Costa Concordia press briefing

One of Costa Concordia’s cruise ships hit a rock near Italian coasts on January 13, 2012, leading to the sinking of the ship, and the death of a dozen of passengers. A mock briefing was organized to address the crisis only a couple days after the accident happened.

The main difficulty in responding to this issue was to take into consideration the timeline as the group chose to held the press briefing a couple days after the accident. We now have many more information about it. The group did well in choosing to reinforce the notion of safety of its ships, especially because its reputation as a safe cruise company would be heavily damaged after this episode.

The accident, even a few days after it happened, was so important and dramatic that the company’s reputation would have been destroyed in any case. It’d take more than a press briefing to rebuild it. Despite all these difficulties, the group managed well its message and stuck to it.  They were also well prepared to respond to any kind of questions, even recurring ones.

Given the extent of the situation, it was smart to include people from the cruise company, Carnival Corporation, but also from the training program, CSMART, to reinsure that every level of security is included and working on it.

Overall, how the group addressed the situation at the press briefing was the best way to handle the situation only two days after the tragic event. The media coverage of the accident in Europe was so huge, as well as the search for other survivors was such a mess, that it was impossible to handle it without a hitch.

Starbucks: How to transform a crisis into an opportunity

The vice president of public relations of Starbucks held a session during the public relations day at Newhouse. James Olson presented an interesting view on his company, and how going back to basics was a wise move.

Starbucks underwent a financial crisis back in 2008 when it had to shut down more than 600 under-performing locations. It leads to the departure of its emblematic CEO, Howard Schultz, who came back to the company a few months later. This situation brought important change within the company’s communication approach. Right after that, Starbucks tried to find again its true spirit and identity.

This quest to find the company’s true beliefs leads it to go back to the basics: its customers. The company grew so fast and so big in his years of existence, with more than 17,000 stores in 60 countries, that it became difficult for it to keep a common voice shared by all its stores. In conducting change, Starbucks’s CEO played an enormous role as the leader and face of this change.

Howard Schultz at the Global Leadership Conference
October 2012, Houston, TX

Starbucks’s case illustrates how well it was able to handle a crisis, but also how important is the CEO within a company. The strength of its communication after 2008 was to put Schultz in the front line and having him being the bond of this huge organization. From Olson’s presentation, I’ll tend to say that crisis management is all about being able to question yourself: When something is wrong choosing to change is a key to evolve toward the right direction.

Schultz’s personality was the driving force through Starbucks’s global communication to retrieve their roots. Employees programs, community relations, being transparent by advocating their decisions and policies, were the main implementations done to strengthen their company’s overall communication.

Global Leadership Conference
October 2012, Houston, TX

This situation is the perfect example of a strong corporate social responsibility program. Starbucks managed to turn its crisis into an opportunity and by doing so, it wisely communicated toward both its internal and external publics. Employees were one of the key targets, and the feeling of belonging to the company was one of the top messages to spread out.

This case will surely become a classic of crisis management and of the use of CSR as a communication tool. It will now be even more interesting to keep an eye on Starbucks’s future communication to assess whether it is a lasting project that will guide the company through its future years of business.

Of new markets and fresh perspectives

Scott Kronick’s presentation on international public relations during Newhouse’s PR day was exciting and inspirational.

Kronick has been working for the international public relations agency Ogilvy for more than 20 years. He began his career in the US, before having the opportunity to move abroad to China, 17 years ago. He arrived there at the beginning of the 90s, right when the economical independence and growth started.

Through his presentation, he managed to show us two things: How the use of PR in China differs from western countries, and how much one country and its whole population has evolved over two decades.

China is the country that we always hear about as the new world’s economic leader, the biggest population, or the sweatshop of the world, but we never have insights from a PR perspective. Especially because there are so many Chinese students at our university, having more information about their country allows us to appreciate and understand their culture.

Doing PR means above all knowing who are your publics. This statement is even more accurate when it comes to international PR. But the fact is, it is harder to capture these audiences when it’s another country, a completely different culture, and therefore another way to consume or respond to messages. “You can’t start talking to somebody unless you understand them,” was one of Kronic’s key points.

Cross culture business and communication has existed for decades, but the more interactions are made with eastern countries, the more we have to learn again how to do effective PR through new perspectives. “You gotta know what you don’t know”.

What I’ll remember from this presentation is that doing good PR is more than ever about curiosity and passion for your job. Having already an international background, I’m even more interested in exploring international PR as a potential path for my future career. As Kronick said in an interview he gave to Voices From Other Lands: “Building bridges between cultures is [my] mission,” and he surely knows how to talk about it. 

Of the importance of being artsy

One of the things I miss the most since I moved to Syracuse is art. I know there are museums, art galleries or even movie theaters in the city but it’s definitely not as varied. I had the chance to live in Paris, and there are so many opportunities there to access art as a student. For instance most of museums are free when you’re under 26, and there’re at least 15 to 20 different exhibitions each seasons.

Maybe it is a cultural thing, because when you’re socializing with that crazy Parisian crowd, talking about art is like your free entrance ticket. I remember reading a funny piece on that this summer in the New York Magazine. They were saying that in most European or American big cities you would need to talk about sport to find a common subject of interest, but in Paris sport would never start a conversation. You would just earn a weird look and a shrug.

My point is that cultural life is essential to many people, and I particularly experienced it during the two years I spent in the French capital. I know that it is the case in most big cities, and although we are pretty lucky when it comes to the cultural life in Paris, it is not the only city with such a wealthy cultural life.

However, it is something I’m pretty tied to. So my concern since I am living in Syracuse is to find ways to enjoy art without having such a direct access to it. As much as it is a challenge, I actually love being outside of my “natural habitat” and have to adapt to a completely different environment from the one I used to live in.

