Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft–Accused of assisting brutal repression

Last night I watched the PBS Frontline documentary “The Tank Man.” It highlighted the story of the Communist government’s brutal ending of the pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989, focusing on the gripping image of the lone young man holding up an entire column of tanks. A sub-story within this documentary was the role that Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft are playing in helping the Chinese government work to limit the access to information of its people–including about the events in Tiananmen Square. More than that, Cisco and Yahoo in particular were accused of actually assisting the Chinese government in tracking down those who violate China’s rules about dissent and free flow of information.

The footage included testimony from the four companies at Congressional hearings. Cisco stands accused of selling equipment and systems used by the police force to track and prosecute enemies of the state. Yahoo turned over information to the government about the activities of one of its customers that resulted in his arrest and 10 year prison sentence.

When you look at it as presented by the Frontline producers and even more so in my brief explanation, it is chilling and creates an immediate visceral reaction of horror and anger against these companies. And I will tell you that when I saw Cisco’s written statement (they refused to participate in the documentary) I was reminded of I.G Farben. I am working on a book about an American fighter pilot sent to Buchenwald and the I. G. Farben plant was right next to this horrid concentration camp making full use of the slave labor-to-death of the inmates. So many prominent German companies played key roles in supporting a brutal regime including participating in its brutality. Cisco’s explanation and Yahoo’s as well focused on the need to follow the laws of each of the countries they operate in.

They are right of course. But here is one great challenge of globalization. To not participate in the massive opportunity that is China is to relinquish a position of leadership in global business. To participate, means that you have to violate the principles, laws and core values of the customers and regulators who mean the most to you. To say these companies are between a rock and a hard place is understating it.

This, I would consider a smoldering crisis. It could erupt at any time into a full blown flame. As it is, it exists in the blog world and once in a while it emerges into the mainstream media such as PBS. It would not take much for it to burst to a critical reputation crisis for these firms–and based on what was presented Cisco is most at risk. An entrepreneurial activist, the focused engagement of the Freedom Frontier folks, a politician looking for a good cause to run on, a high placed reporter seeing this as a Pulitzer prize opportunity–all very possible and I would guess worrisome to the communication leaders of these organizations.

This challenge also highlights the issues of managing a smoldering crisis. Direct, open conversation and engagement with those (such as me) who are deeply concerned about this and the role they are playing is vitally important. But how do you do that without fanning the flames and inadvertently help the issue burst from the smoke into a full blown crisis?

It will be interesting to watch.

Dealing with video–the biggest challenge ahead for crisis communicators

Someone asked the question if videos and their widespread publishing had been as pervasive when George Bush was at Yale as it is now, would he be president? The presumptive answer is no. That he would have been caught in the act and his embarrassment broadcast to the world to such a degree that he would be unelectable.

Well, George escaped those days while he was in college, but we are not escaping the impact of video today. This article from the the IndyStar highlights the dilemma that a great many companies and organizations will face soon if they haven’t already confronted it: unauthorized communication from or about the company over which they have no control and which can quickly and easily be put in the hands of thousands if not millions.

The ubiquity of video creation and instant publication via YouTube or other video sites represents a huge challenge for communicators. Here are my quick suggestions in determining the policies and strategies needed to deal with it.

1) Understand the situation. CEOs and organization leaders absolutely need to know what is going on here. Like the instant news world itself, the growing role of blogs in forming reputations and opinions, leaders cannot lead if they do not know the landscape. This is the fundamental principle of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It is all about intelligence–situational awareness and the smarts to know how to act on it. CEOs today (most in their 50s and 60s) cannot be expected to be conversant in the world of YouTube, Facebook, etc., and that means it in incumbent on todays’ communication managers within an organization to take the lead in providing that intelligence. Tell you the truth, I am a little sick of hearing PR people talking about “getting a seat at the table.” What they need to do is start leading their organization in understanding and adapting to the new world of public information and they will find themselves at the table without even trying.

2) Fight fire with fire. Reputation battles are going to be fought with video and in YouTube (and other sites) land. Know it, believe it. Be prepared to operate there. If you don’t know how to create instant videos and publish them to your sites in minutes or to the video sites, you better learn it and learn it fast. There are a rapidly increasing number of video capture and publishing tools available. One we think is very promising and that our company is working with is called Viditalk (www.Viditalk.com). Check them out.

3) Increase your situational awareness. Media monitoring is much more challenging than it used to be. The reason is the internet of course. Now almost everything that happens either starts here, is focused here or ends here. That is not to say that the mainstream media are not involved, but more and more the stories they cover start on the internet and then they pick them up which then further feeds the internet activity. So your media monitoring now needs to include or even focus on monitoring the internet content. There are a number of companies that are doing a good job of providing this kind of monitoring and some even provide it in one simple package. I just don’t see how any company or organization can operate in this environment without a pretty robust internet monitoring system.

