Reputation Management

PR blunders are almost always due to a bad decision upstream, not the reaction to them. You could say DPS’s recent decision to offer a southern style lunch of fried chicken and collard greens in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad decision. You could say a lot worse.

They said it was well intentioned so let’s give them that. Looking at this with a light most favorable, how do you think it possibly could have gone down? Maybe I’m naive, but I’m having a hard time imagining there wasn’t at least one person who raised a concern.

Don’t you think that someone – anyone – just had to have wondered aloud “I wonder if this might come across as stereotyping?” Why didn’t anyone listen to this voice?

The mother who brought the menu to our attention called this “a teaching moment.” Indeed. As a starting place, before DPS tackles cultural sensitivity issues which at this point seem depressingly out of their reach, I suggest DPS should learn a basic public relations principle:

When in doubt – when there’s a sliver of a doubt – don’t do it. Just don’t.

Did DPS even weigh an alternative? If they did, what were they afraid of? Bad press as a result of not offering a special menu in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?

I’ve blogged a few times about how rare practicing is in business. In the context of social media, and in the public relations domain.

Exactly opposite of athletes and musicians, working professionals spend 99% of their time executing and 1% of their time practicing. It’s hard to find places in business to practice. So when you do, you have to take advantage of them.

It’s not surprising to see Tiger Woods recognize the need to get out in front of stories during a crises. He’s a smart guy. He proves it in this article, where he comments aabout Michael Vick back in 2007:

If you made that big a mistake, you got to come out and just be contrite, be honest, and just tell the public ‘I was wrong’…I think waiting a long time got a lot of people polarized.”

So he knew, just like most of know, how to manage in a crises. But knowing isn’t the thing. Executing is. And he of all people should know that effective execution requires practice.

My father wasn’t much of an arts and entertainment kind of guy and he had but a few jokes at his disposal. One of them was a Bill Cosby take on doing drugs. Goes something like this:

“People say that drugs enhance your personality. Yes, but… what if you’re an asshole?”

So to be discovered on Google I should be consistent. Be a one-note blogger. Write myopic web copy.

Yes, but… what if I’m multitudinous? What if the value I add to clients and the world is an ability to connect and align seemingly disparate data points into a cohesive and effective strategy that uncovers efficiencies and new ideas? What if I see branding as much about leadership as marketing? What if I find as much professional inspiration from Walt Whitman as Seth Godin?

I don’t want to be known for what Google says I’m known for. I don’t like how it evaluates people and their value. A good yellow pages. Not a good relationship builder.

We are large. We contain multitudes. Sign me up for references and conversations.

That’s my context, anyway. Not the right approach for all brands and clients. (Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.)

Any other people out there who feel their brand is larger than keywords and alt tags? What’s the Song of Your SEO? Would love to hear your approach.

Ed Stein, EdSteinInk.com, reprinted with permission

If the current dialog about health care reform can teach us anything, it highlights the importance of figuring out our values.

We all know the importance of inside-out strategic planning (and brand development, for those who consider them separate). The enterprise values, vision, and mission (brand) should be a collective exercise. Involve as many people as possible. Hold retreats, perform exercises, play games, put the words of participants on giant sticky notes. Transform the more insightful quotes into pictures on the graphical strategy map. Include verbatims in the final deliverable. Stage-gate the process by communicating back to the larger enterprise during development.

And we’ve all seen the process devolve and the gears grind. Collaboration turns into open season across units: operations launch scuds at market verticals, marketing challenges revenue models. Anyone can write copy — wordsmith-ing hijacks strategy.

Then at some point getting the damn thing done trumps involvement. Can we just move on already? I’ve got work to do.

How to avoid this in strategy and brand development? It’s probably in the values.

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I connect things. I’m wired to. Sometimes it’s powerful, and sometimes it unnecessarily complicates. It can make for good integrated plans, but it can also result in tangled communications.

The past few weeks have been powerful. I’ve reconnected with two long-lost friends. One’s a guitarist I met while attending Berklee College of Music, the other a magazine editor I worked with for a short stint in my career.

The guitarist moved back to Israel, the editor moved a few blocks away from me. The guitarist I found on Facebook, the editor I found at the neighborhood frozen custard shop.

International, hyperlocal. The reach of social media, the power of sugar and cream.

Two very different people with whom I shared important times during transitional periods in my life. I learned important lessons from both of them. And the lessons connect.

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It’s like a unknown, unmapped compound straight out the X Files. Newmont has built a community in the middle of Ghanaian nowhere for its western expat employees at Ahafo. A pristine suburbia with driveways, lawns, playgrounds, sidewalks, concrete curbs. Flower pots on porches.

And a community center in the middle of it. The gathering place for middle management to vent frustrations of Denver senior leadership, share stories of near mishaps, talk about home.

It was here, drinking beer and eating bar-b-queue, when a concept that’s been bouncing around in my head finally settled.

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