Monday's quick reads: Toyota, Tiger, and evolution of corporate citizenship

1.) Toyota and Tiger Woods: Kindred spirits? (Fortune Magazine) -- The question is being raised more and more: Can Toyota recover its reputation? There is no simple answer. The writer explores Toyota's chances by comparing the automaker's plight with that of Tiger Woods.

2.) How Whole Foods reaches millions with Twitter (Social Media Examiner) -- Have you ever wondered how a business handles more than a million Twitter fans? Want the inside scoop from the largest retailer on Twitter? Whole Foods Market is a leading example of Twitter’s power to build millions of relationships a single customer at a time. Here are key excerpts from the writer's interview with the Whole Foods team.

3.) Survey: Most marketers shifting portion of their budget to social media (Social Media Business Council) -- Alterian’s 2009 Annual Survey Results shows 84% of marketers plan to shift at least a portion of their traditional marketing budgets to digital/interactive/social media channels in 2010. The survey involved more than 1,000 marketers from around the world and was conducted between October 1st through December 3rd of 2009.

4.) Corporate citizenship for the 21st century (Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship) -- Do you know what it takes to lead in the ever-changing field of corporate citizenship? The Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship has just released two reports that help answer that question and that create unique competency models for today practitioners and tomorrow’s aspiring leaders.

Toyota’s crisis response is a two part story

(Image credit: Junko Kimura/Getty Images)
Like most riveting stories, the current recall crisis that has beset Toyota can be divided into multiple parts.

In Part One, which is still unfolding, the company is responding aggressively to a crisis. In Part Two, which will unfold in the coming months, Toyota will have to respond to the inevitable question from policy makers: “What did you know and when did you know it?”

Let’s look at Part One.

In the last few months, Toyota has recalled a staggering 8 million vehicles and halted production on 11 different models due to a plague of sudden accelerations in its cars. The crisis has rocked an auto company that for a half century had been synonymous with safety and reliability.

After a slow start, Toyota is responding the way any company should that is serious about rebuilding its reputation. Here are five key components to Toyota’s crisis communications strategy.

Be honest about your situation. Toyota recognized it was in a hole and stopped digging. It halted production on nearly a dozen different models, pledging to fix cars currently on the road before pushing new ones off the manufacturing line. The move is bold and not without serious financial repercussions, but it sends an unmistakable message that the company will bear any burden to keep its customers safe.

Say “I’m Sorry.” Toyota President Akio Toyoda (pictured) apologized to customers and took personal responsibility for the recall, as did the chief of Toyota’s U.S. operations. Sound easy? Ask ACORN and Tiger Woods what happens when you respond to a public crisis with defiance or indifference.

Fix the problem. Toyota quickly found a structural fix to the sticky accelerator pedals plaguing its vehicles. This may seem obvious, but too many companies believe that crisis response begins and ends with a good public message. They ignore the underlying problem that led to the crisis, whether it’s a sticky brake pedal or, as we recently saw in the financial industry, a huge appetite for bad debt. Toyota found a solution and dispatched thousands of employees to work 24/7 to repair vehicles currently on the road.

Start talking. Toyota’s public outreach has been relentless. Here’s a quick count of media channels they’ve used to touch consumers, opinion leaders, and policy makers nationwide: press conferences with executives; live television and radio interviews; huge TV ad buys; full page ads in newspapers; op-eds by Toyota executives in The Washington Post and elsewhere; video streaming on Youtube; a regularly updated website; a toll-free hotline; paid search ads on Google, and; regular recall updates for the company’s 100,000 fans on Twitter and Facebook. In sum, they’ve used every means of communication short of the carrier pigeon.

Enlist your friends. Toyota wisely called on a few friends to speak on the company’s behalf. NASCAR star Michael Waltrip posted a message on Youtube stating his belief that “Toyota won’t settle until they get it right, and I know they will make it right.” The company is publicizing testimonials from satisfied Toyota customers, and is working closely with members of Congress who represent states with tens of thousands of Toyota employees.

Okay, so Toyota gets crisis communication. That is rare, given that a lot of successful companies believe you don’t make money by showing contrition.

