I’ve saved the best for last, as Roger Conner’s session at the 2009 Ragan Corporate Communications Conference was far and away my favorite. Conner is vice president of communications for Marriott, a company he’s been with for more than 30 years. You can imagine that he’s accumulated a fair number of entertaining stories in that time, and he shared many during his presentation titled “Handling crisis communications at a new level of intensity.”
Describing Conner as affable and engaging would be a bit of an understatement. He had the whole room laughing with his tales, but also shared some remarkable stories of the quick thinking and extra effort needed to protect the public’s faith in one of the world’s most recognized brands. At a major hotel chain, crises can run the gamut from terrorism to health concerns to political unrest to food poisoning. Even the fact that Marriott’s CEO, Bill Marriott, is a member of the Mormon faith presents challenges for the communications team in terms of public perception and managing the brand’s image.
Conner shared the story of the bombing at the Islamabad Marriott in Pakistan in September, 2008. Within an hour of the bombing, Bill Marriott’s statement was posted to his blog, Marriott on the Move. The company effectively used the blog to get its message out without having to wait and pull together a press conference. Mainstream media could visit the blog and pull quotes from it right away. It was also interesting to hear the backstory behind the blog – Bill Marriott is 76 years old and doesn’t use a computer. He audio records all of his blog posts and then they’re transcribed. Knowing that Marriott is such a strong brand name, the communications team felt that it would be better to have its CEO blog than to have someone else in the organization do it – but they wanted to make sure that it was “authentically Bill.”
In crises like a terrorist bombing, the communications team needs to mobilize quickly. Marriott has a one-pager called the “First Hour Document” that contains everything that communicators need to do and everyone who needs to be called or notified within the first hour of a major incident. Each person on the team has hard and soft copies of this document, and every team member has two-backups that can act on their behalf. Marriott also has several emergency messages pre-written, so that if a particular type of incident happens, they don’t have to spend time writing and can just adapt an existing crisis messages for the situation at hand. Moreover, Conner showed us the “Marriott Comm 2.0 Wheel” – a colorful, graphical display of 17 communications channels that should be looked at and used if necessary during a crisis – everything from mainstream television to Twitter to YouTube.
Another type of crisis communication that Conner touched on was reputation management. Remember the Mumbai terror attack from just a few months ago? It didn’t happen at a Marriott property, but initial news reports said that it did. Conner and his team quickly called news stations to report the error and asked them to remove the Mumbai Marriott from its reports and graphics so that the brand wouldn’t be linked to that event. Similarly, when the recent “Craigslist killer” met his victim at the Marriott Copley Square in Boston, the communications team requested that news outlets stop identifying the hotel in every report after a few days. Conner noted it’s important to divorce your name or brand from the newsmix as soon as possible.
Conner’s session was merely an hour long, but I could have listen to him go on for hours. I hope he decides to write a book when he retires, because he certainly has the material for it. But beyond his colorful candor, he offered some solid advice for brand management during a crisis – and for the most part, Roger Conner’s definition of a crisis far outweighs anything most of us would have to face in our roles as communicators. Thank goodness.
I did notice that Conner was interviewed for myRaganTV, so check that site (next week?) to hopefully see some excerpts of Conner’s remarks. Image via Flickr user zairochka
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