Tag Archives: crisis

Reputation management: Royal Caribbean and Haiti

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External crises can force companies to make consternating choices.

Royal Caribbean has come under fire for continuing to dock its cruise ships on the Haitian peninsula of Labadee in light of the devastating earthquake. An article in The Gaurdian, later picked up by The Huffington Post and the LA Times travel blog, among other outlets, questions whether passengers should be sunning themselves and enjoying cocktails on the beach when so many are suffering in Port au Prince.

It’s a sticky situation for Royal Caribbean. On the one hand, they’ve used their cruise ships to deliver pallets upon pallets of supplies and drinking water for the residents of Haiti. They’re bringing economic activity to Labadee, where hundreds of Haitians rely on tourism income to feed their families (in fact, it’s probably less a matter of the positive economic impact of the cruise passengers than it is the avoidance of the negative impact should the cruise ship divert to somewhere else and thus leave those who depend on tourism revenues in a lurch). Royal Caribbean has also pledged $1 million in relief to Haiti.

Opinions are flying around the Internet and in the media as to whether RCCL is doing the right thing. Passengers themselves are divided, and some refused to disembark during the Labadee visit and stayed on the ship. Others are glad to be spending their money and be involved with the relief effort. Some have made the argument that Haiti (and for that matter, most Caribbean vacation destinations) was abjectly poor and in need before the earthquake, yet that didn’t stop cruise ships from docking there and passengers from visiting.

It’s a reputation management nightmare. There’s no clear-cut “right answer” that will make all RCCL stakeholders happy. Royal Caribbean made its decision and while many are supportive of their efforts, some are swearing off the cruise line and calling it insensitive, shameful, or even disgusting.

Blogging the company’s rationale

I do admire the way Royal Caribbean has communicated throughout this crisis. The company’s blog, written primarily by the CEO, has been almost entirely devoted to Haiti for the last two weeks. One post details the internal processes the company is using to monitor and manage the situation in Haiti – they’ve even posted a link to a .pdf of their daily meeting notes. Another post addresses the Guardian article and defends their decision to continue operations in Haiti. They’ve posted several photos of relief supplies and discuss a meeting with President Clinton. Both the CEO, Adam Goldstein, and Associate Vice President, John Weis, are posting a few times a day.

Sometimes CEO blogs get a bad rap, and it’s often deserved. They can be dry and uninformative. But having a CEO or company blog in place gives you an instant response platform when a crisis arises. Royal Caribbean had to make a tough call, and through its blog has been able to not only explain and defend its decision in detail but also receive instant feedback by way of comments. Many of the comments support the company’s choice.

I’m sure the RCCL team agonized over what the proper course of action was. I’m still not entirely sure what I would have chosen to do had I been the one making the choice. But I can appreciate that Royal Caribbean was honest, forthright and transparent about its reasons and processes with its customers. I read the posts and can relate to Adam and John as real people who had to make a difficult decision and ultimately are trying to do right by the people of Haiti, their employees, their customers and the public at large.

Did they get the communications piece right?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Instead of debating whether or not RCCL made the right choice to continue docking in Labadee (those discussions are happening all over the Web at the links I included above), I’m more interested in hearing your reactions to how they’ve communicated their choices and actions during this crisis. What could they or should they have done differently? What risks do they still face in terms of reputation management and how do you think they should address them?

How you can help

My earlier post on how to donate and support Haiti relief efforts

Image via Royal Caribbean’s Why Not blog

The secret to avoiding a YouTube crisis – revealed!

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It’s not a matter of if. It’s when. With user-generated content easier and more common than ever, it’s only a matter of time before someone in your organization does something that rubs someone (or a lot of people) the wrong way and soon millions of people are watching the travesty on YouTube.

Latest entry: United Breaks Guitars

This video, out only since Monday, already has half-a-million views, 3,200+ comments and has been picked up by several mainstream news outlets, and many bloggers are going to town on it, too. United is apparently talking to the video’s creator and trying to make things right, but I think the catchy ” ‘Cuz United breaks guitars” refrain is going to be quick to the lips of lots of passengers from now on.

There have been countless posts on how to handle reputation crises like these, so I won’t rehash some of those principles in depth (respond quickly, take it seriously, respond using the same medium by which you were attacked, etc.).

But here’s my number one observation on how to prepare your organization ahead of time for when something like this happens. Ready for it? It’s simple:

Don’t suck so much in the first place!

Typically these attacks come from people with a real bone to pick. The United Breaks Guitars guy tried for more than nine months to get his guitar fixed and was stonewalled all the way. If his claim had been honored, or if an astute United customer service rep had gone out of their way to help him, despite what “policy” and “procedure” said, there’s a much lower chance he would have made this video.

What’s more, if United was generally known for having great, attentive customer service, even if the guy had made the video there possibly would have been a group of customers who’ve had positive experiences with United who could have come out and defended the company. Instead, check out the YouTube comments. Everyone just kept piling on with their own “United sucks” stories.

What if someone had made a video like this about Zappos? Maybe Zappos lost a guy’s order or something. First, I doubt he would have been stonewalled when he called, so it probably would never get to the level of him feeling like he needed to make a music video about bad service. But if he had, Zappos would have already had a rabid community of fans in place who had received great customer service in the past and who might have been willing to defend the company.

With United, so many passengers likely had a similar negative story that it was easy for them to relate to the video and pass it along, helping it to go viral so quickly. Videos that don’t resonate with people don’t go viral. Try not to frequently give your customers reasons to create this kind of content. Even if most never will, many will read, share and comment on the content that does get created (check out Forrester’s Social Technographics Profiles for more).

Unfortunately, not a lot of “this company is so awesome and great” videos go viral (but when they do, be ready to capitalize and use it to help tell your organization’s story, the way Mayo Clinic did). But you can keep some of the negative ones at bay by not giving people a reason to make them in the first place and creating enough brand defenders that even when those videos do get made, they’ll get very little traction.

Yes, you have to manage a reputation crisis when it comes up, but shouldn’t part of preparedness include preventing those crises from ever happening in the first place?

Having a Crisis Comm Strategy Lets Marriott Sleep Tight

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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.”

marriottIn 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