That brings us to Part Two.

The recall exposed Toyota’s larger problem: their inability to resolve a brewing crisis that reportedly first surfaced in 2002 when complaints of sticky accelerators spiked. In 2005, Toyota recalled more vehicles than it sold. Two years later, Consumer Reports stopped automatically endorsing Toyota vehicles due to what it considered declining quality. Even worse, recent news reports suggest that Toyota failed or refused to disclose vehicle problems to federal regulators over a period of years.

In the coming weeks, Part One of this story will come to a close. Shortly thereafter, Part Two will begin with congressional hearings, investigative journalism, and consumer lawsuits likely to take center stage.

Toyota’s crisis communications strategy will have to adapt to this new phase. They would be wise to be as aggressive and creative as they’ve been in recent weeks because, like many compelling stories, the second act may prove to be the most dramatic.

This article was first published in today's Daily Record.

Quick reads: Toyota, the Washington Capitals, and resignation by tweet

1.) The Capitals are reaching out (The Washington Post) -- The Washington Capitals in recent years have moved more aggressively than any other NHL team toward embracing social media Web sites such as Twitter and Facebook, targeting supporters who get their information from non-traditional outlets.

2.) Sun's chief executive tweets his resignation (New York Times) -- Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation. Late Wednesday night, Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.

3.) ConAgra Foods embraces a social media culture (Social Media Business Council) -- ConAgra’s Director of Public Relations, Stephanie Moritz, explains how ConAgra is approaching social media as a strategic opportunity. Stephanie’s case study explained how they’re integrating social media across many aspects of their business, how they educated senior management through “digital immersion,” and how ConAgra uses five core items to determine their social approach.

4.) Can Toyota be successful in brand damage litigation? (The Drum) -- One analyst believes that Toyota’s crisis management challenges say less about the quality of its crisis communication response, and more about the organisation’s culture and ability to identify and manage incidents before they become crises. Nevertheless, it is clear that this particular incident has the power to do enormous damage, not just to the Toyota brand, but also to its business.

Word cloud analysis of President Obama's State of the Union address

Word clouds are a creative way to gauge whether your message stands out in a speech. Pictured here is a word cloud of President Obama's State of the Union address Wednesday night.

Ask yourself whether the right themes break through, then give your own company's message a test drive for free at http://www.wordle.net/. You could insert your CEO's upcoming speech, the executive summary of your last annual report, or even a press release or a blog post. You may be surprised at what themes pop out most.

To be sure, a word cloud is not the final arbiter of whether your message passes the clarity test. It cannot account for tone, body language, compelling stories, or the speaker's ability to personally connect with his or her audience, but it's a fun tool that may add some fresh perspective to your company's messaging goals.

Monday's quick reads: The Pope, the FCC, and medical correspondents in Haiti

1.) FCC is on the hunt for ways to improve news media (The Wall Street Journal) -- Just a month after the Federal Trade Commission held hearings on the beleaguered news industry and what the government might do about it, the Federal Communications Commission is getting into the act, too. The agency has launched an investigation into the “Future of Media,” and released an 11-page request for information about the state of the news business. It plans to examine the current state of the news industry, industry trends and what the agency could do to change its current rules.

2.) Pope to priests: Go forth and blog (Associated Press) -- Pope Benedict XVI has a new commandment for priests struggling to get their message across: Go forth and blog. The pope, whose own presence on the Web has heavily grown in recent years, urged priests on Saturday to use all multimedia tools at their disposal to preach the Gospel and engage in dialogue with people of other religions and cultures.

3.) Medical correspondents face delicate balance in Haiti (Los Angeles Times) -- Confronted with the overwhelming need in Haiti, medical doctors who serve as network correspondents have been toggling between roles: that of physician and reporter. On Sunday, ABC’s Dr. Richard Besser assisted a pregnant woman in labor and NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman operated on the wounded in a makeshift clinic. CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta performed surgery Monday on a girl with a skull fracture who had been airlifted to the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.