4) Recognize that it is an antagonist world. I will be commenting more on this soon but I received complementary copies of two recent books relating to crisis management (a benefit of blogging!) and while I haven’t read them yet I will and comment on them in this blog. The point is both of them are focused on the antagonist environment we operate in. Why antagonistic? Because of the motives involved. The mainstream media’s overarching motive is to attract and hold an audience–and they do that by entertaining. That is frequently bad news for the people and organizations they cover–just tools in the process of doing their job. Bloggers similarly operate by generating traffic to their sites–controversy, vitriol, exxageration, misinformation, accusations–all play into the game. Activists exist for the purpose of attacking others. Politicians are continually on the lookout for a popular cause of harm being done–real or not–so they can be the white knight riding to the rescue of the victims and victimized public. And perhaps most fearful of all, plaintiff’s attorneys are entrepreneurs whose opportunity to cash in is dependent on finding or making demons out of ordinary companies, organizations and people. I know that is overstating it–but it is a rough, nasty world out there and those engaged in reputation management and crisis management had better understand it.

Tony Blair–the Solomon of our Time?

I’ve long been an admirer of Tony Blair and am very sorry to see him leave the political scene, particularly with the unfortunate cloud that seems to hang over him. His wisdom in these confounding days seems unmatched and is at its best in his retrospective essay in the June 2 issue of The Economist.

While taking on subjects far more profound and significant than crisis management, there are some important connections as well. Since public communication is a leading concern of many government agencies and since we frequently work with communicators in public agencies, his words about the changing role of the state is particularly interesting and appropriate:

“the state today needs to be enabling and based on a partnership with the citizen…public services need to go through the same revolution–professionally, culturally and in organisation–that the private sector has been through…the user has to be given real power and preference.”

That last statement in particular should be a mantra adopted by communicators and none more so than communicators in public organizations. It is the public that determines your future. The trust you enjoy, and respect, is your only real guarantee of the ability to continue your mission. More and more whether or not that trust is maintained or enhanced is on your willingness and eagerness to provide the unvarnished information they want, at their time, on their terms. Holding back, controlling, spinning, managing, doling, hiding–are all certain ways of disrupting and potentially destroying that trust.

Tony is right. The challenges ahead are daunting. Oh, for leaders who have such clear vision and the courage and strength to carry them forward into policy and action. We will miss ye.

The satisfying validation of pioneering a whole new concept–Virtual Joint Information Centers

I hope my patient readers will allow me a little self-congratulations here. Once in a while, if you are lucky, you get a brief and fleeting sense that maybe what you are doing is making a difference and changing the world even just a little. Eight years ago, almost to the day, I became involved in a major oil industry disaster. It involved a fuel pipeline explosion that took three lives and since I was contracted to one of the oil companies involved, I became very involved in the communication response including serving as spokesperson for the company. I learned a lot and it was my first experience with an ICS (Incident Management System) response including the use of Joint Information Center or JIC.

The communications were a disaster–despite our best efforts. And it was largely about the lack of technology needed to meet the high demands for information from the media, neighbors, government officials, agency leaders, etc. Attorneys were involved–enough said. Out of that experience came my book (Now Is Too Late2) and a communication management technology now widely recognized as the leading urgent and critical communication management system. Out of it also came a concept which the technology expressed and made possible–the idea of virtual JICs.

The idea is simple: Joint Information Centers as conceived and currently implemented flat out don’t work. Too slow. They depend on communicators from a variety of different organizations getting physically together in one room, getting all the needed technology hooked up, getting all the lists and tools they need to work with together, getting them organized, coordinated and properly directed. All that is very possible and happens all the time. It’s just that it takes days, not hours or minutes. And minutes and hours is what you have to work with in these days of instant news, blogs, fulltime all the time news channels and the like. For long term events, it still is possible and necessary to pull a big JIC together–but that is after the virtual JIC has been at work.

The virtual JIC depends on technology. A complete and comprehensive technology platform that allows a dispersed team to function as if they were all in the same room. And it also depends on universally accessible technology–because a JIC by definition includes communicators from a variety of organizations that normally don’t work together and frequently don’t even get along. So using one organization’s tool without providing full and complete access to all the players simply doesn’t work.

That was our concept. It works–it has been proven in major oil industry events, major government events (such as the G8 Summit), major weather events and natural disasters including Hurricane Katrina. It is at work all over the world right now.

We’ve been trying to gain attention and understanding of the concept of virtual JICs for over five years. And now, here is the point of all this, we have some validation. Out of the Ohio State Public Health Department, a researcher by the name of Bret Atkins has analyzed the concept of Virtual Joint Information Centers and in a very academic mode, has evaluated the idea and its potential. Here is the strongest external, sober-minded, non-commercial and completely unbiased analysis of this idea since the days it first hatched.

