Quick Tip: Defend Your Organization when It Is Attacked
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the need for organizations to present a more human face, to be authentic, hip, friendly and approachable.
But what happens when someone kicks sand in your face? Do you do a group hug and sing Kumbaya with the lobby group accusing your company of illegal and immoral acts?
No. You defend your organization’s reputation.
Quickly, assertively, honestly and with good grace.
Your lawyers will tell you to clam up and send threatening letters. Tell them to visit TaubmanSucks.com, and call you back when they’ve finished hyperventilating.
What can get you into trouble is an aggressive (or passive-aggressive) response. You can be strong without being aggressive.
You can apologize without grovelling.
Whatever you do, don’t roll over and let them beat the crap out of your reputation, without speaking up.
Photo via iStockPhoto by Nathan Blaney.
See more Quick Tips.
Tags: business, communications, fight, accusations, interest groups, opponents, lawyers, apologies, attacks
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Advocacy, Communication Tactics, Crisis Communications, PR, Persuasion, Reputation Management, Spin
10 opinions for Quick Tip: Defend Your Organization when It Is Attacked
Rob La Gesse
Jan 10, 2008 at 7:51 am
Thanks Eric - an interesting post. Of course, the 90 minutes I spent reading the taubmansucks.com website has me 90 minutes behind schedule today… so I better get busy!
Anne Wayman
Jan 10, 2008 at 10:42 am
Lol, Eric, I didn’t watch the whole thing, but skipped to the condensed version and scanned it. It’s just a shame more people don’t know and use the ideas in Marshall B Rosenberg’s book, Nonviolent Communication : A Language of Life (http://www.cnvc.org/). So much time would be saved and heck, we’d all get along better!
Bob Turek
Jan 10, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Eric- I liked the way Will Smith recently defended himself against misuse of his words regarding Hitler. The press still characterized his initial words as “misspeaking” however because they were afraid of how their audience would react. Interesting how the press fell prey to timidness on this whole issue. Free, but subject to pressure, press.
Mary Emma Allen
Jan 10, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Nice post. Something to get us thinking. We need to plan ahead on how we’ll generally react, so we aren’t caught unawares. That’s not to say we’ll have canned speeches or releases ready, but have a general policy or philosophy.
Eric Eggertson
Jan 10, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Bob: Hah! I spent at least 2 hours there the first time I visited.
Anne: thanks for the link. I’ll check out that book.
The Other Bob: Reporters can be a little gun shy sometimes, if they think they’ll get banned from talking to a big star, or a batch of stars managed by the same agent/publicist.
Mary Emma: Gerard Braud advocates having a crisis communications plan that includes pre-written notices, etc. to the nth degree. For some organizations, it’s the only way to respond quickly when the poop hits the fan…
Rob La Gesse
Jan 10, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Eric (it is Rob, not Bob, but I’ve been called both, and worse) - instead of having plans to the Nth degree, why not ONE PLAN - the most senior guy/gal you can find at the time goes in front of the press, tells what they know, and admits what they don’t know. Defer specifics until more information is known.
I don’t mind it when people tell me “I don’t know - I’ll find out and tell you tomorrow”. I DO mind it when people try and BS me. Or when they give me “canned statements” that often don’t even apply to the current situation.
BTW - I am kr8tr on Twitter. In case you didn’t connect the pieces.
Take care,
Rob
Eric Eggertson
Jan 10, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Rob: Oops! Yeah, I connected the pieces. You have a distinctive name. Not distinctive enough, or I would have got the first name right.
Gerard’s concept is that you work out what your initial messages would be for a variety of situations, so when something happens, you aren’t fumbling around tweaking the wording while rumours spread. Getting top-level sign-off often slows things down when you can’t afford to wait.
In the Virginia Tech example, he points out that a prepared statement that indicated there had been a violent incident and students should be aware that a shooting took place on campus could have been out much earlier if management had some wording ready early, and just needed to change a couple of words to make it accurate.
In addition to that, he’s all for getting a spokesperson in front of the cameras, even if it’s just to say that we don’t know anything about the situation yet, and we’ll let you know as soon as we know something.
Susan Gunelius
Jan 11, 2008 at 10:54 pm
This is a really important topic to talk about, Eric. Great post! From a marketing perspective, your point is also very relevant in copywriting where competitors attack eachother frequently. It’s essential that marketers proactively deal with these potential attacks rather than reactively.
Yuri Aksyonov
Jan 14, 2008 at 7:50 am
Thanks for post, Mr.Eggertson!
This problem is global. Here, in Ukraine, web hasn’t been so important part of life and reputation management as in US and Western Europe. PR people and public person’s/companies don’t understand, how to work with social media and how to communicate with customers wia internet. When somebody read something negative, they start to do strange things:)
One of largest Ukrainian companies was target of some “blog attack”. They tried to defend via court, which tell some providers to block some pages at Blogpost from Ukrainian visitors. Some providers blocked Blogpost site:) It was something like “blogstorm” after this…
PR people in Ukraine don’t think SEO is some important thing to understand… Most of them don’t want to understand.
PR and Marketing News and Ideas - January 15, 2008
Jan 15, 2008 at 7:41 am
[…] to Companies: Register YourName Sucks without Delay - Kami Huyse follows up on my recent post referring to […]
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: