In San Francisco, ABC7’s Dan Noyes had an interesting (and for PR pros, instructive) run-in with Laguna Honda Hospital PR chief Marc Slavin.
Noyes was probing allegations that Laguna Honda administrators inappropriately used money from the Patient Gift Fund.
On the YouTube page for this video (below) it says
According to Noyes, “Hospital Director Mivic Hirose ignored our phone calls for an interview. So, we showed up at her town hall meeting at the hospital.” That’s when the chief of community relations Marc Slavin stepped in and repeatedly patted Noyes with a hand. Each time, Noyes warned, “Do not touch me,” and one point Noyes threatened to call the cops. But like a brother bugging his little sister, Slavin continued his touchy-feely ways with Noyes and the camerawoman.
Check it out:
I worked for a few years as a public relations staffer in two major metro hospitals. I had to deal with the best and worst of the journalistic profession on events as catastrophic as the Murrah Terrorist Attack to stories about overweight kids to (sadly) routine updates on shooting victims. Almost always, reporters were professional and respectful of the operations of the hospital, understanding that it was my job to protect the privacy of our patients as well as provide an environment where our staff could do their work without distraction.
Most reporters would call ahead to schedule an interview or ask for a statement when a story was brewing. We would do our very best to accommodate them while meeting our legal, patient privacy and ethical obligations.
I do recall, however, being infuriated by certain tactics used by a tiny minority of journalists. This included the “gotcha” where they showed up unannounced with what I believed to be a clear agenda to cause trouble for the cameras.
Besides all other reasonable motives (professionalism, maturity, civility, etc.) that is one reason why I would never, ever, touch a journalist in any way–no matter how infuriating their tactics. Nor would I raise my voice or do anything provocative. My job in those situations was to get the journalist out of the building and reschedule the interview–not to make the journalist angry or put on a show for the cameras. My job was to minimize damage, not escalate it.
True, Slavin rattled Noyes, effectively taking the focus off the investigative reporting and putting it on the reporter himself, but at what price?
It’s a fairly textbook case of winning the battle but losing the war. Slavin made an ass of himself. He made the hospital–already on the hook for some pretty nasty allegations–look like it’s staffed by idiots. As I write this, the YouTube page for this video has nearly 17,000 hits, and that doesn’t begin to cover the blogs, news sites and other places where this story is being discussed.
So instead of cooling the situation down and seeking a way to get the reporter an interview (nevermind planning ahead and responding to allegations in a timely way to ensure his boss was not vulnerable to an unannounced impromptu visit), Slavin has guaranteed that the allegations have been repeated thousands of times, across the globe.
Ideally, the relationship between PR and the news media should be a balance based on mutual respect (even if it’s a grudging respect), professionalism and ethical behavior. If one side of this balance fails to meet those standards, it’s still incumbent upon the other to remain professional and keep cool. In this case, the PR “pro” reacted in an unprofessional way to a reporter’s provocative tactic.
He should have known better. Guys like Marc Slavin make the entire profession look bad. In future I hope he keeps his hands to himself.
I received a nice email about some of my AlexanderG Whiz blog posts from Kandi, a customer service professional in the hospitality industry. Here’s part of her email:
Hey Alex!
I enjoyed the Honda follow-up blog! Glad to see that they didn’t disappoint, now every time I get those coupons in the mail I wonder what they are going to try to up sell me on when I enter!
Also wanted to let you know that I deeply enjoyed your April 26th post about Good Customer Service to the Core, I actually just spoke to a [college] hospitality class about customer service and getting back to the basics. [...] I totally agree with you though that if people in the service industry would just realize that it is the small things that make the most impact a lot of the companies wouldn’t be where they are today!
Anyway just wanted to check in with you and thank you for blogging!
Kandi
She also mentioned she is thinking about writing a book on customer service. We hope she does–and we’ll certainly let you know when it’s published.
Thanks for writing Kandi!
You can write us, too–or leave a comment below. Come on, let’s hear from you!
The Harvard Business Review says that being a “controlling” boss can hurt the bottom line, let alone employee morale:
Believe it or not, the mere thought of you can make your employees do a lousy job.In fact, if your employees consider you a controlling person, even an unconscious thought of you can have a negative effect on their performance. If, for example, they were to happen to subliminally see, out of the corner of their eyes, your name flash for 60 milliseconds, you could expect them to start working less hard. Even if they didn’t intend to slack off.
[...]
It’s all too easy, once people become managers, for them to forget how deeply their employees value freedom and autonomy, and the extent to which some of them, at least, will react to any infringement of it, even unconsciously.
I’ve seen it before, firsthand. I had a boss who micromanaged everything my team did, literally adding days to the time it took to finish a project. I also had a boss who hectored me about deadlines–even though I never missed deadlines–several times a day in what I can only think was an attempt to assert his authority. The grand prize goes to the boss who told me who I could sit with when I ate lunch in the company cafeteria.
Seriously. No kidding. I’m sure it goes without saying that I probably didn’t always do my best work in those situations.
I maintain that when you give your staff parameters to do their jobs with the autonomy and empowerment to make decisions, they will become your greatest asset. When you stand over them like a parent does a rebellious child, you will get an employee who acts like a rebellious child, however subversively.
If managers hire the right people and give them the tools they need, managers shouldn’t have to be controlling at all. Management and control are two different things.
In my career I’ve been a manager of anywhere from three to more than a hundred employees. I viewed my management duties this way: I had my own work to do and little time or patience for staff who needed me to “stand over them” to ensure they did their work properly and on-time. I hired people who were professional and, once given parameters and the tools they needed, got their job done.
Nine times out of ten, that management philosophy worked well. The few times it didn’t usually indicated a need for me to work on my management skills or the person I was managing was–for whatever reason–in the wrong job.
To say the least I’m perplexed about BP and their response to the oil spill in the Gulf. I could (and may) write a White Paper on all the mistakes and missed opportunities, but for today let’s talk about their spokespersons.
They’ve made some obviously vague and tone deaf statements–especially recently with CEO Tony Hayward’s assertion that the spill’s environmental impact will be “very, very modest”:
Yeah, tell that to the fishermen, Tony. Their impending “modest” bankruptcies are no biggie.
Hayward’s wishful thinking out loud makes the situation worse for BP, particularly when his own COO Doug Suttles (who I give points to for making himself available to the media) apparently contradicted him on the Today Show this morning (last few seconds of this piece):
Two spokespersons in a crisis communications situation is almost never a good idea, especially when there is no message coordination. It’s certainly played a role in BP’s long-standing environmentally-responsible image–which now resides somewhere in the vicinity of that leaking well on the bottom of the sea.
Developing…we’ll have more analysis shortly.
In the meantime, what do you think? Should BP’s CEO stay out of the messaging, or does it really matter at this point?
This one speaks to me: “There’s inherent stress in choices. When starting a business, you don’t have a lot of choices.” Though that is balanced out by “It’s a lot easier to bet the farm when you don’t have a farm.”
The complete loss of BP’s “environmentally strong” brand equity
…all in one story, unfolding on the nightly news, internet and in the papers: the BP Oil Disaster.
This will be a case study that will be used by PR practitioners for years to come. We’ll get our thoughts together for an upcoming post. In the meantime, we’d like to know what you think about this: how bad is it? Or, are we wrong? Is BP et al handling it well? Leave us a comment–we may include your thoughts in our post.
So what say you, PR pros or armchair PR strategists…any thoughts?
Actor Russell Crowe stalks off an interview after being baited (intentionally or unintentionally) by an interviewer about his new “Robin Hood” movie. Have a listen (Warning, there is some adult language in this audio clip):
Free Advice:
If this stuff really gets to you, why not try treating the press the way George Clooney or Meryl Streep does, man. They have boundaries, but generally don’t let the media get under their skin. Laugh it off. This petulant stuff plays right into their hands.
Then again, maybe you like stirring the pot to generate buzz or even just to amuse yourself. If that’s the case–rave on, Mr. Crowe.
