Cause Catalysts

9 Crisis Communications Tips From Biz Stone

April 15, 2011 in Corporate, Social Media, Social Messages with 0 Comments

On his personal blog last night, Biz Stone gave a terrific response to Fortune’s predictable Trouble @Twitter article that was meme-ing around, well, Twitter all day yesterday.

His blog, The Trouble Bubble, was so smartly executed that it could be a case study for successful executive-level crisis communications. Not every negative or probing article requires a response. Not every criticism or complaint needs to be addressed. But when a reporter questions the soundness of an organization’s management, operations, vision or culture, then an executive-level response is merited beyond just a soundbite or short statement. And this is how it’s done well.

So, based on his post, I give you:

9 TIPS FOR SUCCESSFUL CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS FROM BIZ STONE

We founded Twitter, Inc. in March of 2007 and while we have long said it’s about the users, not the service, we have nevertheless enjoyed favorable media coverage. What took so long for somebody to write the article that says we are falling apart?

Tip 1: Provide historical perspective — long view backwards.

The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It’s much more interesting that way. Twitter has had so many ups and downs you’d think we would have had more negative press. To me, it’s like watching the movie Rocky—he’s up, he’s down, he’s out, he wins!

Tip 2: Put criticism in context. Show perspective.

Fortune magazine finally stepped up to knock us down with a cover article, “Trouble@Twitter.”

Tip 3: Thank those who are complaining or criticizing for doing an important job and providing valuable information or lessons.

Here are some examples of how this works. After mostly positive coverage of Facebook, Fortune finally published an article in April of 2009 titled, “Is Facebook Losing Its Glow?” However, later that year they published, “What Backlash? Facebook Is Growing Like Mad.” Google received similar treatment. In July 2010 Fortune published, “Google, The Search Party Is Over.” Later that year, they published, “Google Continues To Gain Search Marketshare.”

Tip 4: Be matter of fact in tone. Build your own case logically and methodically.

We’ve had lots of positive press from Fortune in the past. In July of 2010 they published an article titled, “Twitter’s Business Model: A Visionary Experiment.” The article ended with, “Facebook might want to take notes.” It may seem odd, but from my perspective, this means we are being taken very seriously. Twitter is an important company and it’s under scrutiny from journalists—this is exactly how it’s supposed to work.

Pin It

Hosting Howard Schultz with Peet’s Coffee

April 5, 2011 in Branding, Corporate, Personal Reflection with 0 Comments

I had a chance to attend the Los Angeles leg of Howard Schultz’s national book tour this morning for “Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul” (thanks, Larry Benet).

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a big admirer of Schultz’s leadership style and corporate vision. No executive is better at communicating core values and articulating the importance of balancing profit motive and purpose motive. Whenever I hear him speak — and today was no exception — I’m struck by his authenticity and conviction. You can tell that he leads with his truth and believes in the values his company stands for.

That said, nobody that incisive can escape a touch of perfectionism. I suspect he is a perfectionist (we can sniff out our own) and I know he is a brand control freak so it must have just killed him that the event producers served Peet’s Coffee during the pre-event reception. Yes, that’s right. They hosted Howard Schultz with Peet’s Coffee.

Everyone was whispering about it. Not sure who should have caught that minor detail, except for everyone working on the event in any capacity. I even overheard a member of the security team joking about it with an usher while people were filing into the auditorium.

Someone asked Schultz about the oversight during the Q&A session, and he said exactly what I was expecting, “When I saw that they were serving Peet’s Coffee, I almost turned around and left.”

Schultz spoke about the word “love” today and what it means for someone to love what they do, to love the company they work for, to love a brand and what it stands for.

When it comes to brand management, love is in the details. You just can’t miss those kind of details.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
- COMMENT ON THIS

- Matthew DiGirolamo

Pin It

The Micro-Mantra: Three Words To Live By

March 17, 2011 in Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Messages with 1 Comment

Yesterday, @MariaShriver created the worldwide trending topic on Twitter – #threewordstoliveby.

This is the tweet that started the trend. And this is the one that first established the hashtag.

People all over the world have been writing their three-word life credos. Other celebrities have chimed in. Brands like Nike and AMC have advertised around it.