The White Paper: “The Virtual Joint Information Center: A Technological Tool for Public Health Emergency Communication.”

I hope that Mr. Atkin’s call for continued evaluation of this concept will bear fruit and that his study will result in national level recognition of the importance of this for public safety as well as for protecting and enhancing reputations.

Google, Microsoft and the changes to come

I had the chance yesterday to talk to a fairly high level sales executive with Google. Someone who had earlier worked for the company that Microsoft just purchased for $6 billion–needless to say he was happy with the price paid. But as someone who sells Google’s ad services to some big accounts in this area, he is in the thick of the war brewing between the two giants for all our ad dollars. And it will be a war–with interesting twists and turns that we can’t even imagine now.

I asked him about Google’s strategy of the street level addition to Google Earth and he talked about the potential for stores to take people from the street level into tours of their stores, directing them via Google to find just what they are looking for. Google doesn’t seem terribly worried about monetizing the street level views as they don’t seem concerned about monetizing
Google Earth, but it all adds up to making advertising more direct, more powerful, more effective. The pay per click model is here to stay–more than that, it is  rapidly coming to what all those who buy advertising long for and that is advertising as a fixed cost of the sale. I’ll pay for the ad if I sell the product but not if I don’t.

This has huge implications for all of us in communication and not just those buying advertising. How we connect with each other, how we provide messages, how we shape opinion, how we deliver facts are all related to how the commercial enterprise does its job. I can’t predict exactly how this clash of the monoliths will impact crisis communication or reputation management, but I’m pretty darn certain that it will have a huge impact. Repeat after me: Change is good, change is my friend.

The media fueled frenzy re wi-fi “dangers”

I thought there were wierd stories in some of the supermarket counter “newspapers,” but this one out of England about people getting scared to death by a report about the dangers of wi-fi radiation looks as far fetched as they come. Fear, sex and controversy sell newspapers and get viewers tuned in to your broadcast program so this story and the ones to follow will likely sell papers.

A few comments: If Sir William Stewart doesn’t lose his job over this, the UK government has no brains. He “warned” everyone about the dangers of mobile phones–a danger that has been completely discredited by study after study but he still has his job. And now uses it to warn of the danger of wi-fi. Loser.

People are funny. Once they get an idea in their head that something is dangerous they manage to link it to all kinds of symptoms. One lady thought she was suffering from menopause, but it turns out it is wi-fi. Oh my gosh, this is too good. Hey lady, your broom handle contains known carcinogens! Run! Hide.

This would be hilarious if it did not demonstrate the problem with the media. They feed on this stuff without much sense of responsibility for what they are doing. They prey on the weak minded, the fearful, the ignorant. What will happen? Lots of kids and families will lose their Internet access over this. Big deal? Yes, because this is just one more example of the state of fear that is being continually created around all kinds of issues. It is one thing for it to happen due to honest mistakes or even because of ambitious if misguided scientists. But when it is done for the purpose of selling papers, selling more ads and making more money it is disgusting and dangerous.

Here come the videos

One phenomenon I’ve been watching with interest is the growth of video as means of mass/individual communication. I’ve commented frequently on how effectively the Coast Guard uses video as part of their public affairs operation and other companies, such as Starbucks and JetBlue have used video effectively as key part of a crisis management response.

My thoughts on this this morning were further spurred by watching yet another political video. I won’t provide a link to it because that would make this blog more political than I want. It showed a mock ad on a Fox news program promoting a drug that will help you get over your symptoms of ambivalence over one prominent candidate.

The point is not the particular ad–it is video and its increasingly pervasive, creative, powerful and ubiquitous use in today’s communication. Video production has become democratized. New easy to use video capture, editing and publishing tools are emerging rapidly. (To prove this point, I just made a quick video on my Mac laptop, uploaded it and here is the link to the Quicktime version.)Video conferencing via web is being built into all laptops and is part of the increasingly popular meeting applications. YouTube and other video publishing sites are spurring on the use of video with surprising rapidity.

This political season is being driven to a remarkable degree by online videos. Some candidates like John Edwards are leading the way in terms of use of YouTube as well as videos on their websites. And since politics is mostly driven by those who detest particular candidates, the opponents of specific candidates are filling the Internet with all kinds of videos–like the one referenced above–demonstrating their animosity as well as creativity.

Politics once again provides leadership in adapting to and innovating new means of communication. Those in business or organizational communication ought to be paying close attention to what is happening in these campaigns. Because what candidates face today particularly related to those who hate them or oppose them, is what you will face tomorrow from your activists and opponents. Business competition may look like this. Activist action will undoubtedly look like this as it increasingly does today. And just plain old every day communication between boss and employees, between CEO and the leadership team, between a company and its customers and an organization and its stakeholders will look like this.

If you aren’t ready for video, look out. It is ready for you.