Being Creative: Five Tips To Find Inspiration

I might be teaching "Editing and Proofreading Your Work" at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, this weekend, but past experience tells me to expect one off-topic question. It makes sense, I suppose.

Despite my adopted style for blogging, which leans more on journalism, students tend to notice how much acrylic I've accumulated for creative work. (That was before I grew tired of dusting symbols of affirmation and stopped entering.)

"How do you find inspiration?"

I never really liked the question. Or, more accurately, maybe I never liked my answer. Since I have hundreds of techniques that work for me, but not necessarily for you, the best answer always seemed to be that it becomes part of your nature. And chances are, if you are going to be any good at it, it's already in your nature. Yeah, I know. Sounds like a cop out.

So this year, I decided to craft an answer and share it here first. Hope it helps. Or, if you're so inspired, offer something better.

Five Tips To Find Inspiration.

• Embrace Pop Culture. Advertising can be, but doesn't have to be, like original literature. It often blends in pop culture or builds upon what is already resonating with people. Keep tabs on the top ten everything: books, movies, television shows, recording artists, plays, fashion, trends, politics, etc., etc. It's the single best way to gain insight into millions of people.

Trust me. The movie The Blind Side (2009) was a hit for a reason. It's a story of hope, honesty, and perseverance. We need some of that nowadays. It's also quite the contrast with Apocalypse Now (1979).

• Find The Fringe. You can't always rely on what is popular. You have to pay attention to what is bubbling below the surface. Stuff that never quite makes it to the mainstream, but has an undiscovered quality that is unmistakably refreshing or long since forgotten.

More importantly, you have to consume content well beyond your personal preferences. I usually have a long list of things on my future reading list. Some are are recommended by friends. Others are just shots in the dark. Books aren't the only tool. The fringe can be found anywhere. You know, stop ordering the same sandwich at your favorite restaurant for once.

• Listen Everywhere. If you want to know what people are thinking, take some time to listen. I touched on the difference between hearing and listening yesterday. Don't limit yourself to online conversations. Listen to how people interact: in a grocery store checkout line or in a restaurant.

The real advantage to the skill is that most people don't even hear other people, let alone listen. They are too busy talking. Trust me on this. If you're always talking, you'll never learn anything.

• Experience Life. Go out and do things. I tend to adhere to a rather rigid schedule. There have probably been too many weeks in my life that blurred together. Even so, I try to sneak in some random stuff every now and again. For example, I'm not a ballet buff by a long shot, but I was happy to go when my wife suggested our kids could use some culture in a city not known for it.

But there are plenty other things out there if ballet doesn't strike your fancy. I've done a lot of different things, ranging from rafting to horseback riding (in search of wild mustangs no less). My family tends to plan vacations the same way. We take at least two small vacations every year. At least one of them is someplace we've never been. And even if we have been someplace before, we load up on sights and experiences we've never done before.

• Become An Insider. This has practically become pat in my Writing for Public Relations course. Stop hanging out with communicators all the time and hook up with the people in your industry. You'll often learn more from them anyway.

I once met a communicator who worked at a utility. He always told me that he had a hard time relating to the non-corporate side of the company. (Utilities are cool. They have two very different cultures in one company.) It was fair, I suppose. The non-corporate guys had a hard time relating to him too. Me, on the other hand, I toured every power generation plant in southern Nevada. And when I needed to interview anyone, I did it in person. (It was a great excuse to get out of the cubicles and hang with dynamic and sometimes salty people).

Maybe my initial answer wasn't a cop out.

Looking back over the list, I suppose my answer wasn't such a cop out. If you do those five things, creativity will likely become part of your nature. If you follow some of the more popular advice, on the other hand, you'll likely kill it.

At least, that was my conclusion on those the heaviest hit by inspirational advice posts. One suggests stealing ideas outright. Another pointed toward finding purpose in life. And yet another was just a big long list of my first tip, expanded to include blogs, quotes, and all that.

