Archive for the ‘media relations’ Category

Two Ottawa-related crisis communications stories have caught my eye in the last few days.

First, there’s a long and entirely worthwhile story in the Ottawa Citizen today about how the federal government responded to the magnitude 5.0 earthquake that hit Ottawa last June.

On June 23 at 1:41, life was proceeding in Ottawa as normal. City council was meeting, the New Democratic Party was preparing to make an announcement, people were preparing for the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto and Muskoka that were happening that weekend, etc. Then… this happened.

Buildings across the city were evacuated, and media and the public began to look for information about the earthquake.

But as Tom Spears writes in the Citizen story, precious little information was available from Canadian authorities.

Within minutes of the quake, the Earthquakes Canada web went down, quickly followed by the phone lines for public and media information.

The first government update cited news reports of the magnitude, not its own sources.

Media began to rely on the US Geological Survey, while in some cases complaining about a lack of response from Canadian government sources. People who had actually experienced the earthquake were leaving firsthand reports at the USGS site. Earthquakes Canada has the same functionality… but it was down.

An hour later, a twitterer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said “Pretty sad that the traffic has totally wiped out NRCan’s earthquake site. Emergency preparedness much?”

At 4:25, a media conference call was planned. The call was scheduled for 6:00 pm. The media advisory went out … at 6:24. Only three outlets were on the call. Not surprising.

One academic claims this is a result of a general desire for control from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office.

The department provided a statement to Spears, telling him that improvements have been made in web functionality, and that the failures of systems seen on the 23rd had nothing to do with true emergency communications networks between agencies.

That may well be true. But as a communicator who’s dealt with a few crises and who’s prepared for a bunch that haven’t yet happened, it seems to me that there were some missteps here.

• The surge capability of the Earthquakes Canada site was obviously not there, and its phone system wasn’t sufficiently robust.
• There were far too many approvals necessary to allow seismologists to start informing media
• There weren’t pre-approved templates for crisis media advisories and the like which could have been issued without translations
• There were too many layers of approval and not enough delegation to responsible public servants

Second, the University of Ottawa had an unfortunate incident take place last week. When it was testing its emergency-notification text-messaging system, it sent a notification of a violent intruder to about 3,000 members of the university community. The message read:

“LOCKDOWN in effect! Violent aggressor {in/at XXX location}. Stop all activities. If possible, close and lock the door, and turn off lights. Silence cell phones. Keep away from doors and windows. If it is safe to do so, close blinds. Take cover and remain quiet until authorities instruct otherwise.”

A number of classrooms did exactly as the message said, until about 20 minutes later, when an all-clear message was sent. Was this a fail? I’m not sure it was. I think it’s obvious that sending out the templated message was a mistake. But there was little real harm done, and rather than reduce the credibility of the university’s emergency communications, it may have reinforced in the university community that the system will work in the event that something does happen.

To sum up the lessons that I take from this:

• Crises are going to tax all the resources of your organization. Make sure that your crisis plans assume almost total breakdown of systems and will allow you to operate with minimal functionality. One place where I was involved with crisis planning wanted to develop a “dark site” using FTP technology that would require complicated (at least to me) software and seemed to me to be almost impossible to predict would work efficiently in a real crisis. I argued for a WordPress-based site that could be updated from anywhere with Internet connectivity or from a smartphone.
• In large organizations, make sure your communication plans are shared and tested with the other key elements of the organization and that you’ll all know how to react.
• When you’re testing, it’s likely a good idea to tell people about the testing in advance. Saves a moment or two of stress.
• Have someone on your crisis team who can summon the most pessimistic scenarios you can imagine. If you prepare for the absolute worst, you’ll be better able to deal with only the moderately bad. (For some reason, I secretly love doing this type of stuff.)

And the final secret you might be interested in:

I think that while nobody wants to see a crisis or disaster happen, it can often be one of the most exciting times to be a communicator. Crises tax people’s brains and judgment to the maximum. They’re like intense workouts for the brain. And the more prepared you are for the crisis, the better you perform, and the more the experience feels rewarding rather than disheartening.

Two stories have caught my eye in the last 12 hours or so.