P.S. Mr. Crowe, please drop this Robin Hood stuff and get busy on a sequel to “Master and Commander” (your best work ever, IMHO).
Sometimes doing the right thing earns a company good P.R.:
Talk about customer service.
Employees at a Deffenbaugh Industries Inc. trash facility in St. Joseph sifted through a truckload of garbage Thursday to help a Savannah couple find $4,500 in lost cash.
The St. Joseph News-Press reported that Amy Ezzell frantically called Deffenbaugh after her husband, Chris, told her he had accidentally thrown away an envelope full of cash along with trash from a fast food restaurant.
{…}
Chris had taken the money to Leavenworth, Kan., to look at a camper for a family vacation. He decided not to buy the camper and the envelope got mixed up with other trash. A Deffenbaugh worker knew which truck the money was in and rerouted it to the St. Joseph facility. A team of 10 workers sifted through the trash for about two hours before finding a mass of gooey bills.
“It was really gross, it came out of the envelope and it was soaked with everything,” said Dean Dymond of Deffenbaugh. “In fact, they found it near some cat litter in the trash, so it was pretty bad.”
All of the money was there and the couple said they couldn’t be happier. “I really appreciate everything they did for us,” Chris Ezzell said.
He said he tried to give the employees money as a reward for their efforts, but they declined it.
Besides the fact that Deffenbaugh workers did a good thing–the right thing–without expectation or acceptance of a reward–they also earned some great coverage from at least two local TV stations and local newspapers.
If you empower your employees to take initiative (by informing them of policies and of course setting parameters) it will almost always pay off with good customer service and even some great PR.
The key to giving a good interview that gets published, posted or broadcast (and getting requests for future interviews) is the ability to provide pithy, colorful and interesting answers to questions with which people may easily identify.
Before an interview, know the key messages you want to express. Pick two or three key points you want to get across; then work on some 10 to 30-second analogies to explain them. This doesn’t mean a canned, robotic line shoehorned into the interview, but actually the development of the ability to discern when that message will fit, then delivering it in a way you would when talking across the fence to your neighbor.
Warren Buffet is the master at this. Take a look (particularly at the first 56 seconds or so):
Besides managing to get a word in edgewise with Charlie Rose (kidding Chuck!), how many rapid-fire analogies did he use here? They were interesting, vivid and made sense to anyone who heard them.
Whether you’re talking about sustainable architecture, accounting or the proposed convenience store you’re opposing in the neighborhood, the artful sound bite can make your case better than reams of facts and figures. Using a little bit of wordplay to paint a picture is a great way to go.
Let’s look at the convenience store example for a bit of wordplay in action.
You live in a quiet neighborhood where a longtime business is closing; a convenience store company wants the space. You feel the c-store will bring crime and disturbances to your neighborhood and want it stopped. You hold a rally or town hall meeting to express your opposition. A TV reporter shows up and asks why you oppose the store. Remember, he will probably use the best 3-5 seconds of what you say–if anything at all.
Here’s one answer:
“These convenience stores are just bad for the neighborhood. They often bring crime and noise that lowers property values.”
All true, but is it interesting enough for the 5 o’clock news?
Here’s another:
“These ‘convenience’ stores just make it more convenient for dangerous thugs to target our neighborhood. That lowers home values and quality of life for all of us. That’s pretty ‘inconvenient’ if you ask me.”
Sure , a bit snarky, but the key message comes across. So, which one’s going on the news?
Remember, analogies and clever wordplay can be the difference between the cutting room floor and “Live at 5.”
I’ve written about my media training seminar before, and as I write this I’m taking a break from working on a presentation I’m giving to a fantastic Kansas City company next week. A popular part of my seminar is tips on interacting with the news media.
Here’s some basic information on giving an interview broken down into 8 key points. Bear in mind there are lots more nuanced approaches and tactics (TV vs. print interviews, phone vs. in-person, etc.) but this should give you food for thought.
