Just when you think you assume you're doing everything right, it's amazing how many things can go wrong.
Take Newsweek, whose editors thought they had a solid source on an upcoming report about prisoner abuses in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But just to make sure, they ran the
story by U.S. Department of Defense officials prior to publication. When U.S. military officials only made minor corrections - and reportedly didn't comment on editorial saying
American soldiers in Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down a toilet as a means of gaining information from Muslim prisoners - Newsweek took that as a sign its information
about the Koran was accurate, and it ran the story.
Yet after anti-American protests broke out in Afghanistan - resulting in 17 deaths, according to several reports - the article triggered a worldwide firestorm.
Newsweek first apologized, and then it ultimately retracted the article. Nevertheless, readers, bloggers and pundits blasted Newsweek for getting the story wrong,
and they blamed the publication for sparking the riots. (How ever, General Carl Eichenberry, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the riots had nothing to do with the
Newsweek article but were part of the political process there. Unfortunately, by the time of that revelation, the damage to Newsweek's reputation already had been
done.)
A similar reliance on assumptions also befell fast-food chain Wendy's last month, when a customer "found" a finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili. The media and the public
assumed this was another "poisoned fast food" story and started to pounce. When it was revealed a few weeks later that the entire episode was a hoax intended to extort money from
the fast-food chain, it did little to stop the late-night jokes from David Letterman et al.
It's the difference in the outcomes of these two crises that demands scrutiny. Newsweek's credibility suffered a lethal blow. Readers have been up in arms. Still,
nearly two weeks after the story peaked there was a growing sense that Newsweek had weathered the storm.
In Wendy's case, following the "missing finger" revelations, sales dipped for a bit but with the help of a "Free Frosty" giveaway and an in-depth interview given by Wendy's
CEO Jack Schuessler to the Associated Press, the restaurant's reputation remains intact.
Contact: Katie Paine, CEO of KDPaine & Partners LLC (Durham, N.H.), can be reached at 603.868.1550, [email protected].
| PR News Report Card: Wendy's | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Criteria | Grade | Comments | Advice |
| Extent of coverage | F | This is another story that will go on for much longer than anyone suspected. By giving the AP interview, the CEO may have prolonged the crisis, but it was countered positively by the messages that were communicated during the Q/A. |
As much as we recommend that the sign of a well-managed crisis is one that goes away quickly, it may be worth prolonging if it presents an opportunity to communicate good messages. |
| Effectiveness of spokesmen | B | Wendy's kept a very low profile during most of the crisis, with the police handling the bulk of the questions about the hoax. This allowed company spokesmen to be focused in their comments and to generally communicate key messages. The CEO interview also really helped position the company as being conscious and caring. |
If you possibly can, leave the hard, nasty interviews to the authorities. They are much more used to dealing with those sorts of questions. |
| Communication of key messages | A | Most of the stories mentioned that Wendy's has built its reputation around quality. | If you can weave a good message into the generic descriptor the media will use in a crisis, you get an A+. |
| Management of negative messages | B | Once the initial kafuffle was over and the police stepped in, the roles of victim and accuser reversed. Wendy's won sympathy and support for its caring and concerned response. The down side was that the bizarre nature of the plot only prolonged the story. |
Having a crisis resolved in your favor is a good goal, but be prepared for the fact that it may perpetuate the story. |
| Impact on customers | D | Wendy's sales dropped precipitously after the initial news story broke - some reports said the scandal was costing the food chain a $1 million a day - but they have since rebounded, in part due to a "Free Frosty" giveaway promotion. |
In any crisis, drawing attention to yourself via advertising generally is not recommended because it only reinforces the negatives, and it can annoy the customer further. However, if you can leverage all the attention to sell more products, no one will mind. |
| Impact on shareholders | A | Wendy's stock has been climbing ever since the arrest of the woman who planted the finger. |
Shareholders love it when you handle a crisis well. |
| Impact on employees | D | The CEO probably was not alone when he said he was tortured by all of the attention the Wendy's episode was getting on late-night talk shows. |
No employee likes his/her company to be the butt of jokes around the country. Mitigating the frustration and anger of employees will help the company move on. |
| Overall score | B+ | Wendy's did and continues to do the best it can under the circumstances (that, in some ways, are beyond its control). |
The company handled this one by the book, and it did it well. |
| PR News Report Card: Newsweek | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Criteria | Grade | Comments | Advice |
| Extent of coverage | D | The story made it into virtually every major news outlet throughout the world. The fact that it took two weeks for the story to become an issue didn't help. Speed is the essence of good crisis management. The bigger problem is that, since the story hit with such ferocity, it will linger in people's minds for a very long. The story remains the subject of countless blogs and postings, and to make matters worse, a Baptist minister put up a sign in front of his church saying, "The Koran deserves to be flushed." |
Sometimes saying you're sorry isn't enough. Given a topic fraught with this much volatility and passion, it's unlikely that anything could have kept it under wraps. |
| Effectiveness of spokesmen | C+ | The editors and the reporters did a good job of saying they were sorry, but they weren't always on the same page. The fact that the editor announced specific policy changes to prevent a recurrence was a major plus. |
In any crisis, after you've got your messages and responses crafted, the next step is to make sure that everyone and anyone who might be interviewed has them memorized and doesn't stray from them. |
| Communication of key messages | C | Despite the overwhelming onslaught of bad press, Newsweek did, in fact, manage to get the idea across that it does have policies to help ensure that stories are accurate. |
The media know their own business too well to ever fudge an answer. The difference between "source" and "sources" was too good a story to not dig into. When in the thick of a crisis, think like a hungry reporter. |
| Management of negative messages | D | A situation can't get much worse than to have countless reports of how you got a story wrong. Virtually all articles contained a negative message and, though there was an occasional positive message to balance things out, that message didn't make it into most of the mainstream publications. |
In any sort of response to a crisis, if you can work a major message into a sound bite, you can go a long way toward mitigating the damage. |
| Impact on readers and advertisers | D | Some readers are dragging Newsweek's advertisers into the fray by calling for a boycott of advertisers to protest Newsweek's "anti-American bias." |
When in crisis, monitor the blogosphere. Even though bloggers may not have a lot of credibility, if their posts come up in a Google search, they count. Unless you know what they're saying about you, your reputation could be tarnished indirectly. |
| Impact on shareholders | D | The stock price of Newsweek's parent company, The Washington Post, took a nosedive after the crisis broke. Although it has climbed slightly in the last week or so, it is still significantly less than where it was earlier in the year. |
These days, shareholders, both individuals and investors, pay much closer attention to the communications and reputation of the companies in which they invest. As a result, a stock price is much more likely to be influenced by the media. |
| Impact on employees | C | It can't be much fun in the Newsweek newsroom these days. From here on in, any source is going to be heavily scrutinized, and every story will be vetted with a fine-toothed comb. |
Don't forget that your employees have access to all the same news sources you do. So when they pick up their local papers and read negative things about the organization, they inevitably will be frightened. You need to address these fears head on. |
| Overall score | C- | Under the circumstances, it was well- handled. It just wasn't handled soon enough. | All the right messages in the world won't make up for the fact that you waited too long to get them out there. |