Penn State debacle elevates importance of crisis planning for communications professionals

Ad Age reported yesterday that Penn State's Board of Trustees has engaged a PR firm to provide crisis communications counsel. Last week it was reported that Joe Paterno, after his firing, hired his own public relations counsel. Too little, too late.

Arguably, the sordid Jerry Sandusky story first broke in March 2011 when Harrisburg Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim wrote about the grand jury investigation. The mainstream media picked up on it after the grand jury report was made public earlier this month.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Now, weeks later, after public opinion has already been formed and the university has already taken numerous slings and arrows for its botched response, Penn State enlists the help that it should have had months ago.

This is a strong lesson for communications professionals on the importance of crisis planning. The time to plan a response to a crisis is long before the news goes public. Penn State had months -- if not years -- to prepare for the day that this story would be made public. Many of the Penn State officials who are now under a dark cloud of scrutiny were called to testify before the grand jury. It's not like this was unexpected.

We are. State Penn.

The PSU mess spotlights need for systemic change in higher education

Full disclosure. I am not a Penn State grad, but I am a fan, a big one. Not just of its football team, but also the role the university has played in my family's history. It was Penn State that transformed a coal miner's son into an educated man, my father, who through the GI Bill graduated from PSU before dedicating his life to education. He never forgot that gift, and lived in gratitude -- which is why I never thought I would write this: "I am glad my father is not alive to see the Penn State mess."



The details are horrific. Unbelievable in every way. Damage done at every level. It's all much more than public relations or damage control. It pains me to even mention those terms in this regard. No. The problems here are much, much deeper. Systemic.

I place blame where no one else is looking. The cloistered world of higher education. Change has to come and hopefully, the PSU example can create a more transparent and relevant system of higher education here in America.

Fortified in Houston

Public affairs conference on Marcellus Shale reinforces core beliefs of public relations

This week offered a rare opportunity for me to speak in front of 120 public affairs professionals drawn from top energy firms from across the country. The topic was Marcellus Shale, an issue near and dear to my heart and of great controversy here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

More important than what I said, is what I heard from other speakers, all top minds in the industry. Their messages fortified me in many ways, because all too often I find myself defending the power and purpose of public relations.

Yet, there in Houston, surrounded by many whose job it is to provide voice and balance to an industry habitually under fire, I walked away re-energized in delivering the message to clients large and small. Here's just a sampling of what I heard:

1. The need for enterprises to tell their story and control their narratives has never been greater. It was said time and again, in ways big and small. If an organization isn't telling its story, its competitors, antagonists, and opponents are doing it for them. In other words, as one speaker summed it up, "If you don't have a seat at the table, someone else is eating your lunch."

Would NPR be better off without federal funding?

Today's resignation of NPR's CEO Vivian Schiller raises an important question that the beleaguered network should now consider answering. Would NPR be better off without the federal support it receives each year from taxpayer dollars?

That very question rests at the heart of Schiller's resignation, which comes on the heels of a sting operation in which NPR's top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian), was caught suggesting that federal funding confuses private and institutional donors who wrongly believe that their private dollars are unwarranted because of large-scale public support.

How energy companies can win the Marcellus Shale public relations war

I had nothing more in the game than an intellectual curiosity. That’s what led me to write my last post about a Nielsen Buzzmetrics analysis that Gregory FCA conducted that showed declining public opinion for Marcellus Shale development. It’s a topic that is close to my heart simply because my family’s roots trace to the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania.

I have never forgotten their hardships and desires to build better lives for their children and grandchildren. Now that the fortunes of these areas are turning, thanks to a massive natural gas play buried some 10,000 feet below their lands, I wondered what the public thought of Marcellus Shale development.

The resulting study, which showed a drop in public opinion in both traditional and social media, should have been good news for the opponents to development. The study revealed that their public relations efforts are having an effect, and that the sentiment online, and in traditional media, is becoming more negative as the conversation heats up.

How conspiracy theories affect reputation management

Why is it that some stories that don't make sense often get stuck in the public's consciousness and can never be dislodged?

Even if they're ridiculous. Unsubstantiated. Absurd. So the story of the Bush Administration's orchestration of 9/11 continues to resurface. And an increasing percentage of Americans believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Conspiracy theory affects the easily influenced and persuaded but it also infects bright minds and the level headed. Why?

Because we all share a basic human need to want to believe that our lives are far from haphazard. Our minds are constantly working to convert chaos to order. We believe that events are somehow driven by a hidden hand, a plan, or even a conspiracy. And so we look for meaning even where none exists.

For us, it's too painful to believe that a nondescript group of hijackers could commandeer commercial airliners, kill more than 3,000 innocent human beings, trigger wars, and inflame global hostility. Similarly, it's impossible to acknowledge that a troubled loner could, with a single shot, murder the most powerful leader in the world. The cosmos can't work in such ways. They are too fantastic of stories that demand back stories, so we fill them in to alleviate our own discomfort.

The human tendency to replace the unexplainable with an explanation has an inverse effect as well. When the evidence suggests that a conspiracy has led to a specific result, we often disbelieve our own eyes and instead replace the obvious truth with an imagined outcome.

Such is the case of my personal hero, Lance Armstrong. I first came to love Lance in 1999, when he won his first Tour de France after beating cancer. I read his books, fell in love with the story, and hung a framed poster of Lance in my office as a reminder of victory over adversity. And even though my own eyes were telling me something different, I believed it all.