After four months, I start to appreciate new things that I would have never consider liked in my former busy urban life. And I’m pretty surprised with myself to see that I tend to find ways to like the local cultural life, and complain less about how it is back home. 

I dislike everything, I'm Parisian

At the end of the day, I think the arts and culture are essential. However, it is not necessarily about having access to it, but more about knowing what to do once you enjoyed it and always keep you interested in everything surrounding you.

Change, bring it on!

Nancy Cantor, Syracuse University’s chancellor since 2004, has announced last Friday via an email that she is resigning from her position. This decision will be effective in June 2014. 

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Announcing this decision a year in a half in advance seems a little anticipated. Through the email, she keeps referring to SU’s great work over the years, and how the university is a leading higher education place contributing to the world’s greater good. Although all of that sounds very nice, it seems like she is trying to say a lot to, at the end, not say much about why she is really leaving.

The fact that she declared her departure months before it happens is on the one hand a great way for the university and its staff to get prepared to the change. But on the other hand, it sounds like she might stop caring about the university’s good because she knows there’s a determined end to her contribution.

From a PR perspective, managing her departure will surely be a challenge. By the time she left, she would have been at this position for 10 years, bringing her working lifestyle and beliefs among this big university. It is going to be a challenge to rebuild the university’s identity around a new chancellor, still unknown. It also is a challenge today to deal with the consequences of such an announcement. The fact that she didn’t give much reason explaining her departure will give some interesting PR releases.

Being a SU student for only three months makes me feel a little bit disconnected from such information. It is an important change, but it seems like a controversial one too considering SU’s past few years. The weeks to come will surely be of interest in learning more about this departure. I’m also curious to observe if her work at the university gets affected.

Journalism & PR, or how to build a relationship

There are so many stories out there, of so many different interests. As PR people we obviously want our own to be the top ones, but to achieve our job efficiently we have to be clever when it comes to pitching our story. Knowing the strength of our news, and being aware of who could be interested in or concerned about it, is essential. Although our ultimate goal is to get the maximum coverage on it, we are not looking for useless attention, and are rather seeking for a beneficial one.

This week, we had the chance to welcome in our digital writing class four journalism professionals that gave us some insightful tips. Scott Willis from the WAER radio station, Steve Billmyer from the Post-Standard, Matt Mulcahy from CNY central and Kevin Tampone from the CNY Business Journal were all there to talk about their field's experience.

We talked a lot about the digitalization of both our professions, but I would rather mention the importance of building relationships with the journalists we’re going to work with.

We are used to often discuss the change occurring in our field, and how our practice is even more relying on digital devices and media; but it is also important to be reminded that the best way to achieve our work is still relying on a human relationship. 

PR practitioners and reporters have a give-and-take kind of relationship. Ideally, PR people want to be able to call reporters and get their story out, while journalists want to get in touch with PR representatives every time they need it for a story. Obviously, this is an idealistic reality. Therefore, as our practice entitles it, building relationship, not only between an organization and its publics but also between PR practitioners and their intermediaries, is an essential part of our work.

Our guests strongly remind us to always do our research on any media or reporter we’re about to get in touch with, for any kind of story. Building a strong and respectful relationship with our media interlocutors is assuring us efficiency in our work. This is what this week’s panel taught me about news worthiness. Obviously, knowing our story and knowing how to pitch is essential. However, having an accurate idea of whom to pitch it to, is as important.

Social media or the ultimate asset

This year’s presidential campaign witnesses the use of a new tool in the race for the White House, social media.

Although President Barak Obama is using them since his 2008 campaign, 2012 shows a significant increase in both candidates’ online presence.

The Pew Research Center for Excellence in Journalism has published an article comparing the use of social media by Barak Obama and Mitt Romney. They issued two interesting graphs made from their observations. 

This first graph shows both candidates’ presence on four different platforms in June 2012, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs. Obama is clearly more active on his platforms. Twitter is the most significant one. Over a period of 13 days in June, Obama posted 404 tweets when Romney only had 16. Only Facebook’s post were more important on Romney’s side, with 34 posts against 27 for Obama over the same period. 

The research emphasizes how both candidates are actually using social media. As they're saying it, ideally the goal of platforms such as Twitter or Facebook is to generate interactions with the audience through comments, re-tweets or responses. The purpose of social media in general is to create an equal relationship between a sender and its audiences. Although some control over these platforms is necessary, the interaction is still totally different from what traditional media with an ascendant relationship. 

The Pew Research Center’s study reveals that despite the use of social media, this traditional asymmetrical relationship remains, and the “discussion” that should be engaged between the candidates’ platforms and their audiences, is not happening. Candidates are not responding to retweets or comments, and voters’ voices are not meant to be meaningful.

Although the candidates successfully took over Internet and used a lot social media, they are still exerting an important control over these networks. Social media is definitely an asset in this campaign. It's a smart way to reach certain audiences, especially a youth one. However, it seems like it will take a few years, maybe a couple of campaigns, to use these digital media in a symmetrical way where audiences will play a significant role in their candidate’s campaign.

As the Pew’s study summarized it,

“While there may be no simple answer, throughout modern campaign history successful candidates have tended to outpace their competitors in understanding changing communications. From Franklin Roosevelt's use of radio, to John F. Kennedy's embrace of television, to Ronald Reagan's recognition of the potential for arranging the look and feel of campaign events in the age of satellites and video tape, candidates quicker to grasp the        power of new technology have used that to convey a sense that they represented a new generation of leadership more in touch with where the country was heading.” 

Including communication changes are therefore an asset for campaign’s strategies. The use of social media is essential but needs some work to be used at their full potential.