TOUCHDOWN – MCGUINTY IN GODERICH

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: In the wake of a disaster, leaders need to communicate quickly, effectively and empathetically in order to avoid a communications-based calamity of their own making.  George W. Bush post Hurricane Katrina, anyone?  At the opposite end of the scale this week was Premier Dalton McGuinty, because he simply did everything right.  The day after Sunday’s devastating tornado, there he was, on the ground in Goderich, surveying the damage first-hand, thanking the first responders and other volunteers, and offering reassurance to the people of the town and municipal leaders.  “You’re not alone,” was his message.  The sentiment, coupled with $5 million in immediate emergency relief and an open door to more if need be (“We’ll see where that gets us and we’ll take it from there,” he said) sounded all the right notes.  All Ontarians felt for the people of “Ontario’s prettiest town” – and the man whose responsibility it is for speaking on our collective behalf at such a time did so especially well.

TOUCHDOWN – HARPER’S STATE FUNERAL OFFER

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: Before the inevitable online debate had even begun; before any public calls for it came; and, most importantly, before he found himself in a position of responding rather than leading, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had already decided to offer Olivia Chow the honour of a state funeral for her late husband.  And thus, the wheels were set in motion for Jack Layton to lie in state in the rotunda of the House of Commons, with a state funeral to follow tomorrow in Toronto.  We’ll set aside any discussion of the policy decision.   But anticipating developments and how the resulting media coverage might play out, well, that’s issue management and media strategy.  And, although I’m speculating wildly here, I do remain convinced that someone in the PMO – likely including Harper himself – saw the outpouring in the wake of Layton’s death and quickly realized that calls for a state funeral would be inevitable.  It’s always best to be leading a major story than responding to one, and with such a large emotional layer to this one, it was a good communications play to get out in front of all of it by making (and announcing) the offer, rather than being put in the position of having to consider and then respond to the inevitable calls for it.  I don’t at all doubt Harper’s sincerity in also wanting to pay respects to his “friend and colleague” as he described Layton, as well.

TOUCHDOWN – JOBS BOWS OUT. APPLE STAYS HEALTHY

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley: Leadership transitions for any company, of any size, can be very delicate situations, but they are doubly so for a company like Apple Inc. After all, the popularity of its product line – and of its shares on the stock market – are intrinsically linked to the cult of personality around one man: co-founder Steve Jobs. So when Jobs announced this week that he was stepping down from his job as CEO (for which he earns $1 a year – a salary that only adds to his corporate mystique), it was a moment fraught with risk for Apple in the eyes of customers, investors, media and employees. But Jobs & Co. pulled it off by managing the announcement in a way appropriate to both the man and the company. First, it was made by Jobs himself, through a letter to the board and the Apple community. Second, he addressed the succession question head-on, “strongly” recommending to the board “that we execute our succession plan and name [COO] Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.” Good wording, communicating advance planning, continuity and, most importantly, no surprises. Almost in the same breath, the Apple board issued a statement announcing Cook as CEO and expressing absolute confidence in his abilities. By being prepared with their messaging and showing themselves to be all on the same page, Jobs and the board appeared  in full control of the situation – which is probably the most vital message you can send in a time of flux. The upshot: the media for the most part was busy writing panegyrics to Jobs but wasted little ink fretting over Apple’s future, and the stock went down merely 2% the next day amid an overall market decline 1.5%. To me, Apple just wrote a case study in how to manage a leadership transition. Touchdown. (And good luck, Mr. Jobs.)

TOUCHDOWN – LAYTON’S FINAL MESSAGE

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: We were all shocked on Monday morning when news broke of the death of federal NDP Leader Jack Layton.  We knew just from seeing him on TV only a month before, when he announced he was going to take some time to deal with a new form of cancer, that things didn’t look good – but the speed with which the end came was staggering.  Throughout his time in public life, and especially at the federal level, various writers here at TD&F – myself included – have often praised Layton’s communications and media savvy.  So it wasn’t surprising that one of the last acts of his life was to prepare a final message to Canadians, to be made public immediately in the wake of his death.  Sure, he worked with a few close confidantes on it, but so does every political leader on every missive.  The letter, dubbed by many media outlets as Layton’s “love letter to Canada,” was as quotable as it was poignant – with messages of hope, optimism and positivity directed at quarters from young Canadians to Quebecers to his own party members to people dealing with cancer just as he was.  Excerpts began immediately popping up on Facebook and Twitter in the form of status updates and newly-minted avatars – and suddenly, reporters didn’t have to go searching back through an unfathomable mountain of Layton quotes from over the years in order to sum up his thoughts, hopes and aspirations for the country he left behind: the fresh copy was right there.  Well played, Jack, right to the last.  We’ll miss you for many reasons, but one of the big ones will be the communications lessons we all learned from just watching you in action.

