Digital Age Crisis Communications

(Robert Waite - Seneca College, Toronto, Feb. 9, 2016)

Thank you, Ted (deWelles), for that very kind introduction.

And good afternoon, everyone. I understand from Ted that he has made my 2002 lecture on crisis communications available to you.

It is fairly comprehensive in terms of defining crisis communications...and provides some good historical perspective...including 9/11.

So I am not going to try to go over old ground, but instead will bridge from that...to a more focused discussion on crisis communications in our digital age.

Ted also asked me to sprinkle in some “war stories” – so I will try to do that as well.

I’ll start with what I call crisis communications in a digital age.

Crisis communications has never been easy, but I would maintain that it is infinitely more difficult today... then it was when Ted and I were beginning our careers thirty-five years ago.

Why?

First, speed.

There used to be this quaint thing called a news cycle. You worried about the morning edition of newspapers...or the 10 or 11 PM broadcast of the television news.

Then came all-news radio...and 24/7 cable news, initially in the form of CNN.

And then, of course, came the internet, hand-held devices like the blackberry and the iPhone...and apps like twitter and instagram.

Everything today moves at the speed of light.

What does that mean from a practical perspective?

It makes it more important than ever to prepare in advance...to have a crisis communication plan in place...and to try and anticipate worst-case scenarios before they happen.

Because your most precious resource when a crisis hits will be time – you simply won’t have enough of it.

I can give you an example from work I did a couple of years ago for a client...that illustrates what I think is a prudent approach to this problem.

The client was Big Brothers Big Sisters Canada. The context was that Scouts Canada had come under fire for sexual abuse visited upon juveniles by adult leaders...and they had done a very poor job of handling the media.

In fact, they had done such a poor job that the head of the organization was ultimately forced out.

This was not lost on the executive director of Big Brothers.

He realised that his organization was dispersed – dozens of local, semi-independent chapters under the Big Brother umbrella – and that they had neither the legal or communications expertise to react to any potential allegations.

The solution we came up with was an on-line crisis communications tool kit, complete with processes, procedures and stand-by statements.

It gave local leaders instant access to professional guidance...and more importantly, it gave them that guidance to study and internalize before an issue arose.

We also schooled the HQ spokespersons on social media – how to monitor it; how to use it; and when NOT to use it.

Fortunately, the instances where the tool kit has been put to use since have been negligible, but there is no question that the organization’s staff – and Board – are pleased to have it in place.

Of course before digital, we did have a version of instant communication – it was called live television and live radio. And it is still of course around.

Live TV and radio for most politicians and CEO-types is a terrifying prospect, the equivalent of walking a high wire with no net.

There are no re-takes. If you flub, the world sees it real-time.

So why did people do it?

Because of what is called “The 60 Minutes Effect”.

60 Minutes – the Sunday evening news broadcast - has been around on CBS and CTV television forever.

60 Minutes had a reputation for filming or taping interviews – and then editing them down to fit whatever point they were trying to make. Or at least that is what some critics alleged.

Communications professionals began to argue that it might be better for a client to do a live interview – where the entire exchange can be seen – than to be taped and become a potential victim of the editing process.

So here comes the first war story.

Back in 1978, I was press secretary to Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the first African-American to be popularly elected to the U.S. Senate.

He was Obama...before there was an Obama.

It was an election year...and Brooke had decided to seek a third six-year term.

Unfortunately, he had also decided to divorce his Italian-American spouse of 30 years...in a state that was 71 percent Roman Catholic.

In addition, Brooke was a Republican – yes, a liberal Republican, but a Republican – in a state where only 13% of the voters identified with the GOP.

And he also had a conservative challenger, Avi Nelson, for the GOP nomination.

In short, Brooke faced an uphill battle.

In terms of strategy, we wanted to do interviews, but we didn’t want them to be edited down, if possible.

So we decided to do live radio, something called the Jerry Williams Show, broadcast nightly on WBZ radio in Boston.

WBZ was one of the most powerful radio stations in the United States. It broadcast using 50,000 watts and a clear channel signal – it could be heard at night as far away as Halifax, Toronto and Kansas City.

And the Jerry Williams Show was hugely popular in Massachusetts. The format was simple – he interviewed a guest for maybe 15 minutes and then opened up the lines to callers.

And I should add that Williams was considered a pretty straight-up guy – he had a reputation for being fair.

If you can picture it, these interviews take place in a fairly small, sound proof room. There’s a table, a couple of mikes, with Brooke seated on one side, Williams on the other.

I’m in the room, but not at the table. I’m taking notes, in case there is a need for follow-up or clarification afterwards.

As in, “What the Senator MEANT to say was...”

Well, the interview – remember, this is all going out live – seems to be going fine. The questions are about the issues of the day in Washington and Brooke handles them with his usual adroitness.

Then Williams announces that the phone lines are open...and people should call in with their questions.

The lines of course light up. “Go ahead”, Williams says to the first caller, “You’re on the air”.

A female voice suddenly comes on the line. There is something strangely familiar about it, I think.

And the voice says, “Daddy, why are you destroying our family?”

Then...and only then... do I realise it’s the Senator’s daughter, Remy.

Suddenly live radio seemed like less of a good idea.

Now I have to tell you that Brooke handled the whole thing as well as anyone could expect – he patiently said there can come times when parents just need to be apart - but from my perspective, the whole thing was a disaster.