4.) Got a gripe? Send a Tweet (San Francisco Chronicle) -- When his new dryer didn't work, Brian Williams vented his frustration on Twitter: "Sears and Samsung, you fail. Ordered the major washer dryer. Installer says dryer arrived broken. Fail fail fail." To his surprise, a Sears customer service agent replied by tweet within a few hours. Two days later, Williams had a working dryer delivered to his Nanuet, N.Y., home and the negative experience turned into praise for Sears.

AT&T and the new reputation management mindset

Over at the blog Church of the Customer, Jackie Huba relays a personal experience she had working with AT&T's new "Customer Advocacy Center" on Twitter. Read about her experience here. It's as refreshing as it is rare.

The point is social media doesn't fit neatly into our old definition of public relations, in which we cast out press releases and troll for interested reporters. It is much more than that. AT&T, Wells Fargo, Comcast and others have made these tools part of a broader reputation management mindset, where existing customers are as much a priority as journalists, bloggers, and customers-to-be. My hope is such a strategy becomes the rule, not the exception, in the years ahead.

Tuesday's quick reads: Martin Luther King, Judiciary 2.0, and the relevence of "old media"

1.) How to respond to criticism - Lessons from Martin Luther King (Tim Ferriss) -- The author of the best-selling The Four Hour Workweek examines how Dr. King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a classic case study in the art of dismantling your critics' arguments.

2.) Just two in five Americans read a newspaper every day (Harris Interactive) -- According to Harris Interactive, newspapers around the country are struggling. Last year saw several newspapers change their business model to an online focus or shut down completely. This year will most likely see the same struggle and, perhaps, new business models emerge for these media entities. One thing is clear, the era of Americans reading a daily newspaper each and every day is coming to an end.

3.) Most original news reporting comes from traditional sources, study finds (Los Angeles Times) -- As the number of sources for news proliferates on digital platforms, most original reporting still comes from newspapers, television and radio. A study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism that surveyed news gathering in Baltimore as an example of nationwide trends found that 95% of stories with fresh information came from "old media," and the vast majority of that from newspapers.

4.) Judiciary 2.0: Youtube, Proposition 8, and the Supreme Court (Huffington Post) -- Does YouTube belong in the Supreme Court? More to the point: If the White House's own YouTube channel contains some 480 videos, if Congress members consider their presence on the mainstream video sharing site as a given, then what's taking the judicial branch so long?

Clean energy's grassroots challenge

(Image credit: Triple Pundit)
We've blogged before about the grassroots opposition clean energy firms often face when developing new wind projects, solar fields, and biofuels manufacturing plants. Press reports in recent weeks show that problem isn't going away. Take a look:

Massachusetts-based Cape Wind faces yet another challenge to its plan to develop a wind farm off Nantucket Sound.

Minnesota residents are opposing clean energy projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of kilowatts of energy.

A California-based solar firm is facing stiff opposition to its proposed solar field in the Panoche Valley, despite its potential to power 300,000 homes.

Even environmentalists are struggling with internal strife over the perceived risks and rewards of clean energy, according to this great New York Times debate.

Having advised wind and biofuels companies in recent years, my experience is residents don't easily see the tangible local value in having a large scale project in their backyard. If the juice generated by your company's solar project goes straight to the power grid, what's in it for the neighbors?

Clean energy companies that have a good answer to that question - and communicate that answer early and often -- put themselves a step ahead in the race for public opinion. Wondering how to translate your project into tangible benefits for skeptical neighbors? Consider philanthropic endeavors, partnerships with local schools, and jobs fairs, to name a few concepts. We've got more ideas. Just drop us a line.

Monday's quick reads: Accenture, newspapers, and 2009's top PR blunders

1.) PR blunders of 2009 (PRSA) -- For the fifteenth year in a row, Fineman PR in San Francisco has released its Top 10 PR Blunders List.

2.) Most Americans still read a newspaper (Marketingcharts.com) -- Despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing today’s newspapers, nearly three-fourths of American adults still admit to reading either a print or online edition, according to the latest study from Scarborough Research.

3.) Building your brand - inside and out (HR Executives Online) -- Accenture's Roxanne Taylor says it's a long journey from approving a new brand identity to having it successfully represent your company with both internal and external audiences -- and there are often stumbling blocks along the way.

