reputation management

June 5, 2015

The Crisis Show Library on Audio Now Rolling Out

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Today we’re proud to begin the rollout of The Crisis Show Library on audio. It will consist of nearly all 100 episodes of The Crisis Show that began production in June 2012 and running through Spring 2015.

We are rolling out 20 of our favorite shows this weekend on a wide variety of topics: natural disasters/emergency management, social media crises, health crises, CEO leadership and workplace violence to name a few.

For the past three years, we’ve put much effort into making the show about crisis management education from many angles. And we’ve attracted some of the best minds in the business around the globe as guests — all who have given much of their time to deliver information viewers/listeners can use immediately. I thank them!

The show has mostly been broadcast live (with some pre-recorded the same day) to deliver up-to-date analysis of high profile crises: Newtown, CT school shooting, Superstorm Sandy, Australia brushfires, a Brazil nightclub tragedy, a horsemeat scandal that swept Europe, virus outbreaks on cruise ships, deadly tornadoes and earthquakes, the Boston Marathon bombing and major transportation disasters around the world.

We’ve covered CEOS, world leaders, college presidents and celebrities involved in recalls, scandals, crimes, natural/manmade disasters and reputation crises.

This Crisis Show was born on Google Hangouts on Air/YouTube and you can still watch the videos there. But having high resolution audio files that can be easily played in your car, tablets/iPads and mobile phones makes it more accessible than ever. (Note: My guitar hero Jimmy Page was NOT available to produce the audios but they still sound pretty darn good:))

Most episodes will cost $2.99 with a few at $3.99 because of their extra time/file size and additional guests. These include our special “Back to School” episodes and some “anniversary” editions that include mini All-Star teams of crisis management packed into extended shows.

If you ultimately purchased the entire library at say $299, that’s still cheaper than what you would pay today for a one or two hour webinar or seminar. So, in my humble opinion, every episode we make available is a fabulous value and costs less than most fancy coffees. Caffeine aside, this information WILL help you sleep at night because you will quickly gain confidence in your ability — and your staff’s ability — to manage a serious crisis that can ruin your organizations reputation.

We’re using a platform called Gumroad and hope you find it easy to use for purchasing and downloading your files from The Crisis Show Library. But if you have any issues with it, just email me: rich@richkleincrisis.com or TheCrisisShow@gmail.com. You can also DM me on Twitter via @RichKleinCrisis and @TheCrisisShow.

Thanks to everyone around the world who has watched and supported the show the past three years.

And thanks in advance to those ready to buy our audio episodes.

You will certainly learn much about what to do and say before, during and after a crisis to protect hard-earned reputation in front of your critical audiences.

PS…We don’t want to break the Internet by rolling out all episodes at once so please be patient as we spread these out over the coming week.

 

February 24, 2014

Quick Overview of The Crisis Management Advisor on Google Helpouts

This video will briefly explain how The Crisis Management Advisor works.

Here’s the link to The Crisis Management Advisor profile on Google Helpouts.

January 31, 2014

Risk & Insurance Magazine Article on Target Data Breach

I’m quoted extensively in this in-depth article from Risk & Insurance magazine about how Target responded to its recent data breach. A good read for the retail industry and beyond.

January 30, 2014

Introducing The Crisis Management Advisor on Google Helpouts

I’m thrilled to be selected by Google this month as the first Crisis Management advisor on the new platform known as Helpouts. Helpouts allows me to counsel clients around the world with high resolution video that also allows us to share screens and collaborate. It’s been made so easy to make an online appointment and to pay for your time with me, either by the minute or by the session.

I look forward to meeting and advising individuals, companies and organizations facing crisis situations in 2014 and beyond using this great tool.

On the Helpout, I’ll quickly gauge the seriousness of your crisis, make recommendations and then get to work on the process of protecting your reputation.