It always reminded me that while communications professional can advise...it is the client that has to take the real risk – who has to be the one out there teetering on that high wire.

But my point here is that in those days, a politician or a business leader could often choose when and where to be in the public eye.

And a communications professional could help them make that choice.

Which brings me to the second disrupter in the digital age – ubiquity.

No matter where you are, or what you are doing, today you have to assume someone nearby has the ability to record you; video you; or snap a picture of you.

And they can send the result to the four corners of the earth... in a nana-second.

Another quaint concept that Ted and I, your wizened messengers from the distant past, can recall was the concept of a private or “off-the-record” meeting or interview.

This was a construct in the world of journalism...in the days before virtually everyone had the ability to become defacto journalists.

The best example I can think of came in 2012...when Mitt Romney was conducting what he thought was a private meeting for donors.

What he didn’t know was that someone in the room was recording him – voice and video – and captured him saying that he faced a tough uphill climb against the Democrats because “47 percent of Americans are dependent on government”.

This was a line that provided red meat to his supporters – it reinforces the idea that taxpayers are burdened by people on welfare or public assistance.

But it was one of those “facts” that don’t hold up too well to scrutiny.

Among those being counted as “supported” by the government were active members of the armed forces...those in veterans’ hospitals...and seniors on social security and Medicare.

If Mitt Romney had been delivering a public speech, I can assure you that the phrase would have been scrubbed out by the speechwriter... or by staff.

But he wasn’t. He was speaking off the cuff to what he assumed was a friendly audience.

In my opinion, Romney never fully recovered from that one unguarded moment.

I know what you’re thinking – Donald Trump says crazy stuff all of the time – and yet he leads in the polls.

To which I say two things.  One, those are polls among Republicans. That’s a unique universe unto itself.

And, two, Donald Trump, in my opinion, will not defy gravity forever.

He may well win New Hampshire tonight, but he is accumulating so much verbal political baggage that even with a private jet, his campaign won’t be able to stay aloft over the long haul.

I say this because I want to be an optimist. In this world of interconnection and transparency, I’d like to think that with more information, people will make the right choices.

I think about Wikipedia, which is a kind of self-correcting entity, in theory - through constant editing and revision - finding its way to something like the truth.

But of course you then start to ask “whose truth”?

Think back to the Arab Spring, just a few short years ago. It was largely fueled by social media wielded by young people in places like Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia.

If you picked up the Economist, Time or Macleans during that period...you got the impression repressive regimes region-wide were soon to be a thing of the past, due in large measure to social media.

In fact – and this formed the basis of my daughter Emily’s master’s dissertation this past year at the London School of Economics – ISIS  has turned out to be equally adept at using twitter, FaceBook and all of the other social media tools to recruit and to spread their world-view.

Indeed, among many in the Middle East and among young Muslims in places like the UK, France and the United States, ISIS’ message has resonated profoundly.

And they’ve used it – think of the You Tube beheading videos – in ways that might make even Quentin Tarantino flinch.

Thus social media is not only ubiquitous – but it is also available to virtually anyone.

The third thing to consider when trying to deal with a crisis in this digital age is that messages – evidence – is almost impossible to destroy.

It used to be that companies – or countries – could cover their tracks.

Think of the Germans burning thousands of pages of documents as the allies advanced at the close of the Second World War.

Or Richard Nixon famously having his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, erase 18 ½ minutes of tape conversation that directly linked him to Watergate.

And who knows how many letters have been destroyed over the years. I mention letters, because they point out a key difference between the paper age and the digital age.

Letters typically went to the recipient – senders seldom kept a copy.

E-mails of course end up residing both with the sender... the recipient...and anyone else who was cc’d.

And if you don’t think that creates issues...think about VW and the diesel emissions scandal...Hillary Clinton and her home server...or the unfortunate women who have taken Jian Ghomeshi to court.

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Well, you can always erase e-mails, especially if you use an encrypted device and app, like blackberry messenger.”

Actually, you really can’t.

Another war story: It was late 2004. I was working for CIBC.  We had previously let go a very senior guy, the head of our investment banking operation.

Rumours started circulating around that he was working with some of our current employees to harvest customer information... with the intent of setting up their own firm.

They had apparently been doing all of this using BBM – blackberry messenger – using PIN to PIN communications.

My initial thought was there’s no way we can get to that stuff. The CIA and the White House it – that’s how secure it is.

But I was wrong. We hired a forensic data expert – there are such guys – and he was able to go into the server and pull off the e-mails, e-mails that the individuals thought they had erased.

It turns out PIN-to-PIN works fine...until you cradle your blackberry back in the office to recharge. That recharger is connected directly to the server.

So we put out a press release, just before Christmas, accusing a half-dozen people of stealing company confidential information. We also fired them for cause.

A day later, absolutely convinced there was no proof, they denied it. Three hours after that, we released the e-mails to the media. Game; Set; Match.

So all I am saying in all of this is that crisis communications in a digital age is fraught with challenges, characterized by the three factors I mentioned – speed; ubiquity; and, ironically in this paperless age, a new kind of permanence in the cloud or on hard-drives, where messages never really die.

It is also a time of few rules and even fewer referees.

You are entering an exciting profession at a time of great change enjoy the ride.

Communicators have to be more nimble, tech-savvy and resourceful that ever to be successful.

You are entering an exciting profession at a time of great change. Enjoy the ride.

Thank you.