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Three Media Lessons from Paula Deen

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by Gerard Braud

Gerard Braud Paula Deen“I is what I is, and I’m not going to change.” That is the costly statement made by Paula Deen to Matt Lauer in an NBC Today Show.

“If you could attach a dollar to every word you say, would you make money or lose money?”

Those are the first words every executive hears when they attend one of the executive media training classes I teach, designed to help them become more effective communicators and a better spokesperson. [An entire chapter is dedicated to this issue in my book, Don’t Talk to the Media Until… 29 Secrets You Need to Know Before You Open Your Mouth to a Reporter.]

Paula Deen’s interview with the NBC Today Show and Matt Lauer is a living example of three common mistakes made by powerful people who fail to adequately prepare for a  media interview.

Lesson One: Plan Your Quotes

Granted, the racial slur in question is the event everyone focuses on. But in the June 26, 2013 interview with Matt Lauer, it wasn’t her use of a slur, but her failure to plan great quotes and her propensity to ad lib statements that could be taken out of context, that created the greater problem.Paula Deen Today Show

“I is what I is, and I’m not going to change,” Deen said, as my wife and I shared a cup of coffee in the kitchen, watching Today.

As soon as she said it, I told my wife, there’s the sound bite of the day. Sure enough, that was the sound bite that showed up moments later on CNN and every other network. Outside of the context of the full interview, this is a damning sound bite. If you are a person who believed before the interview that Deen was a racist, and then you saw just that quote on the news, she essentially said to you, “I am a racist and I’m not changing.”

Wow? Every day spokespeople continue to say dumb things in interviews and it appears there is no end in site. I would really like to know what, if any preparation she did before this interview. I would love to know if Paula Deen had a media trainer, or if, like many high powered people, she decided to just “wing it.” Did she mistakenly believe that because she is on television so often that no preparation was needed for an interview worth tens of millions of dollars?

In media training, I tell every potential spokesperson, “When you wing it, you crash and burn.”

It is amazing that companies will spend countless hours negotiating multi-million dollar contracts, yet spend little or no time training a spokesperson for an interview that could potentially cause them to lose millions of dollars in revenue with a single misplaced word or sentence.

Lesson Two: Apologize, Yet Understand the Rule of Thirds

Deen does get high marks from me for agreeing to do an interview. If you are in trouble, you need to apologize and make the apology good. She tried, but failed to get full credit for her effort because of her ad lib, oh shucks, I’m from the south persona.

My rule of 3rds applies to Deen’s case. I believe that for any public figure, 1/3rd of the people love you, 1/3rd of the people hate you, and 1/3rd swing like a pendulum, siding with the popular 1/3rd. To that extent, Deen will never lose her loyal following. Media stories showed supporters, black and white, outside of her restaurant verbalizing their love for the southern cooking icon. The monetary loss of sponsors begins when the 1/3rd in the middle decide not to buy your products any more, with, in my opinion, the nail in the coffin being a bad ad lib.

Great quotes must be planned, practiced, and delivered. Great quotes are not an accident.

Refer to this previous blog post and video for lessons on how a planned quote works, even to the point of making you a front-page headline.

Lesson Three: If You Could Attach a Dollar to Every Word You Say, Would You Make Money or Lose Money?

Ultimately, “I is what I is, and I’m not changing,” caused Deen to likely lose tens of millions of dollars. It became the trigger that caused more sponsors and retailers to drop her.

So let me ask you, before an interview, are you willing to ask an interview expert to help you prepare, or would you rather just “wing it?”

 

 

Get the Right Technology to be a CNN iReporter

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By Gerard Braud

Gerard Braud Media Training and Crisis Communication with IPad IPhone{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

In one of our earlier articles we talked about buying the right type of smart phone or tablet to be a good iReporter. But in addition to your hardware technology that you may already have as a corporate communicator or government Public Information Officer (PIO), you need the right software and the right technology for transmitting your reports.

