Email:
818.340.5300 Eye On PR
MAYO kicks off Year 2001 with a new feature on its website
"Eye On
PR"
Everything from tricks of the trade to getting on
the radar of high-tech editors
and industry analysts to making your company newsworthy. As a nationally recognized freelance writer
George S. McQuade III reports on the PR industry.
March
12, 2001 Monday (archives
below)
When 
"CBS
60 minutes" knocks on your door don't panic!
Due to so many email requests about crisis communications examples
with TV and radio media MAYO is reprinting a startling case study.
>>!MANAGE
THIS!<< Avoiding "60
Minutes" While Your Web Site Disappears
MEDIA
INSIDER NEWSLETTER & CRISIS MANAGER -[Editor's Note:
This is an educational, entertaining and creative example of professional
tap dancing, spin-doctoring and counter-punching from reader and Crisis Manager
George McQuade, currently Vice President of the Internet Account Team at MAYO
Communications, Los Angeles, http://www.mayocommunicatons.com.
The case history won 1st Place/Crisis Communications awards from IABC and
PCLA and 2nd Place from PRSA.]
In
January 1998, Los Angeles Housing Authority PR pro George McQuade
learned
firsthand why the Web should be a part of every crisis
communications
plan--and why it shouldn't be the only part.
On
his first day back from a vacation, McQuade was interrupted in
his
regular Monday morning staff meeting. "About an hour into the
staff
meeting, a usually quiet employee in public relations abruptly
barges
into the meeting pointing to me to come outside quickly. "You
had
better get upstairs to the HACLA Board of Operations Committee
meeting
right away," he said. When I asked why, he told me there was
a
"60 Minutes" camera crew, and that there was standing room only in
the
boardroom."
It
turns out L.A. commissioner Diane Middleton was about to announce
her
resignation -- which was news to McQuade. In announcing her
departure
from the HACLA board, Middleton read a laundry list of
reasons
why she was stepping down -- in front of a crowd of union
representatives,
staff members, former employees, and reporters from
CBS's
newsmagazine TV show "60 Minutes."
In
addition, Middleton had faxed explanatory letters to several
media
outlets. "In one letter, she wrote that she was 'greatly
disillusioned
at the misuse of taxpayer funds that I have
encountered,
and disregard for rights of taxpayers, public housing
residents,
HACLA employees, and contractors,'" McQuade says.
The
resignation letter was also faxed to the U.S. Secretary of
Housing
and Urban Development, several Congressional offices, Los
Angeles's
mayor, and 15 L.A. city council members. The letter accused
McQuade's
boss Don Smith, the executive director of HACLA, in her
list
of mismanagement and wrongful doing charges.
Luckily,
McQuade had drafted a crisis plan in 1995 which called for
communicators
to respond with an action plan within 15 minutes. His
first
step was to meet with Smith to figure out a strategy. "As I was
walking
out the door of his office, my boss joked that Commissioner
Middleton
had voted yes on 99 percent of the spending items, and she
also
approved the procurement policy," he says. "I nearly hit the
floor.
I now had perfect ammo for the news release."
The
news release -- sent to all major and local media, including "60
Minutes"
-- implied that if Smith was misusing funds, so were each of
the
commissioners, including Commissioner Middleton.
McQuade also
called
"60 Minutes'" producer and gave her a lead to a half dozen
more
visual "better stories" from the area, both positive (for the
Housing
Authority) and negative (about area government and politics).
Next,
McQuade attempted to surf the Internet to find out if the story
had
already hit any online news outlets, and if the crisis was being
discussed
in newsgroups. He also planned to post the news release on
the
agency's Web site. But he kept getting server errors each time he
tried
to access HACLA's site. "At first I suspected it was the
computer
I was on, because MIS was installing a new Sun 5000 system
and
it was interfering with everything from payroll to e-mail and
the
direct Web connection," he says. "But the next evening I tried
it
from home from my wife's computer, at MAYO Communications and
again
server error messages popped up. First thing in the morning I
confronted
the MIS director, who told me that the entire Web site had
been
deleted, and he was trying to contact the contractor to see if
they
had it backed up. The contractor told him no." The immediate
effect
was that no information was going out and no questions or
information
were coming into the site. Any e-mail arriving was either
deleted
or went unanswered until the site was back up.
[Turning
a Bad Thing Good]
McQuade decided that employees were the first audience that needed information.
He announced that the site was down --
reasons
than the reality. "Instead of announcing the site was dead,
I
announced that we planned to redesign it from top to bottom," he
says.
"No employees questioned our actions, and in fact one wanted
to
be on the committee for redesigning a page." The announcement was
made
on the agency's "Employee Grapevine," a weekly dial-in voice
mail
newscast. Next McQuade faxed the news release to Business Wire,
which
posted it immediately on its online wire service. He then dealt
with
members of the housing management, HR and modernization
departments,
which had been using the Web site to accept bids for
contractors
or announcing new jobs. "I told them to be patient and
that
the new site would be shorter, sharper and stronger when clients
visit
their pages," McQuade says.
[Lessons Learned]
"There
is a clear and present danger of becoming too dependent upon
your
Web site for communication with the public and employees,"
McQuade
says. Make sure you have other means of communication, should
an
emergency arrive, he advises. HACLA's 'Employee Grapevine' is a
toll-free,
emergency 24-hour hotline, which dials through a phone
trunk
center outside of California. McQuade offers some further tips
for
using technology during a crisis:
¤ Back up your site! "We never learned who erased it. It
could have
been an inside job, but the lesson learned was we had
barely
backed up the Web site," McQuade says.
¤ Back up all news releases on other employees' systems. HACLA
PR pros send completed releases to each other via
e-mail.
¤ Establish a home office with necessary tools to work out of
your
home, such as a basic computer, printer, and fax
machine.
¤ The media are using the Internet more, and you'd be surprised
who's up all night cruising the Internet for news
stories--so
don't let that crisis release wait until morning.
"Sometimes
the traditional ways don't grab the attention of
assignment
editors who receive more than 200 paper faxes per
day," McQuade
says.
¤
Arm yourself with lots of evergreen positive stories or PR
events
you can launch with little effort on the Internet.
"I placed more
than a dozen stories on the Web site giving the agency
a positive
light within two weeks of the crisis," McQuade
says.
¤ Learn the capabilities of the MIS department. "MIS might
have a
technical solution to help you solve your crisis
communication
just by setting up facilities or stations and people to
man them,"
McQuade says.
¤ Ask for help. There are a host of volunteer agencies and
interns
or students at the local university who would love to
gain
experience and help during a crisis--physical or
computerwise,
McQuade says. "Help them on slow days and do PR
for them, and
you'd be surprised what happens when you need
help," he says.
The
No. 1 rule is stay calm, "even if you feel like you're going to
have
a nervous breakdown. Presentation is everything, and if you
appear
to be calm, the people around you will feel that way, and so
will
your boss. And the media will be less likely to prey," McQuade
advises.
[McQuade,
vice president, MAYO Communications, www.mayocommunications.com
is also a board member of PRSA/L.A. and a regular contributor to Jack O'Dwyer
publications. He is also a nationally
recognized speaker on Crisis communications, external affairs and employee
communications. Contact him at (818)
340-5300 or extremepr@earthlink.net
###
If you have an marketing communications or PR event or a trend that others should read about please send us an email. Please send the event notice two weeks in advance. If you got a PR, marcom or geek question for non-geeks send us your question, we'll get you an answer with our endless resources! gmcquade@MayoCommunications.com
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