FUMBLE – “CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE” SAYS ROMNEY

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: He’s not wrong.  Ultimately, corporations ARE people:  employees, management, directors, investors – and those human beings feel the effects when the corporation they are part of pays higher taxes.  But for Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney this week, being technically right didn’t matter.  In the midst of some strident heckling during a summer fair speaking opportunity, Romney responded to calls for corporate tax increases to help fund social programs by saying “Corporations are people” – and in one sound bite, handed his opponents a bumper-sticker of a line that will live on throughout his entire bid for the White House.  It’s hard to do when under fire, but it’s imperative that communicators consider the potential repercussions of every statement they make BEFORE it crosses their lips.  Case in point: before I had even heard Romney’s remark, a trending hash-tag game on Twitter was #ReplacePeopleWithCorporations – prompting such re-written classics as “Corporations … who need corporations … are the luckiest corporations in the world.”  If your comment goes instantly viral in a negative way, that’s a Fumble.

TOUCHDOWN – OPERATION CUP OF TEA

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley: As if to prove the above point, 22-year-old Sam Pepper created a Facebook page that effectively captured and communicated his fellow Englanders’ hopes for stability in the wake of the riots. On Tuesday, Pepper launched “Operation Cup of Tea,” which through Facebook and Twitter urged Brits to “harness the power of tea by staying home and having a brew, every night until [the rioting] stops,” and to show solidarity by sharing photos of themselves enjoying a cuppa. By that night, the Facebook page had attracted more than 100,000 “likes”; by end of week, it had more than 300,000. Then Pepper launched OperationCupofTea.com, where supporters could pay £6.50 for a bag of ethically grown loose-leaf tea, with the proceeds going towards helping victims of the riots rebuild their homes and businesses. Smart kid – and proof of the power of social media to make positive change.

TOUCHDOWN – JAYS’ GM CRUSHES SIGN-STEALING STORY

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: Quite often in communications, the question of WHO is delivering the message can be equally as important as the message itself.  Alex Anthopoulos is the General Manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, but despite his corner-office role, he is not usually front and centre in terms of speaking for the organization.  He picks his spots, being the lead voice as appropriate on matters like trades, call-ups and other things that are directly his bailiwick, but we don’t see him in front of the media as a matter of course.  So when ESPN reported bombshell allegations being made by some un-named players on another team that the Jays had a spotter in the stands who was stealing signals at the Rogers Centre, it was a bit of a surprise to see Anthopoulos lead the counter-attack.  And it made the message even stronger as a result. “Let’s find four players on some other team claiming they saw the guy in the white shirt and they saw the UFO flying across the sky … I can guarantee you there must be one disgruntled Blue Jay out there to have spoken to.  And to not have been able to do it, shocks me.”  His point – that if the story were true, it would be dead easy for ESPN to have found a former Toronto player with an axe to grind who would be more than happy to spill the beans – was an instant head-nodder.  That, combined with Anthopoulos’ visible anger (also out of character) helped quickly put the story into the “balloon boy” league in the minds of most observers.  It’s not often that a baseball team scores a Touchdown, but the Blue Jays certainly did this week.

FUMBLE – BRIT PM DISSES SOCIAL MEDIA

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley: By and large, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s public responses to the riots that swept England in recent days have been eloquent and balanced. He has been seen to be taking action (by, for instance, recalling Parliament) and has clearly contrasted his law-and-order message against his political opponents on the left, who are urging Britons to pay attention to the underlying causes of the riots. Politically, I suspect Cameron’s arguments will carry the day. But he has had his slip-ups. And arguably his biggest one was the suggestion that the government was considering restricting public access to social media. No doubt, communications and social networking platforms such as Facebook and RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger helped rioters organize and, perhaps, kept the riots going longer than they otherwise would have. But as more than one commentator quickly pointed out, restricting social media is tantamount to cracking down on freedom of speech – and invites unflattering comparisons to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad, both of whom attempted to crack down on social media in the face of popular protests. Rather than “shooting the instant messenger,” as Globe and Mail columnist Ivor Tussell cleverly put it, a smarter response would have been to try to use social media to counter the fear and mob instinct that had seized England – because, after all, the real power of social media lies in its ability to ignite grassroots responses, for ill or (at least as often) for good.

