Have you ever heard of Odebrecht?

It was inevitable that it would be a worldwide story. Two construction workers killed in a partial collapse of a stadium being built to host the Football World Cup opening game in Brazil next year.

How did the relevant Brazilian parties respond to this news?

When contacted by Reuters shortly after the incident, the building company, Brazilian industrial conglomerate Odebrecht, declined to comment. I accept they didn’t have all the information but to not even offer an expression of sorrow is pretty extraordinary.

The stadium owner released a terse statement that read “The board of Sport Club Corinthians Paulista hereby deeply regret the accident earlier in Corinthians Arena. No other information at this time.” Can you imagine a British company getting away with that?

Contrast that with FIFA’s response: "We have learnt of the death of workers with great sadness … The local authorities will fully investigate the reasons behind such a tragic accident."

In the absence of information, you won’t be surprised to hear that there was immediate speculation that the collapse could delay the delivery of the stadium in time for Fifa's December deadline. And that the media rehashed past stories about how Brazil has struggled to deliver stadiums, public transportation improvements and other World Cup-related projects.

When Odebrecht did release a statement, I don’t think it’s one that you or I would have written:

“Odebrecht Infraestrutura and Sport Club Corinthians Paulista regrettably inform that an accident occurred this afternoon on the construction site of Arena Corinthians that led to the death of two workers: Fábio Luiz Pereira, 42, a Munck operator/driver from the company BHM, and Ronaldo Oliveira dos Santos, 44, an assembler from the company Conecta. Shortly before 1 p.m., the crane lifting the last module of the stadium’s metallic roofing structure toppled, which led the module to fall onto a circulation area of the east building and partially damage the LED façade. The stadium structure was not compromised. This was the 38th time that this procedure had been carried out on the site and a module the same size had been installed just over a week ago in the stadium’s south sector. Teams from the fire department are currently on the location. At this moment, all efforts are being concentrated on offering complete assistance to the families of the victims.”

I'm sure you'd never heard of Odebrecht before today. I bet you have a negative view of them now. Their handling of this incident is a classic example of how poor communication delivers poor reputation. 

Damned if you do or don't .... and how a clear corporate story would help

I was at a seminar this morning about corporate storytelling. Evening Standard journalist, Anthony Hilton, suggested that PR teams often over-react to what should be seen as low-level criticism, especially online. 

His thesis was that even intelligent people can't remember yesterday's newspaper headline. Therefore reacting to every little negative is a waste of time because ultimately it will have no impact. Wait until it is clear that you have a major trending issue that will have lasting impact on your reputation before doing something about it.

I am sure he was being a little mischievous. And then I thought about Asda's little local difficulty yesterday. 

Asda has withdrawn a Halloween outfit it was selling online as a "mental patient fancy dress costume". This followed public criticism on Twitter and from charities working in the mental health field.

Asda did it well enough, offering "sincere apologies for the offence it has caused" (not some mealy-mouthed "sorry if anybody has been offended") and making a "very sizeable donation" to mental health charity Mind.

Storm in a teacup; quickly nipped in the bud; good issues management. Its PR team is right to believe that if it let all these 'minor' issues go unchallenged as Anthony Hilton suggests, then the public would begin to define for themselves what kind of company is Asda. And that might be far removed from Asda's sense of itself.

But Asda's approach to the costume issue also raised hackles with their audiences. Tweets asked why Asda was "pandering to the professionally offended"; individuals suffering mental health issues said they were not in the least offended by the costume; others suggested that "it wasn't the fancy dress costume that caused offence. It's the crass description... What was wrong with #Zombie?"

Asda has a very clear marketing story - Asda saves you money. But I'm less clear as to Asda's 'corporate story'.

If hypothetically I understood that Asda has a deep and abiding sense of social purpose over-riding its commercial interest, I could easily surmise and understand why it will always "pander to the professionally offended". I'm not going to bother negatively tweeting my upset at their response to the costume issue.

So maybe Asda could look to identify and articulate a clear, concise, consistent and compelling corporate story about itself. Then maybe Anthony Hilton would be right and Asda would not need to engage in so much time-consuming tactical PR.