Start with Skype, the free web broadcasting software available at skype.com

The networks all depend upon Skype as their pathway to you. Over time, they may adopt other options, including FaceTime on iPhones and iPads. But at the time I’m writing this, Skype is their number one choice.

Skype is not perfect. Occasionally the signal is blurry or the image will freeze. Sometimes there is a lag time in which your news media and their audience can hear your voice, but the video image lags behind the sound.

The quality of Skype is often dependent upon the quality of your phone signal or your internet connection signal. Skype can be used on your desktop computer, laptop, smart phone or smart tablet. As you know, WiFi signals can be fickle; sometimes you have a great signal and minutes later your signal is weak. In many crises, you will not have electricity and therefore not have an internet signal or a WiFi signal. If phone systems are still working and if the system isn’t over loaded, you can operate Skype on your smart phone or tablet using a telephone G3 or G4 signal.

Hurricane Isaac Gerard Braud CNNWhen I filed my reports during Hurricane Isaac, the electricity had already gone out. That meant my only option was to rely on my G3 signal, which worked just fine. I used G3 to both upload my videos to CNN and to broadcast live to CNN using only Skype and my iPhone.

If you don’t have Skype on all of your devices, download it right now and practice using it. As with all phases of crisis communications, to be effective you must practice on a clear sunny day. Never wait until you are in the middle of your crisis to try to take these steps.

In our next article, we will talk more about how to use this technology effectively.

If you’d like to learn more, here are the links to my previous articles on this subject.

Here are links to previous articles on this topic:

Crisis Communications for West Texas Fertilizer Plant in Waco: Why PIOs, Emergency Managers, and PR people should be using CNN iReports

IReports for Public Relations and Crisis Communications: Why Your Company or Government Organization Should Create a CNN iReport Account Today

Compare and Contrast News Stories: Secrets of the Media

Get the Right tools to be a good iReporter

Set Up Your CNN iReport Account on a Sunny Day

Hurricane Isaac: iReports Before, During and After. Is This Guy Crazy?

And thank you for your daily votes in the In-Depth Storytelling category. Click on the Community Choice voting tab to help me be selected as CNN’s iReporter of the Year.

Manage the Expectations of Your Audience: Story Telling Secrets of the Media and a CNN iReporter

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By Gerard Braud

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

DSC_0076As you watch television news, especially live cable news and live breaking news in a crisis, observe the questions from the news reporters, news anchors and members of the media. They want to know how much worse will the event get?

If you recognize this, you can make this a part of your planned storytelling, whether you are filing a CNN iReport, communicating as a public relations spokesperson, or communicating as a Public Information Officer (PIO) for a federal or state agency, or for state, county or local government.

During Hurricane Isaac, my goal was to manage the expectations of the national audience and the national media so they would know just how bad things would get. For the most part, it was all predictable for me, because I had been through and reported on so many hurricanes during my career as a television reporter. As a resident of Mandeville, Louisiana and as someone born in New Orleans, I had a pretty good idea of what was to come. (Although the 4 10-food alligators, the 50 dead nutria and the thousands of snakes were a surprise.)

Electric utility companies are a perfect example of the kind of company that should build their media training and crisis communications strategy around managing the expectations of their audience. Some people in New Orleans were very mad at Entergy of New Orleans when the electric company didn’t have electricity restored to all of their customers on the day following the hurricane. The angry citizens called the media and complained non-stop on social media. Although all were without electricity after Hurricane Katrina, they expected faster restoration after Isaac, which was a Category 1 hurricane. Restoration to 99% of the customers may be great, but the 1% without power can still cause a public relations problem for a company.

To their credit, Entergy was holding news briefings and using social media where possible. But here is what I would like to see every investor owned utility and every Rural Electric Cooperative (Co-op) say to their customers before any big, predictable weather event:

“This storm will disrupt electrical service. You may lose electricity early as trees fall on power lines or as winds blow power lines down. Your home may survive the storm, but in the days immediately after the storm, you may be very miserable. You won’t be able to turn on any lights. You won’t be able to cook on electric stoves. If you have an electric hot water heater, you may not have hot water. Your air conditioning (or heating) may not work. While our electric crews and those from other communities will begin restoring power quickly, we cannot say when everyone will have their lights back on. Furthermore, if the electric meter to your home is damaged or if the electrical wiring in your home gets wet or damaged, it may be weeks or months before your power can be restored. For that reason, we suggest you follow the advice of your local government and evacuate to an area outside of the predicted disaster zone, then return home when you can once again have modern conveniences.”

