of how you treat them and your customers will always take notice of your employees and their morale. |
| Impact on employees |
F
|
I can't imagine a more demoralizing episode than to have worked day and night to get your company back on its feet, and then to see it vilified on "20/20." Unfeeling and cheap is hardly the image you want to project when you need to recruit 700 replacement employees. |
In this environment, the financial bottom line matters less than the moral bottom line. College graduates are increasingly looking for companies that provide not just livelihoods, but meaning in their lives. And customers are looking for trustworthy responsible business partners. |
| Overall |
D
|
I began observing CF as a positive example of how being "real" and showing emotion was a good thing. But that isn't enough. You must back up those feelings with actions and Cantor-Fitzgerald has failed to do that. |
It's not what you say, but what you do, and do over and over again. No matter what you say, people will always look for consistent behavior to determine what they think of you. |