Andrew Caesar-Gordon

South African Police Chief In Radio Ramble

Click here for a great example from South Africa of how not to do a radio interview.

The head of the South African Police Service (SAPS), national police commissioner General Riah Phiyega, has just completed her first year in office. A political appointment – Phiyega has never been a police officer – she has had to deal with a succession of crises.

These have included the Police shooting dead 34 protestors at the Marikana mine; the news that the detective leading the investigation into Oscar Pistorius himself faces seven charges of attempted murder; and revelations that around 1,500 police officers have been hiding criminal records. And this week, as the SABC put it, “yet another embarrassment in a long line of foul-ups”.

On Saturday 31st August, Commissioner Phiyega gave a media briefing. It was an opportunity to reset the SAPS narrative and announce a string of senior appointments to take forward the fight against crime. Instead, the headlines were dominated by the blunder surrounding the appointment of Mondli Zuma as the new police commissioner for Gauteng province (which encompasses Johannesburg). Hours after appointing him, she was forced to remove him when it was revealed that he was facing criminal charges of drunken driving.

In a statement, the SAPS stated that Zuma had failed to comply with a recently issued directive for police officers to declare if there were any pending criminal investigations against them. Phiyega said “I became aware of the court charges against Major General Zuma just after the media briefing today. I immediately met with him to establish the facts … I have therefore taken a firm decision to permanently withdraw his appointment … I am sad and disappointed in [him]”; he will face disciplinary action.

So what did Phiyega do wrong in her Radio 702 interview?

First of all, she had not considered the audience and secondly she failed to control the interview and exploit it for her own purposes. She was defensive in tone and on the back foot throughout. It could have been so different.

To close down this issue, she needed to side with her audience who wanted to hear an apology or admission that there had been a cock-up. It doesn’t have to appear weak to admit this if it is combined with communicating strong actions (e.g. “we have taken steps to ensure that it will not happen again and we have definitely pro-actively checked out his successor”).

With that out of the way, she could then have simply made it clear that Zuma was fired as soon as she became aware that he had omitted to tell the truth and then used it as a hook to communicate positive messages and begin to reset the SAPS narrative.

Instead, to the opening question “Are you embarrassed?”, after a long pause that made her appear uncertain or calculating, she said ‘no we are not embarrassed’ (tip: don’t repeat negative or pejorative words in an interviewer’s question - it’s a gift to the headline writers as it was in this case). She then rambled on about procedures in a manner that was neither convincing nor concise. Incredulous, the interviewer came back with the same question and when ignored (don’t ignore questions – it makes you look evasive; address them and move on to your positive messages) he then peppered the rest of the interview with negative questions.

Her arguing that Zuma is innocent until proven guilty of the criminal charges (which had previously been reported in the media and was just a Google search away) was not helpful. Her best defence was to stick to simple answers and use the same language as the audience – perhaps “Zuma lied and that’s why he was fired. I brought in this regulation because I want to ensure that the police officers fighting crime can be trusted by the people. He can’t be and he has gone. Now let me tell you how his replacement will be taking the fight against crime to the criminals ...” 

Andrew Caesar-Gordon

Example From Sky News As To Why You Should Train Your Receptionists & Security Guards To Handle The Media

Watching the extraordinarily cack-handed response of Ask.FM to the suicide of Hannah Smith following her being cyber-bullied on their website, have a look at this video clip from Sky News doorstepping an employee of Ask.FM here.

When covering your organisation's issue or crisis, journalists will try to speak with senior executives. If your organisation has pulled down the shutters on its communication - rarely a winning strategy - the media may well try to get a quote from any employee no matter how junior.

Receptionists, security guards and junior staff can unwittingly fuel your crisis by offering up information they should not. They may find it difficult to resist a persistent journalist who will tag them as a 'representative of the organisation' fully aware of how unfair and unreasonable this may be (as in the above video clip where the employee being harassed is Latvian and forced to respond in English).

A receptionist or security guard valued in the workplace for their friendly and helpful manner day-to-day can be just as chatty with a journalist, unwittingly providing background detail and flavour for the story. Equally, the member of staff who stonewalls and comes across as uncooperative or defensive can irritate journalists and make the organisation look unsympathetic.