Maria kicked it off with an inspirational tone — “Here are three words to live by: pass it on.” — and so it continued that way for hours: tens of thousands of messages — some uplifting, others profound, a few silly — circulating around the Twittersphere.

Maria shared dozens of her favorite micro-mantras through re-tweets to her nearly 700,000 followers. Once it became a trending topic in the United States, she encouraged her followers to make it a global phenomenon.

And then it did.

When it went completely viral, it went beyond her. Over time, the original messenger was dropped. But, surprisingly, the original positive spirit of the message remained. Well, mostly.

A little less than 24 hours later, it’s still the top trending hashtag worldwide.

So, what three words guide your life? Join the conversation.

- COMMENT ON THIS

- Matthew DiGirolamo

Pin It

Fred Wilson Confused About Marketing

February 25, 2011 in Communications Strategy with 3 Comments

In his latest blog, venture capitalist extraordinaire Fred Wilson comes out against marketing budgets in startup environments. His point: if you don’t make products that suck, you won’t need marketing.

Early in a startup you need to acquire your customers for free. Later on, you can spend on customer acquisition. So if you need to acquire customers for free early in a startup, how do you do that?

Just when I thought I understood where he was leading us, Fred then offers eights ideas (I know because he numbered them like a dutiful blogger) for how to “acquire customers for free”.

All of which are marketing ideas.

And most which are not really free because time, attention and energy spent on any business activity impacts the bottom line whether there is a line item devoted to it or not.

But be that as it may, Fred is expressing a commonly held confusion about marketing – that it’s just paid advertising. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding.

Any business activity that is aimed at connecting a market to a company’s product or service is marketing. It doesn’t matter if the connection is earned or paid for…it’s all marketing.

Fred obviously thinks “customer acquisition” activities are important. So my question is: if a company commits itself to his proposed activities (and diverts resources away from other activities like product development), wouldn’t it be better to account for it and be transparent in the budget? And wouldn’t it make more sense for that company to employ a professional to manage it all?

I don’t get it. Have you come across this thinking in your own work?
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
- COMMENT ON THIS

- Matthew DiGirolamo

Pin It

A Full Communications Society

February 24, 2011 in Communications Strategy, Corporate, Social Media with 0 Comments

Kara Swisher moderated this (slightly subdued) conversation on the evolving landscape of communications at the 2011 DLD Conference. Featured panelists included Silicon Vally/tech communications gurus Brandee Barker (former Facebook Communications Director), Brooke Hammerling (Brew Media Relations) and Margit Wennmachers (Andreessen Horowitz).

The inside baseball conversation covered a range of issues, from managing virality and communications crises to the evolving role (and power) of executive, employee and customer voices in “a full communications society” – as Kara Swisher dubbed it.

All three communications professionals shared some candid and useful insights into their mistakes and “PR disasters” along the way. In typical fashion, Kara gave ‘em hell.

Margit made a great point about the importance of managing the tone of communications — getting the tone right first — in this new media environment where transparency, authenticity and audience engagement is paramount.

I’ve found the same thing to be true. Always manage the message before you try to manage the media.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
- COMMENT ON THIS

- Matthew DiGirolamo

Pin It

Videogame-Changers

January 25, 2011 in Social Movements, Social Technology with 0 Comments

Jane McGonigal is a breathless evangelist for using gaming to help solve the major social challenges of our time. Her TED Talk above, presented last year, is already one of my all-time favorites. She penned a piece recently in the Wall Street Journal — Be a Gamer, Change the World — where she argued persuasively that gamers could collectively be called to redirect some of the millions of hours they spend solving problems in virtual worlds to coming up with practical solutions for the real world.

These gamers aren’t rejecting reality entirely, of course. They have careers, goals, schoolwork, families and real lives that they care about. But as they devote more of their free time to game worlds, they often feel that the real world is missing something. Gamers want to know: Where in the real world is the gamer’s sense of being fully alive, focused and engaged in every moment? The real world just doesn’t offer up the same sort of carefully designed pleasures, thrilling challenges and powerful social bonding that the gamer finds in virtual environments. Reality doesn’t motivate us as effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to maximize our potential or to make us happy. Those who continue to dismiss games as merely escapist entertainment will find themselves at a major disadvantage in the years ahead, as more gamers start to harness this power for real good. My research over the past decade at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute for the Future has shown that games consistently provide us with the four ingredients that make for a happy and meaningful life: satisfying work, real hope for success, strong social connections and the chance to become a part of something bigger than ourselves.