The Scenario:You’ve been asked by your local newspaper to give an interview at your office about your company’s new service.
1: Congrats! You have a service that has attracted the interest of the news media. Handled correctly, this is better than thousands of dollars worth of advertising (advertising can raise awareness, good public relations can earn credibility). Pat yourself (or your PR team) on the back. When scheduling the interview, you of course asked the reporter for a general idea of what she’s looking for (but not for a list of her questions). She says her story ‘angle’ is how the new service will change your industry and affect hiring at your company.
2:Be prepared. The reporter has indicated she’s looking for a story that talks about the service in a generally positive light. There is no indication the story is a critique–though you need to be prepared to talk about all aspects–good or potentially bad–of the service.
Work with your PR team (no PR team? Better contact a professional!) or top associates to anticipate a list of questions the reporter will likely ask–or should ask–about your service. Make a list of succinct bullet points–include info and perspectives you would like to see in the story. Study them and be prepared to use the information–don’t memorize “canned” answers, but have your key messages thought out and at your mental fingertips.
Keep it short and pithy. The news media–whether it’s TV, print or online–prefer brevity. They love the sound bite. If you’ve prepared a few good, juicy sound bites you will likely have a positive effect on the story. I won’t insult you by saying “be honest,” but I will caution you to keep the hyperbole to a minimum.
I wish I could say this goes without saying: Make sure you look your best. Also make certain the site of your interview is presentable. (My seminar includes a few horror stories about this.)
3: Be yourself–but not too much. Be friendly, but remain professional with the reporter. The reporter is there to get information, not necessarily make friends. Remember, nothing you say is ever “off the record.” Saying only what you would “want to see on the front page of the newspaper” is especially good advice here. Don’t be adversarial, but refrain from being too familiar. Remain positive, polite and yes, brief. A short interview is generally indicative of you giving the reporter the info they need for their story. Rambling, incoherent thoughts will not work in your favor.
4: Did I mention being brief, professional and presentable?
5: When the interview is finished, thank the reporter for her time and interest. Offering a one-page info sheet is a nice touch–put key message points about the new service as well as any website information on the sheet. Your website should ideally have more in-depth info, an online media kit, photos, etc. available for download.
6: Do not ask the reporter to let you read the story before it is published. As a former editor and reporter, I cannot tell you how many times people have tried to “control the message” by getting story approval. It. Ain’t. Happening. It makes you look unsophisticated or worse: like you’ve said something you’ll regret. The closest thing you can do to “control” the message: see #2.
7: After the story is published, send a thank-you note to the reporter. Not a “kiss-butt” obsequious love letter, just a professional note or email thanking them for their interest and the great story. Most reporters only hear from people who are ticked off. Don’t you like to be thanked for your work?
If there are any minor errors on the reporter’s part–errors that aren’t damaging to your company or service, let it go. Send the thank-you note and move on.
Now, if there is a glaring error that is potentially harmful to your business, call the reporter and politely fill them in: “Sorry, I may have been unclear about the XYZ cleaning solution.” Explain the facts and that it would be helpful if a correction could be printed as the error could be very damaging to the company. The reporter will likely refer you to her editor, who has final say about corrections–but always start with the reporter. When you talk with the editor, explain again why a correction would be appreciated if not absolutely necessary. I can assure you that a reasoned request backed up by facts will generally get you that correction. Belligerent, “I’ll have your job!” calls or emails will only blow up in your face–potentially ruining your chances of any coverage in the future.
8: Learn from your mistakes–if any–and you’ll do even better next time. Now get copies of that story to your customers and link to it on your company website!
This is only the tip of the media interaction iceberg. Want to learn more? Contact us today to schedule your media training seminar.
AlexanderG Whiz blog posts from Kandi, a customer service professional in the hospitality industry. Here’s part of her email:
Two spokespersons in a crisis communications situation is almost never a good idea, especially when there is no message coordination. It’s certainly played a role in BP’s long-standing environmentally-responsible image–which now resides somewhere in the vicinity of that leaking well on the bottom of the sea.