So crisis media training or at least 'media awareness' for such staff should form part of your planning and preparation for crisis and issues management. Our most progressive clients get this and ask us to do so.

And key advice to such staff? Follow two rules:

• Act professionally – be calm, polite and helpful, offering to bring the journalist's questions to the attention of the Communications department 
• Avoid speculation – make clear that you are not qualified to respond on the company's behalf - a little humour can help here (e.g. "you will understand that such things are way above my paygrade but I will let the Communications department know you are here" or "as the saying goes, I just work here, but I will let the Communications department know you are here") - and stick to the media brief you have hopefully been given by the PR team.

Andrew Caesar-Gordon

A Canadian Blame Game

You would have thought that with over 50 people dead following a runaway train destroying the heart of Lac-Megantic in Canada, the rail company would be focused solely on the human impact of the tragedy. 

Not so if you are Edward Burkhardt, chairman of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway.

Generally, his media interviews have been terrible:

See here

And here

And he has sparked an extraordinarily dangerous “blame game” between himself, an employee engineer and the emergency services. Burkhardt first suggested that the fire brigade had caused the disaster by causing the brakes to fail when they had been called earlier in the day to extinguish a fire on board the train. He then singled out an employee as culpable, questioning whether he had properly set enough hand brakes, suspending him without pay and declaring that ‘in my personal opinion’ the employee would not work for the company again.

We saw the same with the Costa Concordia accident when the cruise company rushed to blame the ship’s captain.  This is always a risky crisis management strategy.

It creates the impression of a business willing to jump to conclusions before all the facts are known, rather than keeping a cool head. It implies a separation between company and employee which could be perceived as artificial and infers that the business’s top priority is protecting its own commercial interests and will use any means to do this, rather than focusing all attention on the human impact at this early stage. This compounds the public anger that Burkhardt did not visit the scene of the disaster for two days because he said he had to “communicate with insurers and various officials” in Chicago.

It’s worth revisiting an example of how to handle a rail tragedy: Richard Branson’s handling of the derailment of a Virgin Pendolino Train atGrayrigg, Cumbria. 

His approach is different from Burkhardt’s in nearly every respect. Firstly Branson cut short his holiday to immediately attend the site. In crisis, you must be seen to exercise ‘grip’. Burkhardt’s remaining in Chicago for two days created another unnecessary media issue in the heat of the crisis. Quebec Premier, Pauline Marois, described his attitude as “unacceptable” and “deplorable”, telling a news conference: “the leader of this company should have been there from the beginning."

Another important lesson is that it is risky giving a press conference with the wreckage of your company in the background (try to find more neutral locations!) Branson was able to do so because he had already been assured that a points failure was to blame. Burkhardt however gave his press conference from the chaos of the scene, with emergency services vehicles and cordons in plain sight and in the middle of a residential street, which only drew attention to the fact that his crisis had affected the whole community. 

Be human – it is what audiences and journalists want. Branson is clearly emotionally affected by the tragedy and his hesitant speaking style (which is not unusual for him even in non-crisis situations) reinforces this. The audience can see that he cares about ‘people’ here and he later dismisses the blame/ sue question, turning it to talking about people and safety. 

And what if investigations conclude that the engineer was not to blame?  In this situation, Burkhardt’s early assertion would be hugely damaging to reputation.

Andrew Caesar-Gordon

Charity Dissembling

He should really have known better. I've just heard a gob-smacking interview that former BBC Editor, Jack Lundie, now Director of Communications at Save the Children gave to the BBC's More Or Less statistics programme a couple of weeks ago on behalf of the 'Enough Food For Everyone IF' campaign.

The programme had dissected the IF campaign's strapline that a child dies of hunger every 15 seconds and found it wanting. The interviewer put to Lundie that this implied incorrectly that the children are dying from starvation.

His PR jargon about "top-line messaging" was compounded by an admission that they effectively dissembling to seek emotional support from the public. He ends up agreeing that the message has become too simplified and people are not correctly informed. Inter alia, that in order to get 'cut-through', you need to manipulate people because they're busy.