Here was a guy who got off death's bed to lift himself over the Alps and Pyrenees, faster and higher than anyone else. His performances were super human. I wrote speeches about Armstrong's accomplishment for my clients to read at sales conferences. I told and retold the stories of how Lance cracked the field and beat the mountains seven times to win the most grueling of athletic endeavors.

And yet, there were signs everywhere that he, like most top-ranked cyclists of that era, had cheated. A number of his lieutenants, those that have ridden on his team, had intermittently come forward with allegations. An alleged positive drug test for EPO was made public by a French newspaper. A teammate testified in court that he overheard Lance tell doctors about his illicit drug use while being treated for cancer.

His retirement from the sport, while at the top of his game, and then his ill-timed return, suggested that he struggled with the risk of getting caught, only to return to the sport once it had cleaned itself up to prove he could win in a clean and fair race.

Then, there was the mushroom cloud effect of US Postal-Lance's old cycling team. Many of its members were Americans. Many became world-class cyclists quickly. Compared to US soccer, where America has worked for decades to achieve international success, cycling did it in a few short years. I should have wondered at that point, could there be more to the story? Could they have just been good at sharing the secrets of doping?

My denial of all things Lance Armstrong was nothing more than a reverse conspiracy theory. Lance was clean because of the back story that preceded his every performance. The dots had already been filled in for me. This was not random. It was the result of greatness with the proof being his conquering of cancer. It allowed me to blind myself to the apparent truth-one that is now the subject of a Federal investigation.

Brutally put, Lance Armstrong cheated. And not only did he cheat, but he probably did it in a revolutionary, systemic way, infecting others by sharing and educating them through his team to the wonders of performance enhancing drugs. Unfortunately, the very greatness of his accomplishments should have raised suspicion. It didn't. The backstory assured me.

So what does this all have to do with reputation management? Truth is often determined more by storytelling (of the lack thereof) rather than the facts of a circumstance. The more we can back fill a story, the greater the chance of we can preserve a legacy or reputation. Without the story, our hands are tied.

I once represented an institution that suffered the grave suicidal loss of a patient under their care. There was no other reason for the loss other than the patient was troubled. But nothing could be communicated about the events out of deference to patient privacy. The story was not there. The dots didn't connect. The Institution paid a terrific price.

On the other hand, there have been instances where clients have faced real threat. But the backstory was intact. The price paid was much lesser than when the story was absent. As public relations professionals, it is our charge to craft the story with truth and humanity to preserve the integrity of those we serve.

Pay for sway? Hardly. O’Dwyer’s pulls rank, Gregory FCA faces a decision

Here at Gregory FCA, we try not to comment much on insider PR news and views. Nothing is more boring than PR people sniping at one another.

But the recent dust up at O’Dwyer’s made me realize that their decision to charge to rank PR agencies is one that more media will have to make in the future as subscribers and advertisers disappear.

For those of you outside the PR industry, Jack O’Dwyer is a long time booster, critic, and commentator on PR, whose annual ranking of PR firms sets the pecking order for our industry.

Gregory FCA has been a beneficiary of O'Dwyer's rankings. As we have risen in the rankings, so too have the number of unsolicited RFPs we receive, often the result O’Dwyer’s rankings finding their way into corporate decision making.

Jack called me the other day from New York. As usual, he was out of breath and manic. He goes on to compliment Gregory FCA for once again being named one of the country’s largest PR firms. Then he gets down to business. The fact is, he’s hurting, and so too are his newsletter and annual rankings. He’s being hit by the same forces that are undermining mainstream media. No one wants to buy traditional ads or pay for subscriptions. It’s that zero sum logic that information should be free.

I appreciate his candor. Then he tells me that O’Dwyer’s simply can’t afford to publish the rankings any longer without more support from the PR industry in general, and Gregory FCA in particular. From here on out, he is charging the country’s largest PR firms, including Gregory FCA, to be included in his ranking.

I think for a moment about all the implications. Does this smack of pay for play? Should Gregory FCA be in the game or out?

I know firsthand how much work rankings demand, especially when you are dealing with cagey PR people given to huff and puff. In my own world, I contend with a local competitor that is forever telling local media they can’t disclose revenue because they’re owned by a public company and restricted by Sarbanes Oxley. It’s a sham, of course. SOX is about transparency. It’s more likely the competitor wants to unethically inflate numbers, and the public parent objects.

Then it occurs to me. If we want to continue to have media at all, the media needs to find novel ways to tap new streams of revenue. If you want a media property to invest hundreds of hours in researching and vetting an open and true industry ranking, then those who benefit from the ranking should be willing to send in a check along with their applications.

If media continues on its current self-destructive course and refuses to charge appropriately for content, then not only is the press in jeopardy, but so too is the PR industry, which depends on this inelegant symbiosis for its raison d'être. Pardon my French. And anyway, where is it written that readers, viewers, or listeners have the right to consume reporters’ work and publishers' property for free, simply by searching Google?

Rankings and awards are two areas that can be clearly delineated from content, and should be fair game for revenue. After all, the media often sponsors trade shows and charges their loyal followers handsomely for the right to hobnob.

Rankings are a similar gray area that, in these desperate times, should be targeted. Jack also deserves kudos for the transparency of his decision. O’Dwyer’s blog published comments from both sides, those in support and those who now consider Jack the Antichrist (which is not too far from my opinion on my competitor’s decision to hide behind SOX rather than disclose real revenue numbers). You can read the gory details of the controversy on the O'Dwyer's PR Blog.

So Jack, I've sent the check! Your work has been too important to the industry and too important to my firm to ignore your plea. I'm happy to pay up for work well done.