4.) Dell's social media past, present, and future (Social Media Business Council) -- In a blog post on Direct2Dell, Dell’s Chief Blogger, Lionel Menchaca, shared how Dell has evolved from their initial “connecting and responding” social media strategy to their current key goals of streamlining, aggregation, syndication, and scalability.

Tuesday's quick reads: Apple, Staples, and the 70 most important words for 2010

1.) Is Apple in control of its PR? (A View From Silicon Valley) -- Blogger Tim Dyson explores why almost all the news we read about Apple comes from rumor sites rather than Apple itself.

2.) Staples using social media to leak holiday price cuts (Social Media Business Council) -- Staples became one of the first retailers this holiday season to use Facebook to leak “Black Friday” deals. The office supply company posted several deals on products, varying from flash drives to GPS units to laptops, and price cuts are as high as 50%.

3.) Banks narrowing their social media focus (American Banker) -- Though Twitter's service is designed to communicate with a vast, online audience, some financial companies are now using it to reach specific groups or even individuals, a sharp contrast to some early efforts that were more akin to e-mail spam.

4.) Seventy words of unconventional wisdom for 2010 (Harvard Business Review) -- What better way for business thinkers to celebrate the holiday season than with the gift of great ideas? As the year 2009 draws to a close, Seth Godin, the innovator, writer, and blogger extraordinaire, has persuaded 70 other innovators, writers, and bloggers to participate in a project he calls What Matters Now.

Tiger's crisis is a teachable moment

This column was first published Friday in The Maryland Daily Record.

The line of consultants giving Tiger Woods public relations advice these days is a long one. Just Google "Tiger Woods" and "crisis communications" and get comfortable. You could be reading all day.

Rather than add to the chorus of armchair quarterbacks, I want to touch on a few lessons that the business community can learn from Woods' saga about communicating in a crisis.If you think these rules apply only to celebrity athletes, think again. Businesses broadly, and executives specifically, are not immune to the public's insatiable curiosity in a crisis. If your company has yet to experience a serious public relations storm, then save this advice for a rainy day.

Information vacuums fill quickly. Information vacuums are the breeding ground of speculation in a crisis. If you don't fill them with facts, somebody else will fill them with rumors. Assuming that journalists and talk show hosts won't speculate -- oftentimes wildly -- without possessing the facts is also foolish. Ratings and 24-hour news cycles mean that speed often trumps accuracy in reporting big news.

Privacy is a right, except when it's not. There is often a disconnect between a company's view of what should remain private in a crisis and what the press believes should remain private. That's the price companies -- and professional golfers -- pay for playing in and profiting from the public arena. The question to ask in a crisis is not simply what legal rights to privacy you have, but rather how likely it is the press will obtain sensitive information through an unauthorized leak, an old IRS form, or a Public Information Act request. If the likelihood is high, consider disclosing it quickly on your own terms. It could mean the difference between two days of bad press and two weeks of bad press.

Accountability matters. Posting vague statements on a Web site that might as well have been written by a publicist rarely satisfy the press in a crisis. They lack sincerity and accountability. Ask Serena Williams. The tennis star apologized not once, not twice, but three times after verbally threatening a line judge at the U.S. Open in August. She posted the first two apologies on her Web site. They didn't work. Only when she personally stepped before a microphone and apologized for her conduct did media scrutiny subside. You can bet Tiger will have to do the same before his next golf tournament.

Legal advice and PR advice often collide. A common theme in the Tiger Woods analysis is that Tiger got terrible PR advice. That's not necessarily true. Tiger may have gotten sound advice -- go public early and on your own terms -- but opted instead to remain silent to reduce liability in the event of criminal charges, divorce filings, or breach of the "moral clause" in his contracts with corporate sponsors. This would not be the first time legal and public relations advisers were at odds. Executives have to judge whether that legal course is worth the damage their company's brand will suffer in the court of public opinion.

