Here Comes The Foot, Here Comes The Foot

“I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth,
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was facing south.”
– Pete Townshend

“I kinda wish this picture weren’t on the Web…”

“I kinda wish this picture weren’t on the Web…”

Keith Trivitt’s “New Realities of Crisis Communications” fromPRBreakfast Club is a terrific, terrific post about what crisis communications is looking like these daze as we kick off another year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s words were ill-advised, to say the least, and – as Trivitt rightly points out – condescending, out-of-touch and downright dumb.

Thing is, this type of misstep – an off-the-cuff remark that comes to symbolize an individual or organization (e.g., Tony Hayward and BP, as Trivitt writes) – is the by-product not just of the advance of social media where every phrase goes global instantly, but also of our increasing need to categorize events and issues in digestible chunks. Gosh darnit, it’s just easier to point to BP and say “Well, they’re an evil empire, and everything they do and everyone who works there is evil – just look at what their boss said.”

To be sure, generalizations can, in fact, be helpful sometimes to our species: “I see a tiger across the road. Last week a tiger mauled Freddie. I should stay away from that tiger.” But this survival skill, well-ingrained in our brain, does not serve us as well when we apply it to the way we live our lives today. It’s a thin line between generalizing and stereotyping, and both can be very destructive forces.

And yet, this instinct is precisely what crisis communication consultants need to be aware of and address head-on. Our clients and management teams must understand that this is how the vast majority of observers will respond in a crisis situation and do everything in their power to ensure they don’t inadvertently add fuel to the fire.

Having a crisis communication plan in place ahead of time is one key step. Regular spokesperson training and preparation is another. In the heat of the moment when the Flip cams, iPads and netbooks are on and reporting the story, it is critical that the spokesperson think before speaking and ask him/herself, “how could what I say be misinterpreted?”

The bottom line? If it looks like a foot and it smells like a foot, you really don’t need to find out if it tastes like a foot, too.

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