What If? What if Facebook leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg hadn’t waited 5 days to speak in public about the Cambridge Analytica mess? And what if they hadn’t missed a March 20 meeting of Facebook employees when the media storm was beginning? What if Facebook hadn’t initially pooh-poohed the scope of data Cambridge had taken from it for a week, as Robert Hackett and Adam Lashinsky wrote in Fortune? The NY Times said Facebook at the outset “questioned whether any of the [Cambridge] data still remained out of its control.” You might recall Zuckerberg’s initial reaction to the suggestion that Russians used Facebook to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “A pretty crazy idea,” he called it. Later he admitted it wasn’t and pledged to fix Facebook. Same deal with Cambridge Analytica: the allegations were bogus, Facebook snorted, until eventually they weren’t. But fixes of a product with billions of users can’t be easy. Facebook’s size makes us skeptical regulators will fare a great deal better than Zuckerberg et al in policing the behemoth. A rule of crisis management is to avoid knee-jerk reactions to potential crises. It’s advised to gather information and then act. It took Facebook 5 days. That’s too long, especially when you say nothing in public and you’re an iconic brand dealing with an earlier crisis. You’d think after the Russia fiasco Facebook would have learned some lessons. The results of this PR snafu resulted in the company’s value falling $58 billion last week. At our press time more bad news: the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it’s investigating Facebook over the Cambridge affair. Shares were down 2% in early afternoon trading. More fallout can be seen in our story Just 41% of Americans Trust Facebook to Obey Laws That Protect Their Personal Information.
Metropolitan Opera
Not #MeToo: Celebrities accused in the midst of #MeToo are fighting back. Former Metropolitan Opera music director James Levine ( PRN, March 13), whom the Opera dropped earlier this month after an internal investigation found “credible evidence” of “sexually abusive and harassing conduct,” is suing the Met for $5.8 million in damages. Levine, 74, alleges the accusations against him are baseless and he was fired without even the courtesy of a phone call. The internal investigation, his suit says, was “a kangaroo court” Met GM Peter Gelb arranged to oust the aged and often infirm conductor. Our take: The Met will settle rather than have its reputation dragged through court. The Met and Gelb want to avoid the possibility of a court case showing they had knowledge of Levine’s behavior, but did nothing. -- Also fighting back is Tavis Smiley, the ousted PBS host. “Still fighting” is more accurate. When Smiley was let go late last year, he adamantly refuted charges. “I have never groped...coerced [or]...exposed myself inappropriately,” he tweeted Dec. 18 ( PRN, Dec. 19, 2017). Last week, though, in a countersuit to Smiley’s, PBS includes witness accounts of Smiley’s alleged sexual harassment and affairs with subordinates, The Hollywood Reporter relates. Our take: We have no idea how this one ends. The PR lesson, though, is avoid making claims you can’t later prove in court.
Half-Price Burritos:Speaking of courts, some good news, finally, for Chipotle and transparency. A NY judge dismissed an investor suit claiming Chipotle withheld information about food safety risks. Since Chipotle’s bout with e.Coli, norovirus and Salmonella in 2014-15, shares have plummeted from an Aug. ’15 high of $758. Chipotle was trading at $327 at our press time.
Gold Cup:Kudos to Starbucks for making PR lemonade from lemons. Feeling the heat (no pun intended) from environmentalists on the issue of coffee cups that can’t be recycled (due to their plastic content), Starbucks has made it a positive, offering a $10 million grant challenge to those who can create a design for a cup that’s easier to recycle.
CEO, Moore
Platform Prater: LinkedIn continued its move toward becoming a full-service social platform last week by adding a video filter feature that allows users to deploy text and stickers with videos. Not surprisingly, videos are exploding on LinkedIn, but brands are warned to be frugal. “Keep it short (30 seconds to 2 minutes does the trick in most cases),” LinkedIn wrote in a post.
Growth: Englander Knabe & Allen and PRCG | Haggerty LLC expanded their joint crisis and litigation communications business. -- Congrats to Abelow PR on 25 years in business. The same best wishes to another 25-year celebrant, Moore Communications, which now has rebranded to Moore(we think founder/CEO Karen Moore has heard all the “less finally is Moore” jokes by now). Congrats also to Green Room Communications on 10 years in business. -- Toy PR specialists Southard Freeman Communications of NY-NJ is forming an alliance with Playtime PR of the UK. -- Film marketer and promoter Liquid Soul ( Black Panther) is opening a D.C. office as it seeks to move into politics and sports. Former BET exec Paxton Baker will lead it.
People: APCO named Simon McGee, former press secretary to U.K. foreign secretary Boris Johnson, as exec director, global solutions. -- Ex-Golin CEO Rich Jernstedt joined Prosper Group as a strategic advisor. -- M&C Saatchi PR named Serena Thynne VP.