That type of statement

1.) Tells it to the audience straight without any public relations B.S.

2.) It manages their expectation for how bad things may get

3.) It gives them a clear reason as to why they should evacuate — because many people are in denial about whether or not the wind or flooding will harm them, but they don’t want to be miserable and without creature comforts.

Social Media Gerard BraudState, county and city governments can also benefit from this approach. The government will often call for an evacuation for public safety. Many people don’t want to evacuate because a previous hurricane did not significantly impact them. Government should emphasize that no two storms are alike. A zone that survived one hurricane might be destroyed by the path of another storm. Government public information officers and spokespeople should also emphasize the loss of creature comforts associated with the loss of electricity, water, operating toilets, and the inability to cook or buy supplies.

This technique goes hand in hand with my previous article on explaining the compare and contrast of what is and what will be. Please read that article for more valuable tips.

To continue to manage the expectations of the audience before, during and after an event, any corporation or government agency, can do exactly what I did as a citizen — they can create a CNN iReport account and file multiple iReport videos just as I did. We will look at that in our next article.

Thank you again for your daily votes through May 5th at http://www.cnn.com/ireport-awards#nom=indepth

My reports are in the In-Depth Storytelling catigory under Isaac’s Aftermath.

To learn more, here are links to previous articles on this topic:

Compare and Contrast News Stories: Secrets of the Media

Get the Right tools to be a good iReporter

Set Up Your CNN iReport Account on a Sunny Day

Hurricane Isaac: iReports Before, During and After. Is This Guy Crazy?

 

 

Compare and Contrast News Stories: Secrets of the Media

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By Gerard Braud

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

IReport Voting pageAs you read this, please be so kind as to also click this link to vote for me as CNN’s iReporter of the Year…  I’m one of 36 finalists and your 30 seconds of support daily through May 5, 2013, is greatly appreciated.

The news media love to show the contrast between what was and what is. If the media are going to do this anyway, you should anticipate it and plan your public relations strategy, media training strategy or crisis communications strategy to take advantage of this.

It is disappointing that the videos shown in my nomination for In-Depth Storytelling for the iReporter Awards focuses only on my reports after Hurricane Isaac. It was actually my CNN iReports before Hurricane Isaac that got the attention of network news producers, which triggered their calls to me to appear live on HLN during the CNN/HLN Evening Express program and the Dr. Drew program.

Here is the how, why and what I did, so you can do the same thing.

Reporters, anchors and media unfamiliar with a particular location don’t know what to expect. Sometimes they have misconceptions, which lead to inaccurate reporting. Sometimes their lack of knowledge makes the audience think the media are biased. Sometimes the local audience thinks the media are stupid. Your effort to make the story easy to tell makes reporters smarter and more accurate.

Since my house on Lake Pontchartrain afforded me a front row seat to the storm, I saw an opportunity to tell an accurate story to and for the media, through my iReports. My experience as a storm chaser and former journalist, positioned me to know that conditions were going to change drastically during Hurricane Isaac. So, my first video iReport Isaac Ireport Gerard Braudforetold that a calm Lake Pontchartrain would overflow its banks, flooding my neighborhood. My video including me showing the calm lake and the beautiful green grass of my yard near New Orleans, then telling how all that you see would be covered with water in 24 hours.

This prediction, as an iReport, got the attention of CNN producers. My strategy all along was to show my flooded neighborhood in my second iReport, which I did.
Isaac Flooding Gerard BraudThis contrast further got the attention of CNN producers. This, in turn, triggered the phone call asking me to do live reports via Skype, G3 and my iPhone 4, all while I had no electricity and 7 feet of water surrounding my house.

