Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Dealing With a Swarm of Bees
Born to Sting
The second-term curse seems to be biting Barack Obama especially hard. With three simultaneous “scandals”, the opposition smells blood and, yes, they’re already talking about impeachment.
So, what can the President do? How can he limit the damage? If I were his communications director, what advice would I give?
First, imagine what you would do if you were attacked by a swarm of angry bees. Would you go on the offensive? Would you attack them? That’s probably a very, very bad idea. The best you can hope for is to contain them, put on some protective clothing, and limit the number of times that you get stung. (This is a great analogy and I adapted it from Marilyn Buckner’s work).
Here are some tips:
Appoint one (and only one) spokesperson – the more spokespeople you have, the more likely it is that the public will perceive contradictions.
Tell the truth even if it makes you look bad — Better to look bad but honest rather than bad and dishonest.
Don’t blame the opposition – even if they’re being hypocritical. You’re not in a position to point fingers. For instance, President Obama might say, with a roll of the eyes, “Wait. The Tea Party claims tax-exempt status because they’re non-political? Are you kidding me?” That might be emotionally satisfying (heck, it may even be accurate) but it only inflames the bees. The goal is to do the opposite.
Don’t blame the media – it only inflames the bees.
If there’s more to the story, say so – the press is great at digging up dirt in a slow, drip, drip, drip fashion. Rather than being tortured over time, get it over with. Tell the whole story and get out in front of the process.
Explain how you’ll fix the situation – remember that you can only win an argument in the future tense. So, develop a plan, reality test it, and present it. It’s important to do this quickly but it’s even more important to reality test it. If it’s a half-baked plan, the bees just get angrier.
Don’t drag your feet – it’s important that the public perceives that you’re doing something. Have a sense of urgency. Appear active.
Don’t hide – you may not feel like coming out for a daily dose of abuse but you need to. You’re going to get abused no matter what. Better to be abused while looking stalwart rather than to be abused while looking cowardly.
Heads must roll (most likely) – it’s sad but true that good people are going to get hurt in the process. But, hey, that’s politics. The bees will demand a sacrifice. Delaying the inevitable only makes it worse.
It’s not an easy process. Your emotions will likely tell you to act in ways that will only damage your position. Michael Levine, a Hollywood PR wizard who has supported some spectacularly stupid stars, probably says it best: “Go fast. Go humble.”
The Ice Cream Theory of Communication
Start at the small end.
If you have a fairly simple product — like soda pop — you can often communicate directly with your market. You figure out who’s likely to buy and craft messages that will appeal to them. Nothing stands between you and your audience. It’s like talking with someone standing nearby on a calm, clear day.
When you have a complicated product or service, on the other hand, you’ll need to deal with an embedded commentariat of current customers, gurus, analysts, pundits, kibbitzers, journalists, and competitors. Each layer of the commentariat can distort your message. It feels like yelling at a person 100 meters away on a windy, foggy, rainy day.
Let’s say you’re introducing a next generation product. You’ll go through an early customer acceptance test to sort out last-minute issues. Once you have everything sorted, you can just put out a press release, right? Wrong.
The issue is that your product is complicated — nobody understands it fully. If your product is very innovative, you have a doubly difficult problem. First, nobody understands it. What does it do? Second, nobody understands its category. What’s it supposed to do? Potential buyers will ask you lots of questions but will then turn to the commentariat to seek verification and validation. So, before you talk to the market, you need to ensure that the commentariat thoroughly understands what you’re doing.
Think of an ice cream cone — it’s wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The trick with ice cream cone communication is to analyze from the top down but communicate from the bottom up. The top of the cone — the widest part — represents your market. It’s big and broad and tempting. Communicating with the market is your ultimate goal. To get there, you’ll need to work your way through the commentariat.
To organize your communications, work from the top down, with a simple question, “Whom do they trust?” So, who would potential customers trust? It’s a good bet that they would trust the trade press. So take your story to the trade press before you take it to potential customers. Who do the trade press trust? Well, they’ll probably ask to speak to some gurus or analysts who have studied the issue in more detail. So brief the analysts before you take the story to the trade press. Who do the analysts trust? Customers. Analysts want to hear directly from customers, preferably without you in the room. So, prepare your early customers to talk to analysts and then make sure they meet.
And customers — whom do they trust? They’ll talk to many of your employees. Let’s say you’ve told a customer, Angela, that your new product is the best thing since sliced bread. Then Angela talks to John, her favorite consultant on your support line. Angela asks about the hot new product. John says, “I’ve never heard of it”. Unwittingly, John has just undercut the entire communication chain. Angela loses confidence in the product and may even jump to the conclusion that you’re lying.
So always start your communications with your own employees. They’re the narrow, bottom section of the ice cream cone. Make sure they understand the key messages associated with the product. Then work your way upward and outward in the cone, to the interlinked audiences of the commentariat. It will take some time to get to the top of the cone — your target market – but it’s well worth the effort.
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