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

What A Journalist Thinks When You Haven't Prepared For The Tough Questions

With interest in and scrutiny of business at an all time high, today’s CEOs must also assume the role of CCO – chief communication officers.  With the value of trust at a premium, corporate reputation management should now be high on the agenda for all business leaders.

This means that the most successful CEOs will be accomplished communicators – not masters of spin, but authentic, passionate leaders with the ability to communicate their messages effectively.  These skills are required in the good times to drive growth and, even more crucially, when engaged in crisis management.

Effective communication cannot be achieved by deciding what you want to say and ignoring the legitimate questions and concerns of your stakeholders.  That’s why I was so interested to read the following Twitter exchange from Simon Neville, one of the Guardian’s business reporters, following an interview with Marks and Spencer CEO Marc Bolland (read from the bottom up):

When preparing for an interview, my advice is to face your fears and contemplate the five toughest, most unpleasant questions possible and work out your best answers to each of them.  Doing so means you will approach the interview with confidence knowing that in a worst case scenario, you have the ability to handle whatever the journalist may throw at you.

If you’ve done your media training you will also understand that you can’t control a reporter’s questions, only your response to them.  Don’t allow yourself to be riled: an emotional spokesman can lose control of an interview.

Finally, remember to begin your  interview planning by considering the perspective of the people reading the newspaper article: it’s not enough to consider what you want to say – you must double-check that your proposed messages resonate with the ultimate audience. It’s only by adopting this approach that CEOs will win the trust of their stakeholders and fulfill their potential as CCOs.

Jonathan Hemus

The Fallacy that only 7% of communication is about the words ....

Many people have been led to believe that only 7% of the impact of communication is about the words/ content and that 93% is about tone of voice and facial expression. essentially that performance trumps content.

This is nonsense and a fundamental misunderstanding of Albert Mehrabian's research in the 1960s. Much to Mehrabian's annoyance.If I want to explain to you how to find the pen I have hidden in a drawer upstairs, having a tone of voice or facial expression isn't going to help you. It's the words!

Listen here to one of our trainers, Scott Chisholm, explain how to utilise Mahrabian's findings properly in your media and personal communication:

Welcome To South African PROs

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Building on our work with clients ranging from Anglo American to Absa Bank to Eskom, we have expanded our team of Johannesburg and Cape Town based journalists to work with a wider range of South African and international businesses.

Successful organisations don't take risks with their reputation. So whether you want media and crisis training to better manage corporate reputation within South Africa, or you are a business growing beyond South Africa, our team of local and international journalists are on hand with the same methodology that has led us to work with 40 of the UK's FSE100 companies and global brands such as Disney, Sony and Hilton Hotels.

Our local website can be found at www.electricairwaves.co.za and we can be contacted on +27 (0) 11 021 2534

Poetic Licence

Interesting piece on the BBC website about Tesco's recent national advertising campaign post the breaking of the horsemeat crisis.

A promise to get to the bottom of the horsemeat issue has escalated into a promise to change Tesco's entire way of doing business, particularly about the way in which it treats farmers and other suppliers. This promise has been delivered in full page newspaper adverts that are written in such a way as to suggest they are in verse. Cue media coverage as to whether and how they are using poetry to make their case.

One commentator - and no friend of Tesco - says that by turning to blank verse, and block-booking adverts in the national media, Tesco are attempting to "change the conversation" about their company. True!

"The story then becomes about how they are responding rather than the issue itself. And that really is clever PR."

I think he's right.

Andrew Caesar-Gordon