That can take the form of creating sharp content that influences public opinion, helping to identify the right spokespeople, conducting media training for mock interviews and news conferences, teaching you how to deal with the media and how to use social media at all stages of a crisis (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and more).

Remember – a few hundred dollars spent on a Helpout could save millions of dollars of lost revenue due to a crisis situation that catches you and your organization off guard and that could destroy goodwill and hard-earned reputation.

April 5, 2013

Rutgers, Barchi & What Organizations Can Learn About The Crisis Domino Effect

“Division I athletics are probably the best marketing tool we have in terms of getting the Rutgers’ name out there,” he said. “If they don’t know the name and they haven’t seen the brand, they’re not going to even look at you.” — Robert L. Barchi, Rutgers president, September 4, 2012 in Star-Ledger interview.

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Rutgers President Robert L. Barchi

A story in The New York Times today about Rutgers is a great example of how a crisis in one part of your organization can result in the media covering (or uncovering) bigger problems inside your administration. And that unplanned media attention can severely harm the entire reputation of an institution. I’ve always advised my clients to beware the smoldering fire, that slow-brewing crisis that suddenly envelops your administration (or your business) and brings greater harm to your institutional reputation.

I’ll now call this the Crisis Domino Effect or CDE.  The CDE is akin to that stuffy nose that leads to a cold that leads to a flu that won’t go away for weeks or months. And just like you try to throw everything at the cold (vitamins, OJ, medicines), you may try multiple tactics to rid your campus or business of the unwelcome media barrage – plus the social media inferno that either follows traditional media or motivates reporters to write stories.

You may “decline comment” or even curse at a reporter or editor for writing that story. You may try to put out a wishy washy statement that gets you in even MORE hot water with your critical audiences. Or, you may sincerely try to get the messaging just right, but you fail to convey or attach any human emotion to the spiraling crisis.

Let’s face it. If I’m a parent who a month ago was thinking about sending my child to Rutgers, it’s likely I’m going to revisit that decision in light of the gross mishandling of the belated firing of Mike Rice, the former men’s basketball coach. (As one of my guests on The Crisis Show pointed out this week, if that was his kid getting abused by a coach, he’d be driving to the school to confront that coach personally.)

It’s safe to assume that same parent considering sending their child to Rutgers has heard about the coaching fiasco. Combine that with today’s article –which focuses on numerous other criticisms of President Robert L. Barchi — and good chance I’m crossing Rutgers off the list. That’s why Barchi and Rutgers now have a full blown crisis and are scrambling to stop the bleeding. And as long as Tim Pernetti, the embattled athletic director remains, the loss of reputation won’t stop soon.

The Rutgers lesson is one I’ve seen so many times. A company, campus or other organization thinks it has an isolated HR problem, when in fact it’s much bigger than that. And, as Rutgers is experiencing, by “investigating” instead of “terminating” Rice last year, it now has a much more costly crisis in terms of litigation as well as lost revenue from those parents of prospective students who have now crossed Rutgers off their lists.

It’s also important to note that while this (thankfully) is not as serious as the Sandusky-Paterno-Penn State scandal, the story is similar in that horrible behavior emanating from the athletics department was ignored by college officials for years. Penn State has paid $208,000 per month to a big public relations firm since April 2012 for an engagement that was scheduled to end this month.

When you add up the costs of litigation, lost revenue and the cost to rebuild reputation, it’s clear that eliminating HR problems with decisive, early actions save reputations later –and monies can be spent more intelligently where all students benefit most. What do you think? Please comment below.

December 14, 2012

Law Firm Partners: 10 Actions To Polish Your Reputation in 2013

December is a great time for law firm partners to plan for significantly raising visibility and improving reputation in the new year.

Here’s 10 actions you can start implementing right now so you are positioned for business growth in 2013:

1 – Fix your biography so people can learn quickly what you’ve accomplished for similar clients in recent years. Did you win a high stakes litigation for a Fortune 500 company? Did you handle a mega-merger that was favorable to client? Lead with your best stuff, NOT where you went to law school!

