Category Archives: Working with the media

Cruise liner crisis

January 16, 2012Communicating in a crisis, Working with the mediaSebastian

As an exercise in crisis communications, the media handling of the tragic capsizing of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, has been nothing short of disastrous.

Already we’ve seen an unseemly spat between the captain (incredibly being interviewed by the media even after being arrested) and the cruise line operator who has apparently sought to quickly apportion blame to the captain well before any investigation can officially decide what actually went wrong.

None of this does anything for the grief of those passengers who have suffered and ultimately, in the long term, the damage it can cause to the business itself could be irreparable.

Know the facts
For any company that has the misfortune to find itself at the centre of something like this, it’s all about knowing the facts. Put up your top executive to provide regular updates to the press, but do not allow them to speculate on the causes before they are actually known. All the company efforts should be towards helping the emergency services and the welfare of the passengers.

Clear and decisive communication is not the same things as making rapid and ill thought out accusations.

Slaying the media beast: PR professionals should be pleased, there is competition in the jungle

October 28, 2011Social media, Talking to your customers, Talking to your employees, Working with the mediaSebastian

There was a time when the media pretty much dominated the world of public relations. Want to reach that particular client segment? Try the trade press. What about those potential investors? The business press. Looking for mass exposure? A good piece in a national should do it.

The big beast
It is fair to say that the media was the apex predator; the big beast which every PR practitioner would have to wrestle with, sometimes playfully, sometimes not, and usually on a daily basis. The good news, for PR people anyway, is that the media in all its print or online forms no longer has the jungle to itself (stretched that metaphor enough yet?).

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations defines PR as being:

“…the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

That last word – ‘publics’ – whether it’s your clients, suppliers, investors or employees, is critical in that social media has upset the old order and provided PR professionals with a whole new set of tools and channels to communicate with their publics in an increasingly targeted and segmented way. And best of all, you can actually have a two-way conversation…I think that helps that bit about mutual understanding.

Let Hercules do what he may…
That’s not to say that media relations has had its day, but when you’re considering your next communications project, the media relations element should arguably take its turn and queue up to have its merits considered like everyone else – of course, you shouldn’t expect journalists to sit down and take it. They can still be wild (sorry, I couldn’t resist it) but gone are the days when they dominated, which can only be a good thing for PR professionals and the businesses they promote.

Foul! Setting restrictive rules for the media plays a dangerous game

October 4, 2011Communicating in a crisis, Working with the mediaSebastian

Whether you love the beautiful game, or think the goal posts in your local park are there simply for the convenience of dog walkers and their piddling pooches, football often provides a useful source of case studies for good and bad media management.

Here, in my view, is a particularly bad case of media management:

It’s my ball and I won’t play
The Carlos Tevez affair – and for those who don’t follow the game, ‘famous footballer refuses to take off tracksuit and play football’ sums it up quite neatly – threw up an interesting press conference where Manchester City’s Head of Communications apparently announced that any questions surrounding Tevez would immediately end the press conference.

What do Man City think will happen if they refuse to take questions about Tevez at a press conference? That journalists will simply shrug their shoulders and write about Mancini’s (the manager) terrific hair; or whether they’ll line up a 4:3:3 formation at the next home game.

Of course they won’t. And this piece in the Guardian sums up a journalist’s attitude very well to this piece of heavy handed media dealing http://bit.ly/rbXrpf

Don’t duck the issue
As ever, don’t duck the issue. If there are legal reasons why a particular matter can’t be discussed, employment contracts for instance, then say so when asked the question. But to simply refuse to ask questions about the hottest issue of the day seems to me to belong to an era of media management that should have long since disappeared.