Facing a Crisis? It’s fashionable this week to portray Facebook in crisis. That’s how fashion-industry guru Amy Odell began a recent column, using stark language to open: “Facebook is in crisis,” she wrote. “So much so that, this week, Mark Zuckerberg is being hauled before lawmakers on Capitol Hill for what has been billed as a public reckoning on a host of issues from the social media giant’s Cambridge Analytica data privacy debacle to long-standing problems with fake news.” As we’ve said previously, in PR the word crisis is used loosely (by this publication, too). Recently we quoted Kevin Elliott, U.S. director, risk & crisis communications practice,
Hill+Knowlton Strategies, on this topic. His criteria for knowing if you’re in a crisis: 1. The situation has the ability to take an inordinate amount of resources and time to manage; 2. It may pose a lasting threat to the brand or the company; and 3. It poses an existential threat to the enterprise: We may not be able to continue business-as-usual for even a limited time. Based on these criteria, and the usage data presented last week showing little blowback from the platform’s 2 billion users (PRN, April 3), we’d say Facebook faces a series of accelerants more than a crisis. Still these accelerants need to be handled well and swiftly as Zuckerberg, 33, heads to the potentially flammable atmosphere of Capitol Hill tomorrow and Wednesday. If not, such accelerants easily could create a crisis-like conflagration. So Zuckerberg should be, and from all reports is, taking his D.C. trip seriously. Still, it should be reassuring his dorm-room startup is not in crisis mode. Yet. We look to Elliott again, who’s fond of saying “those who treat a bad day as a crisis, will turn it into one. And if you treat a crisis merely as a bad day, you’ll make it worse.”
Time Passages: It’s Elliott’s last clause that’s the potential concern. Facebook is the undisputed leader in social media and leaders are cocky. That’s a gross explanation as to why Zuckerberg initially pooh-poohed talk of Russians using Facebook to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. “A pretty crazy idea,” he called it. At the outset, the Cambridge mess was met with a bucket of cold water drawn from the same dismissive Menlo Park well. Quicker acknowledgement of something being amiss in both instances might have prevented Zuckerberg’s cross-country flight this week. Once Cambridge became a media topic Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg said nothing for 5 days. They didn’t even address employees (PRN, March 27). Facebook and Zuckerberg have changed their tune and are cooperating with the Hill. That’s more than good PR. Kudos also to the past 2 weeks’ worth of conciliatory media interviews from Zuckerberg and Sandberg, the latter reiterating how important data security is to the company. Of course her admission comes after it was shown the data of 87 million Facebook users was exposed in the Cambridge affair. Proper that she apologized. Good too was Facebook’s unveiling of a slew of data-protection measures last week, as well as transparency and verification processes for political ads.
Mea Culpa Continued: Much of it comes down to Media Training 101. There are significant policy issues involved, but they won’t be the meat of these hearings. Zuckerberg should continue his commitment to apologizing and improving security. At our press time the House Energy and Commerce Committee published his remarks and they indeed were repentant. Good, lawmakers devour unrepentant CEOs (see Fargo, Wells and Stumpf, John). Avoid being defensive; answer lawmakers’ questions directly. It’s difficult to know if Zuckerberg’s first reaction (“A pretty crazy idea”) is how he really feels. He should never let Capitol Hill find out.
Vacation from Crisis Communication: Who needs PR’s crisis counseling? Call the travel agent instead. Fox News Channel put Bill O’Reilly on vacation when the hubbub around his sexual indiscretions hit the headlines. A vacation also was prescribed for Sean Hannity last May amid his losing advertisers over a bogus story he refused to spike. Laura Ingraham’s derisive tweet about a pro-gun control S. FL HS student’s soiled college ambitions earned her a vacation last week as 19 sponsors withdrew from her nightly show. Hannity returned, O’Reilly didn’t. Ingraham did.
Turning the Page: CCO group the Arthur W. Page Society rebranded to Page and unveiled a hip logo.
Growth:Former WhiteWave Foods communicator Matthew Hargarten unveiled his startup Rival Communications.
People: Weber Shandwick named Lee Anderson-Brooke EVP and west coast lead, technology & corporate. Most recently he led Edelman’s Bay Area technology practice and oversaw its Silicon Valley office.