Crisis Communications Best Practices: Washington DC and the “Snowpocalypse”
MSPA Account Supervisor Ashley Houghton displays her "injuries" after the Dupont Circle snowball fight
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Washington D.C. was recently assaulted by some of the worst weather in the last century (really: we’ve become the second snowiest city in the United States). This anomaly placed the metro area on high alert and, perhaps surprisingly, public opinion of the local governments has been relatively satisfactory. Here’s a list of lessons learned from the latest Snowmaggedon SnOMG Snowverload Snowverboard Snow-bama weather-related crisis:
1) Offer as much information as possible – even if residents have no control over the snow or its removal, providing information about the weather and clean-up efforts will set expectations. The overwhelming information provided by local governments and other important institutions (like Metro) tempered public response.
2) The public will tend to be understanding and supportive during the initial emergency, but that support will not last until spring. Don’t stop plowing once the streets are clear – consider street parking areas, bridges, and sidewalks.
3) Encourage the public to take charge and work together – community events, from snowball fights to t-shirt designs, help neighbors rely on each other and place fewer demands on plows, government, and transportation services.
4) Make reasonable requests – during normal snowstorms, asking residents to shovel the sidewalks in front of their homes is fair. Not if the snow is a six foot ice drift.
5) Oh, and this time, don’t bring a gun to a snowball fight.
In the 1994 election, Edward M. Kennedy knew the state of Massachusetts was looking for change. In fact, he almost lost his Senate Seat to Gov. Mitt Romney! In his biography True Compass, in a chapter called “Campaigning for Political Survival,” he writes:
“ …Troubling fires of discontent burned in Massachusetts and the nation. There was increasing unhappiness with the status quo and a strong aversion to incumbency. There were reasons enough for discontent. People were hurting in my state and across the country. The rhetoric by political leaders was to demonize the poor as people getting something for nothing. read more…
A view of the entrance of the Bella Centre in Copenhagen where the UN Climate Change Conference was held. Via United Nations Photo/Creative Commons
Countries from all across the world came together earlier this month to participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Mike Smith flew over to blog for his HuffPo column, The Energy Collective and other content-hungry entities as each day unfolded. Here’s a roundup of events he attended, people he met and opinions he analyzed:
Dec. 7, 2009: Renewables and Grid Depend on Customers; The (Vestas) Answer is Blowing in the Wind
I will be working from Copenhagen where new entrepreneurs GEO and established companies like the 100-person Vestas wind energy of Denmark (see next blog post) are counting on new carbon consumption guidelines from delegates; many also seeking partnerships with like-minded clean energy distributors or smart grid businesses. My role is both blogging for Huffington Post and as contributor to Energy Collectiv. I am also on a trade mission with the U.S. Department of Commerce and working the U.S. trade booth at Bright Green trade show on Dec. 12-14.
Dec. 9, 2009: EU, US Not Doing Enough for Climate Change (Chinese Party News Service); Deputy Delegate Su Wei Pushes Back on EU Comparisons (The Energy Collective); Deputy Delegate Su Wei Pushes Back on EU Comparisons (HuffPo)
China’s Deputy Head of the Chinese Delegation Su Wei confirmed that the recently announced 45% reduction of GHG emissions before 2020, per unit of GDP, is an internal and domestic matter. He also said China’s ambitious efforts were more remarkable than those of the EU and the U.S. – by offering UNFCCC attendees simple math equations. He is the first delegate to compare “apples to apples” on developed country reduction targets.
Americans Arrogant at UN Climate Conference (COP15) (HuffPo)
American bombast and European Union snark were on full display at Day One of the UNFCC in Copenhagen today. U.S. Envoy Jonathan Pershing said “there is a deal to be done” in Copenhagen but relented that it would not be a treaty.
Dec. 10, 2009: Todd Stern Says No Treaty at Copenhagen
Special U.S. Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern yesterday arrived at the United Nations Foundation meeting on Climate Change, a big jet-lagged, and went right onto the press conference stage. He said that the United States believes the outcomes here in Copenhagen will become a “politically binding agreement” but not legally binding.
Dec. 11, 2009: The Business of Green at COP15
Today in Copenhagen, the world’s governmental delegates stepped aside a bit as global business took center stage. With the Bright Green expo* and trade event starting on Saturday morning, commercial enterprises and dealmakers started their own negotiations today.
View Mike’s complete HuffPo blog feed here.
Via the MSPA Huffington Post blog:
Special U.S. Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern yesterday arrived at the United Nations Foundation meeting on Climate Change, a big jet-lagged, and went right onto the press conference stage. He said that the United States believes the outcomes here in Copenhagen will become a “politically binding agreement” but not legally binding.
A Copenhagen Treaty is “not in the cards,” said Stern. “But a Copenhagen Agreement can take effect right away.”
Rhetoric between the U.S., and China, is really heating-up. The Tiny Island of Tuvalu has proposed a return to Kyoto Treaty requirements and reduction levels which the U.S. will not sign. However, 35 nations have now joined the tiny South Pacific island of 12,000 people in calling for 45% carbon reductions by 2020. Pressure on the U.S. and China is mounting.
The U.S. will not become part of Kyoto: that is “not on the table,” Stern challenged. Stern said the U.S. objective was “always a treaty,” for Copenhagen. But when EU President Connie Hedegaard of Sweden told the UN she thought it unlikely to gain full treaty consensus here, according to Stern, the U.S. wanted to “focus on results not the legal” requirement.
Read more here.
Mike Smith is currently at the Copenhagen Climate Conference, tweeting and blogging about the summit’s developments as they happen (check out his Twitter stream here).