First, new rules that Canada’s Treasury Board (essentially, the financial management arm for government operations) has brought in regarding hospitality expenses for public servants; second, a fight between the Toronto Star and provincial public servants over reports on Internet surfing habits by provincial public servants. What do these have in common? To my mind, questionable premises and easy targets.

Let’s talk feds first. According to a story in The Globe and Mail, Treasury Board minister Stockwell Day is “tightening the leash” on public servants. The Toronto Star’s headline was “No more booze for bureaucrats.” But when you read the stories, it becomes clear that these new rules are being set out to catch a fairly small number of cases. For example, this passage from a story in the Sun chain:

QMI Agency reported earlier this year that top bureaucrats had expensed $506 on liquor during an off-site meeting and spent more than $495 on booze during a farewell reception in 2008. Although the Treasury Board’s policy was silent, deputy ministers and ministers could approve alcohol spending.

Meanwhile, a story in the National Post reported “figures released to the NDP on Wednesday show that total government spending on hospitality reached $556,880 last fiscal year, up from $435,280 the previous year.”

Hm. We have a federal budget of more than $230,000,000,000. Hm. That seems to make around 4/1000ths of one per cent of the federal budget.

And as the partner of a public servant, I can tell you a couple of things. She rarely travels. Her travel requests are usually approved by three layers of management, up to either an assistant deputy minister or the deputy minister. She’s fought — and lost — battles to offer people coffee at full-day meetings. Food? Hah. Paid venues for meetings? Don’t bother asking. While I’ve no doubt that other departments aren’t as parsimonious, I somehow doubt mimosas in the morning and martinis at lunch whilst basking in a sauna are regularly — if ever — on the menu.

For those of us inside the Queensway, this sort of rule-making seems a bit like outlawing public servants buying themselves Ferraris. Sure, we don’t WANT that to happen. But how often does it happen anyway?

Moving on to the provincial story. Apparently, the Toronto Star is wrestling with the provincial government to obtain reports into the Internet surfing habits of civil servants. According to the story,

the government has spent the better part of a year arguing that taxpayers have no right to know how much time civil servants spend on social media sites, sports and entertainment websites or trying to access websites that show porn or promote “Racism and Hate” or “Drugs.”

Keep in mind that the government of Ontario blocks social media sites like Facebook and Youtube from its networks already. The reports the Star wants to obtain are those of investigations carried out by the province’s IT security folks. So why wouldn’t the government release such reports. One reason cited is the confidentiality of HR matters. I can see that being a concern. But I suspect there’s a fear of the “GOTCHA!” story that would result: “The Toronto Star has learned that one bureaucrat spent six hours per day watching Danish pornography…”

There’s a perception that public servants at all levels have it pretty soft. The concern that I have is that stories and initiatives like this play into the hands of solidifying that perception based on some incredibly unrepresentative samples. As a communicator, I understand the power of symbols to lead. The question is: in what direction do we want these symbols to lead us?

As if we didn’t need proof that media training is an ongoing need from Rob Ford’s interview with As it Happens.

Check out how Stephen Duckett, Alberta’s top health-care bureaucrat deals with media:

That’s 134 seconds of pain that could have been avoided by a little less flippancy and a little more diplomacy.

Mitigating this: a full and clear apology and acknowledgement that he muffed it. Good on him for that.

UPDATED: Monday, November 22: The leader of Alberta’s Opposition Liberal party is calling for Duckett’s resignation. Meanwhile, a government backbencher has been expelled from caucus over a rather intemperate e-mail he sent quite broadly last week. Seems like a high-pressure time in Alberta’s health sector.

... or IS it?

I get lots of invitations to events related to public relations, usually from local chapters of professional associations like CPRS or IABC or business groups like the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce, or from companies like Ragan Communications. Quite often, the pricing structure for an event – a breakfast, a webinar, a professional development session, whatever – goes like this:

• Members $40
• Non-members $55
• Students $20

For example, Ragan says on its site

“Ragan Select members always get the lowest prices & access to all ragan.com content.” (emphasis theirs)

This is a sensible structure in some ways. Members pay a membership fee, so this is pitched as one of the benefits of membership — reduced admission costs to events. Makes sense. Also makes sense to give students a break on attendance. I didn’t have much money when I was a student.

