Not so long ago it used to be the case that when you were contacted by a powerful journalist and asked to respond to potentially damaging allegations at short notice, all you could do was to try and make the best of a bad situation. Usually caught on the back foot, it was a race against time as you scrambled to piece together your best defence from whatever facts you could pull together in the given time before the publisher’s imposed deadline. Blogging and Twitter (micro-blogging) have changed all that, as was powerfully illustrated on Friday in the case of Edward Staite, an independent communications consultant who specialises in crisis communications. Staite was the subject of a Sunday Times investigative sting, because of his previous work with the UK’s Conservative political party.

You can read about what happened next in a full account of events covered by Staite himself on his blog here and by two others who have written about what happened and drawn some valuable communications lessons (Communicationdraft.net here and Contently managed here). The upshot was that the original article The Sunday Times was planning went unpublished.

Before Twitter and blogs, Staite would have been defenceless. But these tools gave him a powerful, rapid rebuttal system that he was able to use with great effect to defend his reputation.

At the heart of this saga is transparency and speed. Staite was open and quickly offered full disclosure rather than having the information dragged out of him. He has invested time and effort building his social network and over the weekend that effort paid back in spades. His reputation emerges enhanced whereas The Sunday Times Insight team is left looking, at best, slightly silly.

When I was interviewed for this article in The Sunday Times recently, it reminded me of two very different customer experiences I’ve had with chief executives; one very good and one very bad. Both are highly unusual and memorable.

The good one was the totally disarming personal call I received from Sir Moir Lockhead one day as I navigated my way around a supermarket. At the time, Lockhead was chief executive of First Group, the £6 billion transport operator best known in the UK for its rail and bus services.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am prone to the odd complaint about bad service; it’s been said that I complain like an American. Having had a truly awful journey on an overcrowded, poorly managed First Group train, I’d written to its chief executive to tell him about it. I fully expected to receive the usual platitudes from customer services in response.

So when the chief executive called me, offered a genuine, heartfelt apology, said it wasn’t good enough and promised to personally deal with the matter, you can imagine how disarming that was. He was good to his word and sent some vouchers for a free rail trip by way of recompense.

Shortly after Lockhead retired from the business in March 2011 I was talking to one of First Group’s current senior managers and asked him what he thought of his former boss. “Hard but fair; and you’d do well not to underestimate his interest in even the smallest details,” was the response. Another anonymous colleague in this Guardian profile piece has this to say: “He’s not Mother Theresa and he doesn’t have a future at Relate.”

While the world is awash with fearsome, sometimes gruff chief executives, how many are there who manage to balance those character traits with an ability to get down into the fine details of the business and actually care about one customer amongst millions? It’s hardly surprising that First Group is what it is today with a leader like that in charge for a couple of decades.

My second story is about Jamie Buchan the erstwhile chief executive of Southern Cross, which until it imploded last year was the UK’s largest operator of care homes for the elderly. Trying to find out how to reach Buchan I eventually found his personal email address on the company website, along with an invitation to contact him in the event of any problems. My particular problem was serious: I had cause for concern about the safety of a close relative in one of its homes and wanted to quickly ensure the matter got dealt with.

But after writing to him by email, several days later I’d not received any response or even an acknowledgement. So I called his PA, who called me back the following day because she couldn’t find my email. Where, she asked, had I sent it?  After forwarding it she openly admitted that the chief executive’s email I’d written to was, in fact, a spoof, and that all correspondence to this address went to the Southern Cross marketing department, where she’d found it languishing unopened with many others. How stupid is that?

The downfall of Southern Cross was clearly the result of many different factors. To be fair, many of them were inherited by Jamie Buchan. But my particular experience did nothing to allay fears that he was a leader with his finger firmly off the button.

Ever since his downfall and the resulting political firestorm cast him as ‘arch villain’ in the world’s biggest banking failure (so far), the erstwhile ‘Sir’ and now just plain old Fred Goodwin has never given a media interview. It could initially have been for legal reasons, but I wonder if maintaining a dignified silence was ever the right approach and if he should now review that? Was it a deliberate, planned and considered action or an early mistake that he’s since compounded by failing to tell his version of events?

It really is fascinating and puzzling to watch this former business ‘superstar’ making no apparent attempt to defend his reputation. Did he make no senior media allies throughout his career? Why didn’t he take the well-trodden advocacy approach of speaking through ‘friends’ or other ‘sources close to the subject’ to get his defensive messages out there?