These news reports further set the stage to keep telling the story as conditions deteriorated. Next came the report of the physical damage to my home, followed by stories of massive amounts of debris, followed by reports of dead animals, and the reports of live alligators.Debris from Isaac Gerard Braud

The compare and contrast story should be a standard part of your story telling, whether you are filing an iReport, writing a news release, or communicating directly to the media during a crisis. Recognize what is… recognize what was… then compare the two in order to add perspective to your story and situation. This should be done by your corporate spokesperson, Public Information Officers (PIOs) at the state, county and city level, and anyone who must serve as the spokesperson during an unfolding news event.

In our next article, you’ll learn how to manage the expectations of your audience.

Thank you again for your daily votes through May 5th

My reports are in the In-Depth Storytelling category under Isaac’s Aftermath.

To learn more, here are links to previous articles on this topic:

Get the Right tools to be a good iReporter

Set Up Your CNN iReport Account on a Sunny Day

Hurricane Isaac: iReports Before, During and After. Is This Guy Crazy?

 

Get the Right Tools to Be a Good iReporter

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By Gerard Braud 

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

IReport Voting pageAs you read this, please be so kind as to also click this link to vote for me as CNN’s iReporter of the Year…  I’m one of 36 finalists and your 30 seconds of support is greatly appreciated.

As an iReport Evangelist, my favorite 2 iReport tools are my iPhone and my iPad. These are my favorite crisis communications tools as well.

You are welcome to use any brand of phone or tablet you like, as long as you can

1) Take video of yourself with it

2) Upload that video to the Internet.

Getting to the internet means you either need a reliable Wi-Fi signal or a good G3 or G4 signal on your device.

Raw video, also known in the news business as B-roll, is one type of image you can send to iReports. They also accept still photos. However, my favorite approach is to do a traditional television news style reporter standup. Standup is the TV term for the reporter walking and talking on camera.

Tropical Storm Lee iReportSome early generations of smart phones only allow you to use your phone screen as a video view-finder while you take a picture or video of something in front of you. Ideally, you want a smart phone or tablet that has a two-way camera — the one that allows you to hold your tablet or phone at arms length while you see yourself on the screen.

Your goal in the standup should be to make it short – usually 38 seconds. The short length makes it easy and fast to upload. Sometimes longer videos will not upload because of a lack of bandwidth, especially during a crisis or during bad weather. When doing a standup, your goal should also be to walk, talk and provide information in a quotable nugget, just as you will learn if you have ever been through a media training class. Because of this technology and demand, I’ve changed the way I teach media training classes to teach spokespeople how to walk and talk and deliver great information in a quick nugget. As you deliver your standup, you must also speak in a conversational tone and not in a stiff, rehearsed sounding voice.

Because my goal is to convert my iReports into Live interviews, I also have the right software. Skype on my iPhone and iPad, connected to the web, becomes my source for broadcasting Live. This means that you need to set up a Skype account on a clear sunny day, before you ever actually need it. Just like any other technology, you have to practice using it in order to get it right when you need it quickly in a crisis.

When I report Live for CNN, I’m asked to call one of their many Skype numbers. When I report Live for The Weather Channel, they phone my Skype number.

Gerard Braud Media Training and Crisis Communication with IPad IPhoneThe iPad is my favorite out of my 2 devices, because I love the size of the screen and the quality of the camera. However, it is heavier and harder to hold. Some iPad cases make it easier. Several companies also make iPad tripod devices. While a tripod provides a steady image, the downside is that you are unable to walk and talk to tell your story. In rainy conditions, the iPhone is easier to keep dry. You can use a baggie with a hole cut in it for the camera.

In our next article, you will learn what types of stories get the best attention.

If you have questions, tweet me @gbraud or send an e-mail to gerard@braudcommunications.com

 

 

Set Up Your CNN iReport Account on a Clear Sunny Day

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By, Gerard Braud

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}
IReport Voting page

CNN iReports should be added to the crisis communications, media relations and social media tool kit of every corporation, government agency, and non-profit organization in the world. Should your organization experience a significant crisis that gets significant media coverage, iReports are your direct path to adding perspective and official information about your breaking news story.