But I was thinking about this as a way of recruiting new members. Associations cost money. Unless you’re a student, joining CPRS will run you nearly $400; IABC is a bit cheaper. And unlike the old days, there are a ton of PD events out there that don’t require a membership: Social Media Breakfast, TEDx, Case Study Jam, Third Tuesday, Ottawa Brain Drain, Podcasters Across Borders…

So if you’re an association, and you want to bring in new members, is the best way to recruit to charge people more? Might you not be better served by holding special “non-member events”, where you gave the noobs a discount? Or an event without a charge at all? And for that matter, given the negligible amount of revenue that student attendance at these events likely brings in, might it be worth it to not charge them at all?

If you don’t change your pricing structure, do you risk losing people who want to pay “à la carte” for their professional activities? Is it the membership fees that pay for things like the massive research library that IABC offers (to members and non-members, at different prices)? Without those fees, what happens to the research? Or to the associations themselves?

It feels like a truism to say that the pace of change in public relations and communications is break-neck. The advent of social media has accelerated that pace crazily. Many people in the industry are having difficulty with the way the practice and principles of public relations are being challenged by new media tactics and by the move to make “symmetrical two-way communications,” to quote the Grunigs, approach reality.

The local chapters of associations are led by dedicated volunteers looking to make connections, and in some cases names for themselves. Is the “way forward” now to volunteer for associations, or to do “personal branding?” Is the way forward going to make PR professional associations irrelevant?

I don’t know the answers. But I find the questions interesting.

I was pretty gobsmacked yesterday when I heard Richard Fadden, the head of CSIS (Canada’s intelligence agency), tell CBC’s flagship newscast The National that his agency knew of cabinet ministers in provincial governments and members of municipal governments who were “under the influence” of “foreign governments.”

Fadden didn’t point to a specific country, but dropped a serious hint by mentioning that about half of CSIS’s budget is devoted to China. He also said that his agency had informed the federal government at its highest levels of their concerns — the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and Privy Council Office (PCO).

The reverberations haven’t stopped yet — and yesterday’s 5.0 earthquake that was centred near Ottawa was just a physical manifestation of those ripples.

I’ve not worked for CSIS, either as an employee or a consultant, and I’ve never played in the sandbox of federal politics . So I’m looking at this from the outside, as a PR guy.

At some time in the past several weeks, our chief spook does an interview with one of CBC’s most respected journalists (winner of multiple awards, and some say the inspiration for Live Aid) in which he subtly points at China as an influencer of Canada’s political class.

The day before China’s president arrives in Canada for an official visit, CBC airs the interview as part of a package looking at Canada’s intelligence operations. This is also just before the G8 and G20 meetings are held in Ontario, bringing multiple heads of state to Canada for discussions at the highest of levels.

Fadden then retracts some of his comments in a statement:

“Recent comments I made in the context of a special report by the CBC on CSIS have given rise to some concerns about foreign interference in Canada.  The following statement is meant to place those comments in context.

All of the activities of the Service take place within the law and the CSIS Act in particular.  The CSIS Act requires the Service to investigate threats to the security of Canada – including foreign interference.  The Service has been investigating and reporting on such threats for many years.  Foreign interference is a common occurrence in many countries around the world and has been for decades.

I have not apprised the Privy Council Office of the cases I mentioned in the interview on CBC.

At this point, CSIS has not deemed the cases to be of sufficient concern to bring them to the attention of provincial authorities.

There will be no further comments on these operational matters.”

It didn’t take long for a frenzy of reaction to start. Premiers, mayors, intelligence analysts — all were weighing in on what Fadden had said, and then on the retraction.

Calls for Fadden’s resignation began to surface, while others (such as former senior public servant and current columnist Norman Spector and right-wing blogger Adrian McNair) called for heads to roll at CBC for their journalistic practice.

So from a PR perspective, what can we draw from this?