This is exactly the kind of response that does charity campaigning no good in the short term as audiences realise they are being manipulated by statistical sleights of hand. In the longer term, it tars all charities with the kind of spin they associate with politicians. 

Listen here to the interview (scroll forwards to 6 minutes 13 seconds) .


Andrew Caesar-Gordon

A tale of two leisure industry accidents

This weekend saw two little leisure industry problems. Who handled their communications best? The  little, local, leisure company or the one that is part of the Merlin Entertainments behemoth?

On Saturday 15th June, "Yellow Duckmarine" saw one of their WW2-era amphibious tourist vehicles sink in the Albert Dock - the second such incident this year - with around 30 passengers on board. No-one was injured but lots of media coverage. The press does like a good sinking.

On Sunday 16th June, 39 people (25 of whom were children) were stranded 20 feet in the air on a Chessington World of Adventures theme park ride for three hours after a technical fault caused an automatic fail-safe system to bring the ride to a controlled stop. No-one was injured but lots of media coverage and Sky News was there with a 'Ride Terror' headline.

The owners of the Yellow Duckmarine, Pearlwide Ltd, posted a statement on the home page of the attraction's website. If they scrolled down, anyone thinking of booking a (land-only!) ride would have read the following:

"Following the incident involving Quacker 1, we are working closely with our regulatory body, The Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) and Merseyside Police. The craft involved in the incident holds a valid passenger carrying certificate.The craft has now been recovered and following consultation with MCA it has been taken to a place of safe and secure storage in-order-that a full investigation can take place. That will continue tomorrow morning. Our team followed their emergency response procedure, ensuring the safe disembarkation of passengers on board. We were aided in this regard by a number of canal boat owners berthed in Salthouse Dock to whom we would like to express our thanks. We would also like to express our thanks to the emergency services and the Albert Dock Security team onsite for their immediate and exemplary response. We will continue to provide full cooperation with MCA and Merseyside Police. We are pleased that all of the passengers who were taken to hospital as a precaution, have now been released."

Chessington issued a statement confirming that there were no injuries and apologised to those affected:

"At 4.06pm the Rameses Revenge at Chessington World of Adventures Resort in Surrey experienced a technical problem. This resulted in the automatic fail-safe system bringing the ride to a controlled stop. Experienced resort staff were on site immediately to assist with guest care. No guests were injured in the incident. A small number of people were on the ride at the time and the resort's engineers worked with the emergency services implementing well-rehearsed procedures to ensure their comfort and safe removal from the ride. We are very sorry for any discomfort our guests experienced during the delay."

Compare and contrast. Yellow Duckmarine's statement was defensive (we have a certificate!) and the recovery of the craft was deemed a more important fact to note than the welfare of the passengers who get no apology but are I am sure delighted that the company is so pleased they have been released from hospital. Do they have PR support? A crisis plan? You would hope so given the nature of the service but I doubt it on this performance.

Fair play to the Yellow Duckmarine - they have been swift and transparent. But their tone and focus has been wrong and given this is the second sinking they have suffered, they can anticipate some business consequences arising from the 'multi-agency' investigations that have been launched and reputation loss among customers who clearly aren't highly valued.

Merlin's statement on the other hand is all soothing and professional (an 'automatic fail-safe' that did its job, 'well rehearsed procedures', 'safe removal' of guests from the ride) although there was some spin in there that would make Malcolm Tucker blush (apologising for guest discomfort during "the delay" - that is the three hours they spent stranded aloft!).

And that seems to have been the limit of their PR around the issue. For Chessington/ Merlin, it's a calm "business as usual", 'taking it in our stride' approach from this trusted brand. This trust gives them the benefit of the doubt and - given that there were no injuries - permission to choose not to highlight the issue or actions taken on either of their websites or twitter feed. Chessington may not have tweeted about the incident but it should surely have responded to a customer who had a child trapped on the ride - see below. Note that a journalist from BBC Surrey found her though and sought to contact her for a quote:

Andrew Caesar-Gordon