Just as most of you have established an account at Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, you should have an account pre-established at www.cnn.com/ireport so it is ready to use if you need it. Unlike other social media sites, you will use this one less often.

The set up process is fast and simple. If you have created any online profile in the past you can figure it out and complete the task in 5-10 minutes.Isaac Ireport Gerard Braud

Some leaders and executives may question whether the company needs an iReport account. My philosophy is that if you experience a newsworthy crisis, you have two options.  You can either have your story told by an unofficial eyewitness on the street that has an iReport account or you can provide better video, more factual details, and dispel rumors.

Shortly after your video is filed, a team of CNN iReport producers will watch your video. if they like it, they label it as vetted by CNN. The link is then shared with producers for the various CNN news programs. If those producers like it, they may place all or part of the video on the air in their news program. If your video proves that you have great visuals, a compelling perspective and compelling information, expect to get a phone call from CNN producers, asking you to do a live report via Skype, using your computer, smart phone or tablet.

You will learn more about how to properly produce a newsworthy CNN iReport in an upcoming article. But before we go into depth on that, your assignment is to set up your official account right now.Gerard Braud Media Training and Crisis Communication with IPad IPhone

(And if you haven’t yet done so, please click here to vote for my iReports in the iReporter of the year category. You can vote once every 24 hours and your friends and social media buddies can vote too.)

About the author: Gerard Braud has been nominated as iReporter of the Year for his In Depth coverage of Hurricane Isaac in 2012. During the hurricane his home was surrounded by 7 feet of water and he had no electricity for 5 days. Yet before, during and after the storm, he continued to file Live reports using only his iPhone and Skype. His day job is traveling the world teaching effective communications, media training and crisis communications workshops at conferences and in private corporate settings.

 

 

Hurricane Isaac: iReports Before, During and After. Is This Guy Crazy?

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By, Gerard Braud

(Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.)

IReport Voting page

It is important to evacuate when an approaching hurricane is going to be a bad one. Staying in your home in destructive winds and killer flooding is dumb. Hurricane Isaac was not a strong storm and mandatory evacuations were not called. So, I decided to stay in my home on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville, LA, which is 30 minutes north of New Orleans. The storm winds at the eye of the hurricane were just over 75 miles per hour, making it barely a Category  1 hurricane. The eye was forecast to pass 50 miles to the west of me, which meant the winds would not be destructive where I was. The path would push water from the Gulf of Mexico into Lake Pontchartrain, resulting in localized flooding from storm surge.

As an experienced storm chaser, my goal was to document the hurricane, from the preparation stage, through the flooding, then through the aftermath and cleanup.

My home is a small cottage, raised on steel 10-foot pilings, with steel beams. Below my house is a carport and storage area that is 5 feet above sea level. That places the floor of my living quarters 15 feet above sea level and makes for a great perch to view mother nature. The storage area is constructed with mandatory breakaway walls, which will wash away in a storm, and they did.

Two days before the hurricane I began to document the flurry of activities and preparations in the community. There were long lines at the gas stations until every pump ran dry. I documented empty grocery store shelves, as water and canned goods were snatched up. At the hardware store I documented long lines as people purchased electrical generators and filled propane tanks.

On Tuesday, August 28, 2012, the evening before the storm made landfall, I filed an iReport that showed a calm lake, a green parkway and the green grass in my yard. I explained to viewers that the next day the entire area would be underwater, which all came to pass and made for a great follow up report. That was the iReport that lead CNN Headline News (HLN) producers to ask me to do a live report on Evening Express as the hurricane made landfall on August 29. By then, electrical power had gone out and I was broadcasting live using my iPhone 4, a G3 phone signal, and Skype

Isaac Ireport Gerard BraudThe big surprise with Hurricane Isaac was that the storm stalled and stayed in the same place for nearly 2 days, all the while causing the floodwaters to get higher. A fast moving storm would have come and gone in 12 hours. This one would cause flooding from Tuesday until Sunday.