This story also appeared on the Chinese state-run party news online:
China’s Deputy Head of the Chinese Delegation Su Wei confirmed that the recently announced 45% reduction of GHG emissions before 2020, per unit of GDP, is an internal and domestic matter. He also said China’s ambitious efforts were more remarkable than those of the EU and the U.S. — by offering UNFCCC attendees simple math equations. He is the first delegate to compare “apples to apples” on developed country reduction targets.He is also Director General of the Department of Climate Change, National Development and Reform of the PRC: “It is inappropriate for the EU delegates to compare their obligations to China’s based on our GDP. I think the EU should compare their own reduction targets now versus previous. For the EU from2008-2012, GHG emissions will only be reduced 8% and that is just 2.4% annually.
“The EU is not doing enough,” said Su. These targets are not meaningful or ambitious.
Su also called on the United States to comply with certain requirements of the UNFCCC. “The U.S. should provide emission reduction, technology transfer and financial support to make Copenhagen a true success,” he suggested. He also added sarcastically that U.S. offers to pay our “fair share” of the compensatory carbon mitigation fund for developing countries “should be enought to buy coffins!”
View the complete Huffington Post blog here.
Via Christmasguide
Just in case you’re still not convinced that social media is the new wave of advertiser-consumer relationships: According to Bloomberg, social media has influenced a whopping 28 percent of shoppers in their gift-buying decisions this year.
So, what’s the secret?
Facebook “fan” pages talkative Twitter representatives are kick-starting a new social shopping experience. Says one social media savvy exec to Bloomberg:
“Our customers are spending a lot of time connecting with each other in these online communities, and we want to be there,” said Nick Bomersbach, director of jcp.com. “Oftentimes they’re talking about brands and J.C. Penney, and we want to have an open avenue to have that dialogue.”
Seems like your holiday gift guide may be no further than 140 characters away.
A group of MIT students (of course) have successfully pinpointed the location of ten red balloons planted across the U.S. by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. News of the DARPA challenge, held to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, spread over social networking sites late last week. Says the Gearlog blog:
The agency cast the challenge as a way to explore how the Internet – and specifically, social networking – affects wide-area team building, and the ability to solve broad-scope problems within a set amount of time.
The somewhat anticlimactic win from MIT aside — those smarties solved the puzzle in just over 9 hours — the contest gets us thinking about all of the team-building possibilities that come with harnessing social media. We’ll be waiting to see who will cook up the next contest idea (and, in the meantime, practicing our math).
* “Real Housewives of DC” hopefuls Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed Tuesday evening’s state dinner at the White House, then posted their pictures with the likes of Vice President Joe Biden and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Facebook. When DC society’s answer to Heidi and Spencer can crash the White House like it’s Playboy Mansion, it might be time to reevaluate security procedures. (Update: The Secret Service is launching a probe, according to Bloomberg.)
* Mashable has a great blog entry on the best ways to save — while using social media — over the holidays. And if you’re in the market for some technology saves, they also have a list of the best Black Friday deals online.
* Twitter is the latest online service to jump onto the pay wall bandwagon, and will launch a pay-to-play model in Japan in January. Apparently, the service will only charge followers who want to read the tweets of the famous or well-known. This begs the question: How much would you pay to read a celebrity’s tweets? Seems like the market in Asia would be more receptive to a pay wall: 72 percent of businesses in Asia link in using social media in one way or another.
* Put this one in the “bizarre social media news” file: Roman Polanksi is hereby banned from poking people on Facebook. According to the HuffPo, Polanski is also banned from utilizing certain Facebook applications (“”What ‘Facts of Life’ Character Are You?”).
Guest blog: Mike Smith speaks at School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University
Carrotmobs, Jujutsu and Advocacy
Mike Smith led us this week with an excellent account of his experience in grass roots organizing during the Obama presidential campaign. More importantly — and if we listened well — he discussed how we might learn lessons from the campaign for future political advocacy whether that advocacy revolves around an election or the promotion of specific issues.
One of the key takeaways is to embrace potential allies and enable them to pursue their own online messaging in support of the issue at hand. This necessitates a relinquishing of top down control, and relinquishing such control is something many struggle with throughout all industries be they corporations, advocacy organizations, political campaigns or community organizers.
At issue, of course, is the actual message. What is it? How is it said and how is it presented? This is a classic case of who controls the messenger. In the parlance of the day, are there mechanisms to prevent others from going rogue? Or is that just the cost of doing business in the digital age?
The answer is not simple and the conversation about the answer is quite long. If we cut to the short of it though the answer is yes, no matter the vertical we need to give up our attempts to control every aspect of a brand or message and instead realize that we are a participant in an ever evolving conversation about it.
JUMP to read the rest of the post.
Thanks to two brand new developments, your Twitter experience will never be the same.
The social networking service recently introduced auto-retweet feature — previously only available to a test group — to all users. The tweets you see on the Web will now look like this:
Pretty nifty, huh? The new RT feature is great because it eliminates the old “RT @” drill, which can understandably confuse new users. It also now takes less characters to retweet another user than before, which is especially valuable working within the confines of 140 characters. One possible annoyance: A slew of users you don’t follow will start populating your feed — Twitter selects tweets from the users you follow that it thinks you might find interesting. So far, there are no ways to avoid this — we’ll see if Twitter makes it optional or not.
Also new is the new Geotagging feature, which Twitter rolled out yesterday evening. (Hint: Visit your Twitter “Settings” tab to enable it.) First, though, you have to decide whether or not you want everyone to know where you are at all times. And in a world where deleted tweets don’t really stay gone, we’re not sure if the service is useful. Yet. Read more about it at PCMag.
What do you think?