If his position in considered indefensible, then why not hand back the pension pot with a humble ‘mea-culpa’, and start to redeem himself? He wouldn’t miss the money. RBS’s current boss Stephen Hester found temporary reprieve from personal criticism by doing a u-turn on his controversial bonus award: change the story if you don’t like it!

Another possibility is that Fred Goodwin simply doesn’t give a damn. That seems unlikely from all that we’ve read about him and his allegedly Hindenburg-sized ego. Redemption is clearly possible although it takes a long time, much effort and genuine will: the old adage about reputations taking years to build and seconds to destroy still holds.

But the point here is that reputations can be rebuilt. There are plenty of examples of people who’ve recovered from worse than Goodwin; does anyone remember Gerald Ronson? Look at his Wikipedia page to see how far you can sink and how high you can subsequently rebound. A more recent example is ex-BP boss Tony Hayward. He seems to have done all right so far, and in a relatively short space of time. And so has the reputation of Toyota, following the crisis surrounding its global recall. It will be interesting to see if and how Fred Goodwin finally reinvents himself. Maybe he’s working on a book deal?

I once worked with a guy who was boasting about winning blanket international publicity for a new product, the first  British-designed-and-built sports car for 30 years. I think his success had more to do with the quality of the story than his personal involvement. Rarely do we get the chance to work with story material of such obvious appeal; the rest of the time we have to get seriously creative.

For example, years ago I was asked to make recommendations to launch a new range of corrugated steel cladding panels, the kind you see wrapped around industrial warehouses and some retail stores. The target audience was architects. The client wanted a big, high-profile press event and I knew we’d have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to deliver that. Here’s what happened. Seeking inspiration, I visited a retrospective of world-renowned architect Sir Richard Rogers, designer of the iconic Lloyds of London building.

As I wandered around peering at the models and display panels, one thing caught my eye. It was an image of Rogers posing with business partner Mike Davies.  What intrigued me was that every item of clothing Mike Davies was wearing happened to be red. I got talking to a fellow visitor and he told me Davies was renowned for only ever wearing red. That sparked an idea and I rushed back to the office to research it. As you can see from the photo here and in a recent interview in The Independent newspaper, red is Mike Davies’ favourite colour. Among other advantages, dressing this way saves him time choosing what to wear each day. Now what’s all this got to do with painted steel cladding panels?

Well that one photo started a chain of events that led to what the client described later as the most successful product launch event his company had ever seen.  After I’d tested out my idea on a couple of people, I called the hugely impressive Mary Spillane, who I knew was an expert on personal image-building and invited her to present at our event. The idea was to pick ten leading architects and explain what the colour of their clothes said about them (contrary to popular myth, architects don’t always wear black).

Our other guest speaker was the late Professor Tom Porter whose quirky insights made him a delight to work with. We turned the event into something much more fun and interesting, using lighting effects in the event rooms and even colour-coding the food and drinks. Colour was, of course, the link between all of this and the new product being launched. The client’s presentation, which could easily have been dry and boring, centred on how the colours for its new product range were chosen and the challenges of finding paint formulations that were up the technical task, while also being visually attractive.

The audience of architects and media loved it; all the reporters left with a great angle for talking about a potentially dull and boring product and the client enjoyed great media exposure. Not as much as the all-new British sports car, of course, but enough to remind the client he was working with a fun, creative agency that knew how to coax a rabbit out of its hat.

This post was inspired by the closing remarks of Harry, the ‘difficult client’ in this clip from Absolute Power, a BBC comedy series about a public relations firm starring Stephen Fry. I’ve posted the entire clip but the salient comments are towards the end. Most people, I’d hope, would be starting from a stronger position than Harry and with a few pointers should be able to give a good media interview. There are lots of variables to consider in each individual case but, for starters, here are ten general points that should serve anyone well. I’ll provide a few more soon.