By the time we hit the air live on Evening Express on the evening of August 29, there were whitecaps rolling down my driveway. After dark I did a live report for the Dr. Drew Show. Shortly after I signed off with Dr. Drew around 9 p.m., I began to hear strange creaking noises in the house. Occasionally there were unnerving vibrations. When I turned on the faucet there was no water. This wasn’t good. #understatement. I grabbed a flashlight and walked downstairs, where I could see that the breakaway walls in the storage areas on my carport began to wash out. As they did, debris in the waves broke the water supply, leaving me without running water. Then I realized that near the water pipes were natural gas lines. #causeforconcern

I phoned a neighbor and asked if I could sleep at his house just in case mine had a gas leak. I shut off all of my pilot lights, blew out all of my hurricane lanterns and candles, grabbed my life vest and paddled my canoe to his house. By this time, the water was so deep I simply paddled over my fence.

Overnight, the eye of the storm began to move again. The morning of August 30th I paddled home to find there was no gas leak, so I filed more iReports showing the damage as the water level dropped some.

I was surprised at how much debris had washed into my yard. Then nature revealed unwanted guests. First, there were 10 alligators swimming in my yard. As it got warm, dead nutria, a large swamp rat the size of a large muskrat, began popping up out of the water. I counted 50 carcasses. As the water drained off further, it revealed a blanket of swamp grass 12-24 inches deep, filled with thousands of snakes. I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie. Such anomalies mean just one thing: file more iReports and do more live reports for Evening Express and Dr. Drew.

For me, the beauty of iReports is the ability of ordinary people to take their stories right to the world’s leading news network. News happens fast and there isn’t always a professional news crew present to capture it. A citizen with an iPhone can capture and report the news even when no news crews are around.

Gerard Braud Media Training and Crisis Communication with IPad IPhoneYou should each have an iReport. If you are a Public Information Officer (PIO), Emergency Manager, or public relations expert for a company, government agency or non-profit, you should certainly have an iReport account. In the next few articles you will learn how to establish your account, as well as how to produce news worthy videos.

Final notes

#1 Thank you for voting and sharing the voting link in your social media

#2 I would be honored to teach you the specifics of iReports as a conference presentation or as a private training program. Just download this PDF, then call me.

 

 

 

 

How a Guy in Mandeville, Louisiana Became the Source of Breaking News

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By, Gerard Braud

(Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.)

IMG_0470* copyAs you read this, please be so kind as to also click this link to vote for me as CNN’s iReporter of the Year…  I’m one of 36 finalists and your 30 seconds of support is greatly appreciated.

Over the next few days you will learn the background story of how I was selected by CNN.  If you come back to this blog daily, you will learn secrets about how and why you should also be crazy about iReports and using smart phones and tablets to broadcast to the world.

CNN is recognizing me for a series of reports I filed about Hurricane Isaac 2012.

With 7 feet of floodwater surrounding my home and no electricity for 5 days during Hurricane Isaac, I was able to broadcast live to CNN using only my iPhone, G3 and Skype. Amid the rain, heat, waves, snakes, alligators, debris and dead animal carcasses, I kept broadcasting.

Because of the reports I filed from August 26-September 2, 2012, CNN producers chose my reports out of all the reports filed by 11,000 iReporters in 2012, to be recognized for continuing coverage of breaking news. The reports were seen both on the CNN iReport website and they were broadcasted by CNN and HLN to viewers around the world.

These reports took viewers into places that even CNN news crews couldn’t reach with their million dollar satellite trucks and $60,000 HD cameras.

Wow. #crazyflattered #makesmymomproud #thisisfriggincool. It is so cool to be nominated by CNN.Isaac Ireport Gerard Braud

Hopefully the experiences you will read about here will help you understand why you should be a part of iReports. You will also learn step-by-step how to do what I do.

I have been a CNN iReport evangelist since the program began. During 4 major weather events my iReports have been broadcast on CNN and on multiple occasions have lead to live broadcasts.