1. It’s pretty rare for CSIS to open itself up to media scrutiny as it did for The National. So I find it hard to believe that this was done without a great deal of forethought. And even if it was given little prep time, given the time lag between the taping of the interview, some negotiation should or could have been undertaken to mitigate the damage of Fadden’s remarks. At the very least, I hope they brought in some outside interview prep; if they didn’t, then that explains a lot in terms of the miscues.
2. Is CBC at fault here? Should they have broadcast the interview at an earlier time? It’s hard for me to agree with that. What’s CBC’s job? To deliver news and to get ratings. They maximized their exposure with this story. Brian Stewart and Peter Mansbridge didn’t make Fadden say what he said. They ran with it. As they should have.
3. If we agree that this was deliberate, then the most important question to my mind is: what does CSIS gain by having this information come out publicly? If we believe it was a mistake, then the question becomes: how could CSIS get this SO WRONG? Is it a case of an agency and a person unused to dealing with media fouling up? Or is Fadden just loose-lipped (NOT a characteristic he’s known for, apparently, or one that’s desirable in a spymaster).

It’s been interesting contrasting this with the McChrystal affair in the United States. In one case, a general known for his outspoken, maverick image stops too far over the line and resigns; in the other, a senior bureaucrat barely known in the media at all speaks frankly, backtracks, and appears to be waiting out the storm.

(Photo credit: Charlotte Morrall, CC licenced on Flickr)

I’m really excited to announce that the new podcast PR and Other Deadly Sins is LIVE.

Mark Blevis is someone that I have a tremendous amount of respect for, as well as someone I like a lot. So it’s a kick to think that we’ll be doing this as often as we can. How often that is, we’ll figure out as we go. But for now, it’s just a thrill to get the first one out there.

Grab it at the new site PR and Other Deadly Sins. As always, thanks to Tom Hofstatter for holding my galumphing WordPress hands throughout the process.

It’s easy to snipe from the outside. But having watched and read coverage of yesterday’s announcement of new rules around the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) system by the Canadian Real Estate Association(CREA), I can’t imagine this is the way they would have wanted it to work out.

Some quick background:

In Canada, the MLS system is operated by CREA, and until yesterday, nobody but a realtor could put a listing on that system. This upset people who wanted to sell their house on their own, or who wanted to use services such as Grapevine or Property Guys. The proprietary nature of MLS data also led to disputes between CREA and people who wanted to mash up MLS data with Google Maps. One example of a failed mashup venture was housing123.com, which was shut down last year.

The federal Competition Bureau has been involved in a longrunning dispute with the association, arguing that the MLS system as presently constituted wasn’t open enough to  competition. In February, the Competition Bureau moved against CREA, saying

For example, under CREA’s rules, agents are prohibited from offering consumers the option of simply paying a fee for an agent to list a home on the MLS system. Instead, all consumers looking to list a property on MLS must purchase a pre-determined set of additional services from a real estate agent, such as the presentation of offers and negotiation of a final deal.

“The Bureau is focused on striking down these anti-competitive rules, so that real estate agents wishing to offer innovative services can do so, and consumers can benefit from greater choice,” said Commissioner Aitken. “While the market will ultimately determine prices for residential real estate services, we expect that if the Tribunal strikes down the anti-competitive restrictions, there will be downward pressure on real estate fees in Canada.”

CREA strenuously objected to that characterization. Here’s what CREA President Dale Ripplinger told the Globe and Mail at that time:

CREA president Dale Ripplinger said the decision was “surprising and disappointing.”

“We do not agree with the Bureau’s position that certain CREA rules are anti-competitive, either as a matter of fact or as a matter of law. CREA’s rules allow for innovative business models and provide a broad range of choice for consumers,” Mr. Ripplinger said in a statement.

Which brings us to yesterday, when CREA announced a number of changes to their services and held a news conference. Normally, I would have added “a news conference to explain the changes” to that sentence. But I didn’t for a specific reason — they didn’t want to explain, as this CBC News report will make clear:

The next blow came when the Competition Bureau dismissed the changes in no uncertain terms, saying in this statement:

“There is nothing in these proposals that we haven’t seen before and they do not solve the problem,” said Melanie Aitken, Commissisoner of Competition, “They are a step in the wrong direction. These amendments amount to a blank cheque allowing CREA and its members to create rules that could have even greater anti-competitive consequences.”