I agree with McGonigal that games are not “merely” escapist, and I buy into her premise that gamers are a huge untapped resource for social action and social change, but I believe the escapist qualities of gaming need to be mitigated even further.

The ideal scenario would be two-sided — to create games that engage people online with an epic, world-saving mission in a satisfying, hermetically-sealed environment and that also force gamers to engage with the messy, challenging and often painful and ugly real (offline) world.

At the same time that you are making gaming more purposeful, why not also see if we can make reality more game-like?

Pin It

A Tribute to R. Sargent Shriver (1915-2011)

January 24, 2011 in Personal Reflection with 0 Comments

I was in Washington, DC last week helping the Shriver Family memorialize and celebrate the monumental life of their father and grandfather, R. Sargent Shriver. It was one of the most meaningful experiences of my personal and professional life. I’ve always been idealistic, but I learned from the life of this great man how to more fully live those ideals.

Sargent Shriver’s legacy stands as a towering example of the power of public service.

He was a man who believed with all of his heart that government (now a dirty word) could be bold and innovative, could promote human dignity, and could be a positive and transformative force in people’s lives.

He was America’s social conscience who focused his purpose, passion and power on championing our country’s highest ideals and caring for the poor, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the downtrodden.

He has left an indelible mark on our country through the countless social programs and organizations that he inspired, directed or founded, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics, the National Center on Poverty Law, Legal Services, and the Peace Corps, for which he served as the program’s first director under President Kennedy.

I spoke to a Peace Corps alumnus at the funeral mass in Potomac, Maryland who said that his service decades earlier was the high-water mark of his life, the thing he was most proud of. And to think that more than 200,000 Americans have served oversees through the program. And that is just one of the social innovations for which Sarge could take credit.

I came home from the wake and funeral mass inspired to be a better man — to work harder, live larger, dream bigger, love better and leave my own legacy.

And now, I’m reading his extraordinary biography.

If you would like to leave your own tribute to Sargent Shriver, you can do so at his memorial website.
-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
- COMMENT ON THIS

UPDATE: In 1967, Sargent Shriver returned to his alma mater, Yale University, to deliver a speech at the Yale Daily News Banquet. In it, he said this:

If those are problems that are bothering you, they are the same ones that bother me, also. The question is, what can we do about it?
Down through history, men have been asking that question. One of the clearest answers was given by Plato 2300 years ago: “you cannot make people good; the most you can do is create the conditions in which the good life can be lived.”
But how will these conditions be created? How can we create a world where every man can obtain what he needs — and be free to pursue the happiness he wants.
One way is, to concentrate as much time, money and talent on social inventions as we now spend on social diversions.

Decades later, I say, amen.

Pin It

Unused Cell Phones, Meet Verizon Hopeline

January 14, 2011 in Cause Marketing, Corporate, Social Marketing with 0 Comments

After some vigorous New Year’s desk organizing, I unearthed two old Blackberrys in the back of one drawer. I’m fairly certain that I kept them around because I had no idea what to do with them at the time.

While working with the Verizon Wireless team on their sponsorship of a past project, I learned that the company has a charitable program called Hopeline that recycles and refurbishes unused cell phones and accessories to support domestic violence shelters. It’s a smart idea because it transforms recycling into something even more emotionally satisfying: donating.

So, I just brought the phones down to the Verizon Wireless store yesterday and dropped them in the collection bin. Being saintly is as simple as that.

The program really has had some impressive impact and reach. From their website:

Since the launch of the cell phone recycling program, HopeLine from Verizon has:
•   Collected more than 7 million phones
•   Awarded more than $7.9 million in cash grants to domestic violence agencies and organizations throughout the country
•   Distributed more than 90,000 phones with the equivalent of more than 300 million minutes of free wireless service to be used by victims of domestic violence
•   Properly disposed of 1.6 million no-longer-used wireless phones in an environmentally sound way
•   Kept more than 200 tons of electronic waste and batteries out of landfills

So now you know how to put an end to your own cell phone desk cemetery.

-Matthew DiGirolamo, Cause Catalysts
- COMMENT ON THIS

Pin It