Communications

Giuliani’s membership on the Iraq study panel ended last spring because he never showed up for a single meeting. This prompted the group’s chairman, Jim Baker, to say “If people can’t make the meetings, we’ve got to find people who can.”

On May 18, 2006, the panel gathered in Washington, but Giuliani was busy delivering a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast. On April 12 he skipped the session to a keynote speech at an economic conference in South Korea for $200,000.

Giuliani responds? Yep, sending a letter to the Iraq study panel stating the he needed to quit the group because it was interfering with his “previous time commitments”, meaning his lucrative speaking engagements that included $11.4 million in 14 months.

Wow. What a ridiculous statement. Did Giuliani’s communications director take a sick day? At least it was honest I suppose.

According to an article in Rolling Stone, “Worse than Bush”, Giuliani pulls down $16 million a year, including a $2.7 million advance for a book about himself titled “Leadership”, riding the 9-11 wave. This guy is cashing in on 9-11 and is a leading candidate for the GOP nomination? It’s in plain view people; let’s open our eyes.

So for the GOP: Romney? Fred Thompson? Now Bloomberg is making noise as a possible independent candidate . . . all a better choice than Giuliani.

As PR pros, we’ve all made some embarrassing  mistakes, even sending press releases or pitches to the wrong media list. But some mistakes are bigger than others. Eric Govan, PR manager for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, sent an e-mail titled “Ghetto Prom” — featuring photos of black people in formal attire and commentary denigrating the outfits — to the team’s entire media distribution list.

Oops. Govan was fired.

Research In Motion (RIM) has given us yet another example of bad crisis management. RIM “remained largely quiet” during an outage that left an estimated five million users of the popular BlackBerry wireless email device without service. As all crisis managers know, a lack of immediate response leads to a vacuum which is almost always filled with negative perception and commentary. The company was sharply criticized for not immediately responding to the public.

For example, let’s look at the Wall Street Journal coverage: Black Berry User Stew in Wake of Outage

• “an outage that left an estimated five million users of the popular BlackBerry wireless email device without service angering some customers and fueling speculation about what may have been at the root of the failure.”

• “Corporate BlackBerry users said they found the company’s silence puzzling, given the unprecedented scope of the outage”

The article also quoted some key customers who were very unhappy. This is extremely hurtful to the company and its sales force in particular, and makes an already negative article that much more damaging:

• “I find their reluctance to discuss the event a bit baffling — it undermines their credibility,” said John Halamka, chief information officer for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who oversees 270 BlackBerry users at Beth Israel and 200 more at Harvard Medical School. All were affected by the outage for eight hours or more, he said.

• Eugene Stein, chief technology officer at the law firm White & Case LLP, which has about 1,900 BlackBerry users, concurred with that assessment. “They’re very quiet on this,” said Mr. Stein who said he has kept up with the situation through media reports and was eager to determine whether the failure is likely to be repeated.

When criticized for not issuing a statement, “a Research In Motion spokeswoman said that determining the full root causes of the outage would take more time.”

This is the number one mistake made in crisis management. RIM should have immediately issued a statement, followed by updates, which would have helped control the message and mitigate negative commentary.

Ultimately, RIM shares fell $1.88, or 1.4%, to $132.49.

Rutgers Women’s basketball/Imus

The Rutgers Women’s basketball team also had an opportunity to turn around and better control a hurtful message, but instead the team met with Don Imus and issued a statement addressing race relations. This is disappointing, they had an opportunity to talk about their accomplishments as a team and steer away from the controversy , but instead fell right into the debate trap started by Imus, Al Sharpton, and others. Thus the story remained about Imus’ racial remarks, and not about the unbelievable accomplishments of the team.

The crisis management principles remain the same, yet we continue to see organizations make the same classic blunders. I suspect we’ll continue to see more.

In March YouTube launched YouChoose ‘08, a political site that lets you view political candidates’ official videos. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has the most posted, 64. Go Mitt.

We’re all aware of the benefits that a blog, podcast or a video posted on sites such as YouTube can offer an organization or a political candidate. Political operatives are ecstatic about the potential to talk directly to so many voters.

But is there a dark side to using YouTube for this purpose?

Some candidates are realizing that their campaign message is veering out of control on the information highway.

Here are some examples. Political columnist David Lightman highlighted these numbers in a recent column:

• 98,000 viewers have watched the clip on YouTube covering Sen. Joseph R. Biden’s “explanation” of what he meant when he said Obama was the first black candidate to be “articulate and bright and clean.” That’s nearly nine times as many views as the most popular clip on Biden’s website, a six-minute “message to President Bush on Iraq.”

• About 246,500 viewers have watched John Edwards combing his hair to the tune of “I Feel Pretty.” His most popular video on his own website has been viewed less than half that many times, a two-minute clip of him standing in New Orleans, behind him the hurricane-stricken city.

• Hillary Clinton attempting to “sing” the National Anthem off-key has been seen 1.18 million times.

• “Vote Different,” where Clinton speaks to an audience of silent figures before a woman smashes the screen with a hammer, has been seen more than 3 million times. It dominated political talk last week. The video ended with a final message: “On January 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like 1984.’” These words then appear: “BarackObama.com.”

The video is a spoof of a famous Super Bowl ad for Apple that portrayed IBM as a totalitarian figure. It was said to have been created by someone who worked on Obama’s website, but was a rogue project. I believe the creator was fired by the Obama campaign.Campaigns are still dodging videos that they don’t control. They like to think that the serious minded will visit their websites and avoid the “entertaining” videos on YouTube. Right . . .

But they also realize that these videos are driving traffic to their websites. Obama’s website traffic has soared to a recent 2 million viewings.

So is there a dark side to YouTube? Depends. Running a campaign on the web is like controlling a giant burn. You can try to fan the fire and direct it, but if sudden winds arise, the fire can have a mind of its own. If you’re not careful you can get burned.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest gatherings of conservative Republicans nationwide, Mitt Romney spoke to a packed crowd, receiving a standing ovation. He went on to win the event’s Straw poll, beating out Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain.

According to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 29 percent of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a Mormon, while 66 percent said it wouldn’t matter. For Romney, this is better than some earlier polls I’ve seen, but it still leaves an alarming number of Americans prejudiced against Mormons.

Following the CPAC speech, the New York Times’ Adam Nagourney reported, “Mr. Romney arrived to a much more subdued reception but left to a rousing roar of applause.”

Also covering the speech Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the LA Times, “Some who arrived at the conference undecided left with Romney campaign signs, including Margo Saule, 65, a horse breeder from Charlottesville, VA. Saule called Romney’s speech ’straightforward,’ saying ‘I liked his convictions.’”

I was listening to Ken Rudin’s political podcast the other day. He described some of the emails he gets about Romney and Mormons, and exasperated, stated, “Are we living in the dark ages?” And those are emails from liberal NPR listeners!

So, can Romney overcome the deeply embedded prejudices against Mormons? I guess we’ll see; it’s going to be a great race.