The first time was when I witnessed a funnel cloud during Hurricane Gilbert. I simply uploaded a short iReport with no narration to CNN. CNN showed it, then my phone rang. A friend in California called to warn me there were tornadoes near me and he had just seen it on CNN.  Ha. Funny how that worked.

CNN Ireport gerard braud snowOn December 11, 2010 we had an unusual 5-inch snow fall in the town I live in, near New Orleans. I had not sent out Christmas cards yet, so with my point and shoot camera I made a short news video about the snow, then wished everyone Merry Christmas. I uploaded the video to iReports. Their producers vetted the report and confirmed it was real. They edited off my Christmas greeting, then used the rest of the video all day long to run before every weather report. That was really cool.

CNN asked me to do a live report via Skype, but that got canceled because of breaking news. That was the day the body of Caylee Anthony was found in the woods, leading to the murder trial of the child’s mother, Casey Anthony.

In August of 2011, Tropical Storm Lee came through New Orleans and my little town of Mandeville, LA. A week before, I had moved into a new house on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The storm surge filled my yard with 5 feet of water. Using my iPad and WiFi, I shot a 90 second news report, then uploaded it to iReports. Within minutes, producers were asking me to do live reports. With an iPad as my broadcast camera and WiFi as my broadcast channel, I was on the air for 2 days.

These 3 events set the stage for Hurricane Isaac in August 2012 and the series of reports for which I was nominated. You will learn more details in our next article.

 

 

What Are the Secrets to a Crisis Communications Plan?

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

By Gerard Braud

Braud Communications Training web photoIt is critical to pick the right tools for crisis communication and your crisis communications plan.

The right fit for crisis communications includes your official website, and a mix of crisis communications channels, placed in a priority and used according to that priority. That priority needs to be established during the planning stages of writing your crisis communications plan. That priority needs to be established on a clear sunny day, when emotions are low, anxiety is low and everyone has clarity of thought and purpose. That priority needs to be tested during crisis communications drills, so that everyone in the organization will trust the crisis communications plan and not second guess the plan on the day of your crisis.

Generally my priorities are:

1) Talk to the media on site (If there are media onsite)

2) Post information to your official website

3) Send an e-mail to all employees with a link to the website and a complete text of what is said on the website

4) Send an e-mail to other important stakeholders

5) Post short messages to your official Facebook & Twitter pages with a link to your primary website

youtube6) Post a YouTube video with your official statement

During the planning stages, let me establish the fact that size matters. By size, I mean the size of your communications team. The organizations that use my crisis communications plans vary in size. The Internal Revenue Service has a huge staff of communicators across the U.S. There are global organizations that have employees all over the world, but some have only one or two people on their global communications staff.  There are national retailers with a staff of two. There are manufacturing companies that have no communications staff at all. Therefore, when I say size matters, which tools you use and in which priority you use them is directly dependent upon how many people can help you during a crisis.

If a company has only one communicator on staff, it is difficult to do the basics of a news conference, web statement post and e-mail, and still have time to deal with social media. If a company has no trained communicator, they may have difficulty getting a statement on the web and updating social media at all.

Since so many companies have no trained communicators on staff or because they have only one or two communicators, every crisis communications plan I write is created with a failsafe mechanism. This mechanism takes into account that the person executing the plan may have zero training. I have colleagues in the communications world who disagree and believe that plans should be written for communicators only. That is a flaw, first because is failure to recognize some companies have no designated communicators. Secondly, it is a failure to realize that, in some crises, the communicator may be out of pocket and unable to execute the plan.

Your plan must be so thorough that it dictates that you sequentially do everything that a seasoned, senior communicator would do in a crisis. At the same time, it must be so clearly written that anyone who can read and follow directions can execute it. This is a much more difficult plan to write because it must be thorough, yet simple, while at the time not being simplistic.

When I first set out to write such a plan, the first draft took 150 hours and the second draft took another 100 hours. At 250 hours of writing, I tore it down with the goal to make it easier to execute yet impossible to screw up. That plan now has 1,500 hours of development in it and guess what? It is a living plan, which means it continues to evolve and grow.