TOUCHDOWN – ATWOOD AND INDIGO SCORE

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: Margaret Atwood has suddenly found herself the unofficial spokesperson for the anti-Ford Nation, as a result of the debate at city hall about whether Toronto can afford to maintain the high number of public library branches we currently have.  City councilor Doug Ford remarked that he had never heard of Atwood, prompting howls of ridicule from Can-lit fans and the appearance of “Atwood for Mayor” graffiti.  “The message sent by Doug Ford – and that has now gone worldwide – is that creative people are not welcome in Toronto. Not artists, not musicians, not writers. Not them, not their conventions, not their festivals, not their concerts, not the innovation they bring to the city,” said Atwood in an email to the Globe and Mail. She has also been busy on Twitter and elsewhere online, further driving her message.  And, in a smart bit of marketing, Indigo stores leapt on the story by announcing a 30 per cent discount on any Margaret Atwood titles to customers who show a Toronto Public Library card at the checkout.  Atwood Tweeted about that, too.

FUMBLE IN WAITING – NEWS CORP.’S BOARDROOM EXPOSURE

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley: My colleague Bob Reid and I have been back-and-forth a lot on News Corp.’s handling of the illegal phone hacking scandal in the UK, alternately damning and praising Rupert Murdoch’s embattled company as it struggles with the biggest reputational issue in its history. Murdoch has shuttered his flagship News of the World; he and his son James have had to appear before a special parliamentary committee, where the father-son team apologized profusely for their newspaper’s malfeasance while denying that they knew anything about it. But is that enough to save News Corp. from further damage? Plausible deniability is a wonderful thing in reputation management, but it is not a panacea. Because it begs the question: if it’s true the Murdochs didn’t know about what was going on at News of the World, then shouldn’t they have? Or at least shouldn’t somebody at the highest levels of News Corp. have known? When these questions get asked in media, financial reporters start looking at the boardroom, and in News Corp.’s case they don’t like what they see. Now, what started as an operational scandal is threatening to become a corporate governance cause celebre. In a scathing column this week, Bloomberg’s Susan Antilla ripped into News Corp. over its largely non-independent board, its dual-class share structure and its poor corporate governance rep – pointing out that Governance Metrics International gives the company an F, making it one of only 38 firms out of the 3,000 GMI rates to earn such a crummy grade. The implication is clearly that News Corp.’s board is asleep at the switch, and the phone hacking scandal is only more evidence of it. If you’re a company whose share price has plummeted in recent weeks, the last thing you want to read is that you are “a case study in why corporate governance should matter to investors,” as Antilla calls it. The danger now is that in failing to be seen as paying a more severe price for News of the World’s misconduct, Rupert Murdoch has let the scandal spread into an area that will present reputational risk to the entire company. If News Corp. really wants to stem the momentum of blame, perhaps Rupert (or James) might soon have to fall on his sword a little bit harder.

FUMBLE – ROCKET ADS FLAME OUT

This week's perspective from Bob Reid: I think the TTC’s new “Toronto Rocket” subway train is totally cool. Every time I head underground these days I’m hoping the shiny new train will be what emerges from the tunnel to pick me up. So far, I have only seen it in passing, going the other way (insert sad trombone sound here). But despite being one of the many Torontonians the TTC says are excited about the new train, it’s a huge communications Fumble for the transit commission to be paying $28,000 to run ads (on the subway) to tell people (riding the subway) about the shiny new subway. “These are the type of stupid spends that drive the public crazy,” city councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong told the Toronto Sun. “In the world of ‘must have’ and ‘like to have’ this clearly falls into the category of ‘absolute waste of money,’” he said, referencing the ongoing debate over where and how to trim spending to close the city’s budget gap. TTC Chair Karen Stinz defended the campaign, saying “The advertising in the cars is advertising the fact that three levels of government came together to make this investment in transit in the city.” Trouble is, there are neither logos nor any kind of reference in the ad copy about the tripartite funding. Fumble.