In February, the Competition Bureau filed a challenge to CREA‘s rules regarding the use of the MLS. The Bureau has concluded that these rules restrict the ability of consumers to choose the real estate services they want, forcing them to pay for services they do not need. The rules also prevent real estate agents from offering more innovative service and pricing options to consumers.

“We have repeatedly advised CREA‘s leadership that these amendments do not solve our ongoing competition concerns and I reiterated this directly to CREA as recently as last week in a letter to the President,” the Commissioner said.

So you hvae a news conference where the President flees from the media without answering a single question, then your “enemy”, rather than acknowledging things as a step forward, says it’s a step in the wrong direction. This didn’t go well.

So what went wrong? From the outside, my guesses would be that there was some combination of:

• insufficient thinking through the news conference. If you weren’t going to talk to media, why invite them at all? Send out a statement.
• a lack of consultation of the Competition Bureau. If this was going to poke the hornet’s nest, why do it?
• an overall lack of attention to communications. The CREA web site has far from a state-of-the-art media room. It needs some serious upgrading. Furthermore, there’s a wordpress-based CREA News blog, but that site has nothing about the new rules CREA’s proposing. Last year, when I wrote a couple of blog posts about the lack of mobile functionality on real estate sites, I didn’t find CREA tremendously responsive.

There’s no doubt that CREA is facing a difficult issue. But communications could have a positive effect on the issue. Right now, I don’t think that’s happening.

Photo is licenced by Creative Commons: CC BY-NC 2.0; post inspired by Sarah Stewart

I spent the better part of a decade working at post-secondary institutions in communications. Which means that I did a lot of work around politicians visiting campuses. New buildings, new labs, funding announcements, safety blitzes, policy unveilings… I’ve done ‘em all.

And one evergreen part of the event is the walkabout. This is the part of the event where the politician, accompanied by his or her entourage as well as officials from the institution, leaves the podium and then wanders around an area looking at stuff that’s related in some way to the announcement.

Talking about water purification? Check out this demo: EcoVu water purification.  Announcing new money for education? Hit a classroom or computer lab. Health care announcement? Check out a nursing lab.

This gets done for a couple of reasons. The most important one from my perspective has always been that it’s hard for TV to cover an announcement with just pictures of the politician speaking. You need stuff on tape that the reporter can write over. And in some cases, the politicians are actually interested.

But this morning’s Daily Intel slide show is the epitome of the photo-op: A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things. If you’re a communicator or a political aide, view and chuckle knowingly. Or weep. Or both.

Obama feigning interest in a screw

I’ve been watching the Danny Williams health-care saga with a bit of consternation. And I’ve been thinking about how this controversy started and has continued to swirl when the energy of Newfoundland’s premier should be focused on treatment and healing.

Two provisos first off for this discussion:

• I don’t much care whether he went to the States or not or why
• I don’t much care whether he’s paying for his health care out of pocket

The problem here has been and is one of communication.

The story about Williams broke on Newfoundland CTV affiliate NTV on Monday, February 1. Good on them for breaking a big story. Other media quickly followed, but it wasn’t until Tuesday morning that Deputy Premier Kathy Dunderdale laid out some of the facts in a news conference.

The facts revealed then included:

• There had been weeks of consultations
• The “option” of surgery in Canada was not “on the table”

The facts that weren’t included? Lots:

• The nature of the procedure
• The date when the procedure would be performed
• Where the procedure would be performed
• Who would perform it
• How long the expected recovery would be (beyond an estimate of 3-12 weeks)

There’s not even a news release on the Newfoundland and Labrador government’s media room with information available — just a media advisory (dated 8:25 on February 2) announcing the news conference by Deputy Premier Dunderdale which took place 65 minutes later.

While Williams, like anyone else, is entitled to privacy, there’s a problem here, and that problem is in the strategy. Not saying anything has given this story a huge energy boost. There’s nothing more attractive to journalists than a secret, and this is a whole gift basket of them waiting to be found out.

And the recent history of health in Newfoundland, with a crisis of confidence caused by botched tests for breast cancer, means that a health crisis for the Premier is GOING to be news. For the most part, the story hasn’t been too politicized — even opposition leaders are being mostly supportive — but there’s no guarantee that it will stay that way.