I consider plans that state only standard operating procedures to be too simplistic and dangerous.  This is because there are no mandates to take action in the plan and there are no timelines that must be met in the plan. You can find them online just by searching for crisis communications plans. Many universities use these flawed plans. On the day of the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, the university had just such a plan.

Virginia Tech Shooting - Gerard Braud blogThe Virginia Tech plan had not been updated in five years, which means it wasn’t a living plan. It contained no names or contact information for anyone. It had no pre-written statements. The directions were so simple that the entire plan looks like it could have been written by a freshman PR student on their first day in class. The plan simply listed standard operating procedures.

Meanwhile, the thorough yet simple approach I advocate embeds the standard operating procedure with a list of chronological steps to take. It has specific instructions to communicate at specific time intervals. It includes a statement within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis, and again at the beginning of the second hour of the crisis, if it is an ongoing crisis.

Take a moment to add to your to-do list time to review your plan and ask yourself if your plan is a simplistic list of standard operating procedures that can only be executed by a trained communicator. If it is, add to your to-do list the need for a major re-write.

If you have questions, I welcome your phone call. I’m at 985-624-9976. My two-day workshop to write and complete your crisis communications plan is the fastest way to get what you need.

 

Be a Control Freak with Your Crisis Communication

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

Braud MDU3 copyBy Gerard Braud

Your first choice when “it” hits the fan should be to use the crisis communications channels that you have the greatest control over, that reach the broadest audiences, and that offer you the greatest stability.

Many people think you can’t control the media, but I have a long track record of controlling the media with spokespeople that I have put through a thorough media training class.

Good media training means going far beyond developing three key messages. I think the three key message system is bull. Simply giving an executive three bullet points and asking them to talk and ad lib about those issues as much as possible in an interview is often a recipe for disaster. Many are not naturally gifted at filtering their words on the fly. Many might hit the bullet points, but phrase their answers in a negative nature, rather than in a positive sentence structure.

Ask yourself, why would you ask a spokesperson to completely ad lib an interview with bullet points, when you could achieve better results by giving them time to internalize, carefully worded sentences with a positive sentence structure?

I believe that the key to successful media training is being able to tell a deep story. The story should be filled with quotes from the minute your spokesperson opens their mouth. The spokesperson should be trained to end each answer in a place that creates a cliffhanger, and generates a question that they want to be asked. To that extent, you control the message, you control the questions, and therefore you also control the media.

I’ll get to my priority list of tools later, but first let’s look at a case study that shows the dangers of depending upon social media and why it is a bad fit.

Twitter over capacityHave you ever gotten the smiley whale page on Twitter? It’s the page that says Twitter is over capacity. If you are depending upon Twitter to handle your crisis communications and Twitter is over capacity, you are screwed. In a crisis, chatter increases on both land based and cell phone networks, as well as on social media sites. Making social media a high priority is a bad idea because the probability exists for those tools to fail you when you anticipated that you would need them the most.

The next reason I think social media is a bad fit is because the sites and profiles are so very easy to hack. This happened to Burger King recently. Gerard braud burger king hackTheir entire account was hacked. Read more about it in one of my previous articles.

Beyond the straight Twitter hack, in seconds someone can create a profile with a name that is similar to your profile, causing confusion for the social media audience. Additionally, security is low on social media sites. Virtually everyone I know who uses Facebook has received a direct message from a friend who is allegedly in London, has been allegedly mugged, and who is allegedly asking you to wire money to them because their credit cards and cash have been stolen. This is a hack. The hacker uses deductive reasoning to determine a password.

How many of us have received a Tweet from a friend tells us they made an extra $500 last week and that I can too if I link a website? Or a friend sends a link that says someone has posted a compromising picture of you online. Those messages all came from Twitter accounts that had been hacked. My point is some social media is a bad fit because it is vulnerable to failure and the fix is beyond your control.

Take out your to-do list and schedule time to evaluate which forms of communications are a bad fit and which forms of communications are the right fit.