1. Be prepared and be helpful: anticipate the likely questions in advance and how you will answer them concisely
2. Gather supporting material such as useful, credible facts and figures on the subject in question
3. If time permits, read the publication/watch the programme and find out what the journalist has written in the past on the same subject. A useful site for this is www.journalisted.com
4. Be very clear who the end audience is. Make sure you speak through the interviewer to them, and in terms they will understand
5. Think of no more than three points you want to get across and stick to them. If a natural way to bring these into the conversation doesn’t happen, then create one: “Of course that’s interesting, but the really important thing is…….”
6. A useful aide-memoire is the four C’s: be credible, clear, concise and confident.  Think before you speak, speak in short sentences and with authority. Avoid jargon
7. Don’t get bogged down in detail, give the main points then offer to expand if the journalist appears interested
8. Try to deploy a memorable ‘soundbite’. For example: Politician Ken Clarke on the BBC talking about prison policy said the opposition party (Blunkett & Reid) had a “cheque book in one hand and a copy of The Daily Mail in the other”
9. Tone down the selling: journalists do not write advertisements for your company
10. Be interesting and memorable: what stories, anecdotes or case studies can you offer that liven up the conversation?

Do you agree? What would you add? Let me know using the comments box below.

If you find yourself having to explain something important but potentially boring, it can be tough to find the right language and keep people listening. It gets worse when the subject also happens to be abstract and complex. And the pinnacle is when you’re called upon to do it live, in front of many of the country’s most influential people. So it was interesting to hear the approach of a guest commentator on this morning’s Today programme (BBC Radio’s flagship current affairs show). The guest was Jerome Booth, head of research at London-based Ashmore, an investment management advisory firm. Booth was invited on to the show to discuss the reactions of individual countries to the ongoing financial crisis.

Presenter Adam Shaw’s introduction to the interview began with the notion that countries were reacting in a similar way to individuals when presented with catastrophic personal loss (death of a close  relative, a job, income, freedom). He cited the Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as The Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. He then invited Booth to comment and this is what he said:

“I’d like to offer an analogy and it’s a rather vivid one. We have dead bodies. The dead body in the UK is very messy, there’s blood all over the kitchen floor. We know it’s there and we are trying to clear it up. In the Euro zone, the German part of the kitchen floor is spotless but the dead body is in pieces elsewhere; it’s all around the edges. Our approach to dealing with it is to cover it with a sheet, which doesn’t solve anything in the long term and we keep having to replace the sheet with a bigger one. In the US, they’ve taken the dead body, propped it up in a chair, put a cup of coffee in its hand and are trying to have a conversation with it. The level of denial really does differ.”

Anyone invited to do media interviews on business subjects can use this as a consummate example of how to paint vivid word pictures to keep audiences engaged and entertained. Booth could easily have droned on about economic history (he’s an economist) and lost his audience in five seconds flat. Instead, with this analogy he provided a simple to understand and powerful way of explaining what’s going on. What examples can you think of that do the same?

In my first article on customer advocacy I outlined what I hope was a strong case for talking about your successes through the clients’ voice. In this second piece, I want to explore what’s preventing more firms from doing so. Some of the common reasons I’ve encountered are:

1. The firm has a long-standing (and unchallenged) policy not to talk about clients
2. Clients would never agree to it, for various reasons
3. There is no resource to chase relationship ‘owners’
4. Marketing people are not trusted to talk directly to clients
5. It’s too risky. The outcome cannot be controlled. Clients might be misquoted or say something detrimental

Taking the first two in turn, changing the firm’s policy might be a tall order but when was the last time anyone asked if this approach was still relevant for the hyper-networked, information-rich 21st century? There will always be circumstances were your firm (or more likely your client) doesn’t want the whole world to know of your commercial relationships and what you do for them. But such a rigid policy locks out many other valuable opportunities where this doesn’t apply. You’ll automatically miss the opportunity of identifying those success stories that can go ‘on the record’. And these can be deployed to give potential new clients a very good reason to hire you.

The other common excuse offered is that ‘the client is far too busy’ and/or would be irritated by such a request. This may indeed apply in some cases. All too often, though, it’s a blocking tactic used to deny client access by someone who wants everyone else kept away from ‘their’ client. It’s understandable but unhelpful to you as a marketing professional.

Reason number three is really little more than an excuse, and a poor one at that. There can be few marketing activities more important to the firm than finding clients willing to advocate on its behalf. So what’s really needed is a reallocation of resources. Put your most capable person on the case – delegate it downwards at your peril! And if you truly have no-one internally who can take on the task, outsource it with the same care and attention to a trusted, experienced third party.