2– Put some meat on your LinkedIn profile. The same revised biographical info on your firm website can go on LinkedIn. Be sure the copy is about how you serve and succeed for clients and not a laundry list of fancy titles and bar memberships.

3 — Learn how to use the Advanced Search capabilities on LinkedIn to create a powerful list of prospects customized by items such as geography, job title, company, etc.

4 — Consider launching a practice-specific blog. And, no, you don’t have to blog every day. You can post as little as once per week or month and the posts can be just a few sentences or a short audio or video.

5 — Create a Twitter account and start Tweeting every few days. An easy way to start is by sharing other people’s news that is related to your practice or linking to your new blog post.

6 —  Record and post to YouTube a 2 to 3 minute video that analyzes a hot legal issue in your practice (s) area. This is one way to establish/expand your thought leadership and will improve your search engine results very quickly.  Here’s one we did for a client earlier this year that received 8,000+ views and another that has surpassed 10,000 views.

7 — Identify and secure speaking engagements where your best prospects gather. Want to be a more powerful presenter? Study Steve Jobs and read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. You can also watch a wide variety of great presentations at TED. Here’s one by Seth Godin that is a great example of excellent presentation and inspiring content.

8– Learn how to deal more effectively with the media and consider hiring a professional who can help you with messaging, transitions, body language and answering the toughest questions.  (At LawFirmsPR, we now do this kind of training by Skype, including a video recording and written audit, so you can quickly learn and improve.)

9– Increase your likability and trust. I highly recommend reading The Likability Factor, Trust Agents and Book Yourself Solid.

10– Learn more about crisis/litigation communications for your firm and your clients. A good place to start is The Crisis Show,  a weekly Internet broadcast I started in June 2012 with case studies on a wide variety of crises that touch the legal world —  and with nearly 20 hours of free content so far.

June 15, 2011

Lawyer Moshe Gerstein Indicted; Gibson Dunn Misses Opportunity To Speak Out

News late today that a 35-year-old associate at Gibson Dunn has been indicted on two counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and five counts of possessing a sexual performance of a child brings us back to the issue of how big law firms manage crisis situations.

“These images are not pornography…these are babies, these are toddlers and children being brutally raped, sexually assaulted and exploited by adults on camera,” said Manhattan D.A. Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

So far, the firm has removed Moshe Gerstein’s biography from the firm’s website, which was a good start. But the firm and managing partner Kenneth M. Doran missed a golden opportunity to say SOMETHING about how horrible it is to find out one of your attorneys was allegedly involved in one of the most despicable crimes imaginable.

This wasn’t about an adult shooting photos of himself in a gym and then sharing a provocative photo with young women on Twitter.  It was a grown man allegedly in possession of some 5,000 images of very young children on three home computers and an external hard drive, some reportedly who were victims of violent sexual assaults.

The Gibson Dunn spokesperson was quoted as saying that “we don’t comment on personal matters.” I would advise the firm differently. The firm could have issued a measured statement and said it was cooperating fully with prosecutors in their investigation to make sure none of the firm’s computers contained any materials that Gerstein is alleged to have acquired.

Why would the firm say that? Well, if someone has 5,000 images of child porn on three home computers, wouldn’t lawyers at least consider the possibility that one of those photos ended up on his Gibson Dunn computers?

Saying “no comment” or declining comment because of “personal” or “personnel” matters only harms a law firm’s reputation further because it lets the media and others control the crisis story.

In this case, it’s even worse because Gibson Dunn heavily promotes its pro bono work for an organization called the Alliance for Children’s Rights, an organization that provides free legal services and advocacy to protect the rights of impoverished and abused children and youth so that they have safe, stable homes, health care and the education they need to thrive.

The firm’s management is proud of this pro bono work –as it should be — but that also means it’s educated about abused children. That’s all the more reason that the firm should have issued a statement today.