Don't preach to the extremes. Being successful inevitably means having critics. Yes, Tiger earned this round of scrutiny through his personal conduct, but successful companies and people -- from Goldman Sachs to Steve Jobs -- inevitably give rise to communities of critics and gadflies even before a crisis hits. Your goal in a crisis shouldn't be to convert those who are unwilling to listen, but rather to speak with candor and clarity to the open-minded.

Delay benefits the critics. Ironically, the people and organizations Tiger most dislikes -- tabloids, talk show hosts, and gossip hounds -- were the primary beneficiaries of his decision to remain silent. The longer he thumbed his nose at the press and the public, the more tabloid Web sites like TMZ and the Enquirer hauled in new readers online. The more he dismissed the public's curiosity, the higher the ratings were for cable news and talk radio. (OK, I couldn't resist a little bit of armchair quarterbacking in this column.)

If your company has been through a public relations crisis, chances are good these rules applied. They clearly transcend business, politics, sports and entertainment. What is less clear is whether the broader business community (hint: that means you) will view Tiger's situation as a teachable moment and plan accordingly for the next crisis.

Henry Fawell is a communications consultant for Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC in Baltimore and was press secretary for Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. His column appears monthly, and his e-mail address is henry.fawell@wcsr.com

Monday's quick reads: Dubai's debt, media training, and tabloid journalism

1.) Will big businesses save the earth? (The New York Times) -- Author Jared Diamond says there is a widespread view, particularly among environmentalists and liberals, that big businesses are environmentally destructive, greedy, evil and driven by short-term profits. He knows — because he used to share that view. But today he says that he has more nuanced feelings due to his recent work alongside many business executives.

2.) How to prepare spokespeople for interviews (PRSA) -- While media training is a great way to prepare spokespeople for the spotlight, you know that the pressure of being interviewed on camera in front of your peers can be overwhelming — so overwhelming that you may forget some of the key messages.

3.) Dubai's ruler turns on media, says press exaggerated debt crisis (Wall Street Journal) -- Dubai's ruler turned on the media Tuesday blaming the press for international concerns over his sheikdom's ability to deal with its debts after stock markets in the Gulf plummeted for a second day. "The exaggeration of the media won't affect our perseverance," said Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in an emailed statement, adding that "media did not seek the truth and confused matters without knowledge."

4.) Are there lessons for journalism in the tabloids? (Poynter) -- One writer says that while it's easy to dismiss the tabloid brand of journalism as a lot of headlines and no important news, the Enquirer has left an indelible mark on American mass media culture.

Tiger Woods and crisis communications

(Image Credit: Robert Beck/SI)
The Tiger Woods incident has been analyzed beyond recognition in the past week. If you're interested in lengthy analysis - both useful and not so useful - click here.

I have no intention of adding to the mountain of unsolicited advice being thrown Tiger's way. Nonetheless, the Woods situation has dusted off a few inevitable rules that hold firm when the press and the public set their crosshairs on you. If your company has never been through a public relations crisis, bookmark this page for a rainy day.

1. Information vacuums are the breeding ground of speculation. If you don't fill it with facts, somebody else will fill it with rumors.

2. To paraphrase best-selling author Tim Ferriss, being successful inevitably means ticking people off.

3. There is a universal disconnect between a company/celebrity's view of the right to privacy and the press/public's view of the right to privacy.

4. Assuming that journalists and talk show hosts won't speculate - often times wildly - in the absence of facts is foolish. Ratings and 24-hour news cycles require otherwise.

5. Posting vague statements on a website that may as well have been written by a publicist rarely satisfy the press or the public. They lack sincerity and accountability. Ask Serena Williams and ACORN.

If your company has been through a public relations crisis, chances are good these rules applied. They clearly transcend business, politics, sports, and entertainment. What's less clear is whether the broader business community will view Tiger's situation as a teachable moment and plan accordingly for the next crisis.

Coming up: A presentation to the Baltimore Association of Corporate Counsel

Womble Carlyle's strategic communications group will address the Baltimore Association of Corporate Counsel on Wednesday, December 10th. There will be lots to discuss - crisis management, media training, and how the changes in leadership in Washington present new challenges and opportunities for certain industries. To learn more or register for the lunchtime presentation, click here.