The results of all this have been — and will be — an ongoing laser-like focus on the story by Canadian media, while I would suspect the US attention will subside once Williams gets back to Canada. It’s just sad that Williams didn’t take the bull by the horns, provide the basic information, and then ask for privacy. A man of his considerable forcefulness likely would have gotten it.

The biggest surprise to me is that the strategy the Premier, and consequently the Newfoundland Government, is following must have been developed during the weeks of consultation Dunderdale mentioned to the media. This was the best they could do? Oy.

Sometimes your breath can simply be taken away by the stupidity of a business’s actions.

This was the case for me when I first read that a subsidiary company of Loblaws had filed a statement of claim against the owner of a van which collided with one of its trucks — and against the driver of that van.

Here are some of the details and back story, thanks to sources including Wikipedia’s “Boys in Red” article:

• January 12, 2008: an extended passenger van carrying the Bathurst high school boys’ basketball team was driving back to Bathurst, New Brunswick after playing a game in Moncton. Just after midnight on the 12th, the driver, coach Wayne Lord, lost control of the vehicle in freezing rain and snow and veered into the path of a tractor-trailer owned by Atlantic Wholesalers, a subsidiary of Loblaws. Loblaws is a $30-billion company with nearly 140,000 employees.
• Seven members of the team were killed, as well as Lord’s wife, who also taught at Bathurst High School.
• The accident (collision, says Tom of What the Lemur) made national news, and people around Atlantic Canada were especially moved by the tragedy. For example, one memorial group established on Facebook attracted nearly 9,000 members
• Following the collision, 15-passenger vans were taken out of service in Nova Scotia, and there were multiple investigations into the accident by the RCMP, Transport Canada (pdf of report) and by the province of New Brunswick.
• The investigations didn’t find a single overwhelming cause for the accident; however, the van had worn brakes and tires, while the driver was tired and weather conditions were poor. The RCMP did not lay criminal charges.
• Some of the parents of those killed in the accident have continued to work for changes in policies and processes to make children safer, most prominently through the Van Angels web site.
• On December 22, 2009, Atlantic Wholesalers and Loblaws filed a statement of claim against Lord and the company which owned the van. They were pursuing about $41,000 in damages to their truck, environmental remediation, as well as costs and legal fees.
• The pending lawsuit was picked up by the media, starting with a radio report on Friday, January 9 — the second anniversary of the collision accident.
• The outrage in media response was immediate, and I would wager that the response to Loblaws itself was equally loud and negative.
• After a brief period of not responding to calls for comment, Loblaws withdrew the suit the same day the media attention hit, and issued a statement from the company’s president:

“We thoroughly apologize for the alarm and concern caused by the statement of claim. While it is normal legal practice to look for reimbursement from the parties deemed to be at fault , this decision was clearly made without consideration of the specifics of this accident. We would also like to thank all our customers that voiced their concern regarding our decision, allowing us to reconsider our actions.”

• Now, according to CBC online, Loblaws is engaged in some damage control in New Brunswick, calling the mayor of Bathurst and seeking advice on what action the company could take to demonstrate its contrition.

796 mostly anti-Loblaw comments on this CBC story

I don’t think Loblaws is an inherently evil company. And I don’t doubt that seeking reimbursement for damages is normal legal practice, as the company’s statement says. But there were serious miscalculations here. First, whoever made the decision to file the statement of claim likely thought more about process than about the human aspects of the tragedy. He or she or they forgot the human impact of this accident, which should have outweighed the damages.

The timing was beyond unfortunate. To do this so close to the anniversary of the accident was asking for trouble. But if you weren’t thinking of this as a human tragedy, you wouldn’t think of that.

The most serious miscalculation, was the inclusion of the van driver as an individual in the suit. I’d wager that a claim only against the company might have gone with far less, if any criticism. But when you file suit against a man who lost his wife and seven members of his basketball team in an accident, you can’t help but look like an insensitive bull, even if you’re ‘really’ filing suit against his insurance company.

It’s hard to think about the human factors when you’re part of a huge organization. But as Loblaws has learned, you ignore them at your peril.

Fail image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgriffith/ / CC BY 2.0