The fourth and fifth reasons are understandable and often stem from a combination of inexperience and the absence of a formalised process. The very fact that you cannot fully control the outcome is why client-told stories are so powerful. What you can do, however, is minimise the possibility of a negative outcome. One way to reign in your control freak colleagues, and get them to see and accept this, is to prepare a formal process. This should include how you identify and approach clients, plus how any subsequent outputs are managed (the media interview or the case study article, for example). Ultimately, if a client says something negative, it’s not as dire as you’d think and will be in the context of many other positive things, plus you’ll have worked out the best response to minimise the fallout in advance. That’s one key reason for having the right endorsement management process. That process is the theme of the third piece in this series, coming soon.

The counter-intuitive headline ‘Negative reviews drive sales, claims marketing expert’ on Marketing magazine’s web site caught my eye. But as I finished reading I was left none the wiser about why. Normally I would have stopped there and thought no more about it but the man behind this claim is Don Peppers, a widely-acknowledged marketing expert.

To get to the reasons for Peppers’ claim I had to spend an hour watching his presentation at a recent conference about social media and marketing. I heartily recommend you make the same time commitment. He’s a great presenter and you’ll probably come away feeling like you’ve learned something for free about what motivates buyers. But if you don’t have time, I’ll summarise what he says about negative reviews.

First, don’t be afraid of allowing people to post website reviews of your products or services. Sites with a few negative reviews but mostly positive ones will sell more than those with 100% positive ones. Why? Because people will view the former as more trustworthy, more authentic. Peppers calls this ‘trustability’. He tells the audience that trustability is about companies acting in the customers’ interests and not exclusively for their own benefit. These firms, he says, will be the ones that succeed in future.

To illustrate his point he talked about an insurance firm he uses. He once called them to buy a policy he thought he needed. The agent could have sold him the policy and that would have been the end of the matter. But instead, the agent queried his request and, on hearing about his needs, explained that a cheaper policy would provide the right level of cover. The company made less money on this single transaction, but at a stroke became ‘trustable’, gaining the loyalty of a well-known marketing expert who tells audiences around the world about them. That, clearly, is priceless in terms of endorsement and advocacy.

As Peppers reminds us ‘how you treat your products (or services) today will have no effect on their price tomorrow, but how you treat customers today has everything to do with their value tomorrow’. Wise words we would all do well to remember.

I really like how a freelance Dutch creative duo used Twitter to get noticed  and ultimately hired by a hard-to-reach group that happens to spend a lot of time on Twitter: creative directors in advertising agencies. Naturally, I’d prefer you not to leave this site but the video isn’t available for download; its creators clearly want you to visit their Vimeo page. Here it is: Winning business with Twitter

Nonetheless, there are still plenty of sceptics out there when it comes to social media use by companies that sell to other companies (B2B) as opposed to individual consumers. Half an hour spent browsing the marketing website B2B Bloggers should be enough to answer any doubts, starting with articles like this one.

And if you still have doubts, do some further reading on Google’s latest moves to include social media activity in search results. This blog entry by Seatle-based search software firm SEOMoz explains what’s going on and why.

Most business people are understandably wary of talking to journalists because they know they don’t control the outcome. They worry about looking stupid, being misquoted or misunderstood. There are techniques you can deploy to minimise all of these possibilities but for this posting I want to talk about another danger: finding you’ve ended up offering the unintended ‘contrarian’ viewpoint.

This happened recently to a university professor who was invited alongside myself and three other very experienced PR professionals to offer his views on the importance of selling in public relations. He was first to be interviewed and gave his view that selling wasn’t very important, saying he’d never been asked by employers to include selling in a course syllabus and that it wasn’t necessary. Everyone else, including me, said it was a key skill and that it was vitally important to be good at selling to do the job well. Here’s the resulting article. Judge for yourself but I think the academic ended up looking out of touch.

One of the key things I teach people in media training sessions is this: before you begin a discussion, ask the reporter who else is being/has been interviewed and where you sit in the planned interview sequence. That allows you to think more carefully about what to say, plus it gives you the chance to politely ask the reporter to interview you last of all (when you can ask what others have already said and add value to/take issue with/correct/balance previous comments), or request that they come back to you to review what you’ve said in the light of other comments. It’s not always practical but can make a very big difference to the end result.

Photo courtesy of gabemac http://bit.ly/mDAMPF