Calibrating Your Crisis Management: Sometimes a PR Fail isn’t Fatal

As I dug into NBC’s recent coverage of Boeing Co’s 787 Dreamliner jet, which had suffered its third mishap in as many days, I was ready for action. Here comes another blog post chastising corporate America for failing to be transparent in their PR missteps.

But the story made me cool my jets.

While the Dreamliner’s problems aren’t trivial – a 40-gallon runway fuel leak, brake problems, and an electrical fire on three separate aircraft in three days – no one, not Boeing corporate, not passengers, not aerospace analysts, and not Japan’s All Nippon Airways or Japan Airlines, which purchased the 787s are freaking out.

Instead the news coverage had a very measured tone.  

In an almost deadpan fashion reminiscent of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the story’s point was simple. Take a deep breath. We’ll get the problems fixed. These types of glitches are common on new aircraft – the Dreamliner began service in November 2011. And no one was injured.

Of course, Boeing’s stock price did drop and concerns have been rightly raised. But NBC’s story provided lessons beyond appropriate crisis management.

Knowing your client and knowing how to respond when things don’t go according to plan also comes down to an appreciation of culture. I really believe that if this was a Boeing story with mostly North American players and not Asian companies, there would be a tendency to exaggerate the situation. 

There would be the obligatory quote of a panicked traveler and tacit threats of legal action following the harrowing and stressful experience of being aboard a damaged plane.

Many Asian cultures take respect very seriously. Which is not to say that others don’t. Even our clients and other companies within the same industries can have widely-varying internal cultures. Communications tactics that work for one company don’t always apply to another client, let alone another country.

For goodness sake, it wasn’t the Costa Concordia sinking.

Other airlines still want Dreamliners – NBC pointed out that Air China and Hainan Airlines  plan to keep their orders for 15 and 10 planes, respectively, further calming the situation. Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker even called the planes “revolutionary.”

Imagine that.

Three nations (four if you include Boeing’s Chicago headquarters), separated by thousands of miles and with widely varying cultures holding similar, non-threatening positions. If only that happened more often. They don’t want to fan the flames of outrage or play the blame game; they want to admit fault, measure the seriousness of the situation and move on.

So, before adopting a communications one-size-fits-all approach, remember this story about airlines and cultural relevance. Sometimes a PR fail isn’t fatal. In other words, a two-alarm fire doesn’t require a four-alarm response – overreacting can be just as dangerous as under-reacting.

What’s your view on a “PR fail” and overreacting in times of perceived crisis?

Celebrity Boob Jobs More Important than the Victims of 9/11? NBC Thinks So

Over the past few weeks, a number of ThinkInkers (myself included) have been spending a lot of time sitting in airport lounges, in cramped seats at 35,000ft, emailing from the back of taxis or shepherding clients through a series of trade conferences in different time zones. To say we’ve been busy would be a gross understatement.

So I haven’t been keeping up with my vigorous daily digesting of news. Naturally, when I did get some time to pore through last week’s newsfeeds, I couldn’t help but groan when reading about NBC’s blunder on the 11^th anniversary of 9/11.

While all the other networks cut away from their regularly-scheduled morning programming at 8:46 am on Tuesday, September 11^th to observe a minute of respectful silence for the thousands of innocents who lost their lives that horrific day, NBC’s “Today Show” skipped the brief tribute and kept rolling an interview with 

Kardashian matriarch Kris Jenner, who rambled on about her breast implants.

Really, NBC?

Naturally, the network earned itself an avalanche of criticism for the inane decision and now sports a serious PR shiner. Social networks and the comment sections on dozens of news sites lit up with outraged readers launching their verbal slings and arrows at the network. And who could blame them?

Few, if any, events have had a more thorough and absolute impact – beyond the 3,000 lives lost that day – on so many aspects of American life in the 21^st Century than the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

After the Al-Qaeda hijackers flew their planes into New York City, Washington DC and a Pennsylvania field, the government sent our armed forces into two wars. Those wars have deprived 298,000 people of their lives and have cost American taxpayers a whopping $4 trillion, according to Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

It’s because of 9/11 that we have to take off coats and shoes, haul laptops out of bags, give up our bottled beverages, endure intrusive pat-downs and even subject ourselves to scans that show all our nooks and crannies to get through airport security.

And it’s because of 9/11 that so many innocent Muslims, as well as non-Muslims who “look Arab” or wear turbans, have been the targets of ramped-up verbal and physical attacks by ignorant, frightened bigots.

NBC has defended itself by saying it stopped observing the minute of silence in 2006, with the exception of last year’s 10^th anniversary. That may be. But the network dropped the ball by replacing a moment so meaningful to so many with mindless fluff about a member of the vacuous Kardashian clan.

And that single minute of misjudgment has cost it a conviction in the court of public opinion. I wonder how they’ll try to make up for it next year?