Those tips are so far away from the truth, I couldn't bring myself to link to them.

Real creativity isn't an exercise in transposing things on top of one another. It's much harder than that. You have to see beyond the surface and focus in on what really makes things tick. Simply seeing an abundance of floral patterns and deciding floral patterns are "in" is not enough. You have figure out why floral patterns are in and then work from there.

Or better yet, try those five tips on for size. Like I said, if you do them enough, you probably won't have to look for inspiration. It will already be bottled up inside you, waiting for the right moment. At least, I think so.

Listening: The Most Important Lesson In Communication

Yesterday, Nevada held its primary elections. If you were listening to pundits, it was a night filled with surprises. If you were listening to the public, most races played out exactly as expected. And despite a few upsets, some people still aren't listening.

Listening isn't only about politics. Listening is about business too.

There are dozens of studies and hundreds of surveys making the rounds right now. All of them are hoping to catch a snapshot of how consumers might behave. Most of them have useful data, but most people don't listen. They only "hear."

There are several developing stories that underscore the point. It's why Utterli died. It's why Digg is struggling (but probably not dead). It's why the BP oil spill response has eclipsed Hurricane Katrina as the worst response in American history. It's why not everyone is cheering Santa Clara, Calif., for banning Happy Meal toys. And, there are dozens of more examples.

Politicians are "hearing" constituents. Business executives are "monitoring" social media. But few are "listening."

Utterli heard Utterz turned some people off at a glance, but they didn't listen to how people came to love their enduring cow mascot. Digg heard that being allowed to share content among a Digg network fueled some spammers, but they didn't listen to understand that people love to share social media while tuning out spammers anyway. There are several other social networks in jeopardy too.

BP and the Obama administration hear that people don't think they did enough, but they are not listening closely enough to understand the public wants them to admit their mistakes and that they don't have anything under control. Santa Clara elected officials that heard parents wanted something done about childhood obesity, but they didn't listen to responsible parents who consider McDonald's and Happy Meal toys a once-every-few-months treat. They can make decisions about Happy Meal toys with their own pocketbooks.

Even researchers are becoming deaf nowadays. There is another portion of the Harris Interactive poll I mentioned yesterday that proves the point. Harris Interactive couldn't understand why 70 percent of Americans gave the Constitution high marks, but low marks to the government (43 percent) and political system (23 percent) it empowers. They heard, but didn't listen.

Most Americans think that the political system to driving government is operated well beyond the Constitution, which was originally written as the people's contract with its government. This also set the stage for a volatile election cycle because people don't believe politicians are meeting their commitment to protect the Constitution.

How a lack of listening undermined several campaigns in Nevada.

If you want to understand how this all played out in Nevada, never mind what the pundits say. Sue Lowden, who is a dynamic business woman I had the pleasure to do work with years ago, didn't lose the primary because of her chicken comment. The gaffe could have easily been corrected, but her campaign didn't know how (we did, ho hum).

But what really underscored the race was that she wasn't listening. Candidate Sharron Angle was listening. People are tired of hearing about what establishment representatives want to do for them. They want elected officials to represent them.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid isn't listening. Almost immediately after Angle won (he'll face her in the general election), Reid's campaign launched a release attempting to label her ideas as "wacky." Someone didn't think to tell his staff that the block who voted for her might be put off by it. At least she's representing Nevada, some might say.

The story played out the same in the gubernatorial race. Gov. Gibbons could have turned his time in office around, but he consistently didn't listen. It wasn't the economy that cost him his incumbency. It was how he handled the economic downturn. While he made some of the right decisions, he only "heard" people didn't want tax increases. That's true (they can't afford them). But what he didn't hear is that they wanted him to demonstrate leadership. By the time he did, it was too late.

In the one race I was engaged with, it was much the same. Tim Williams was an underfunded underdog. His opponent was "anointed." Some insiders were so convinced that he could not win that they advised him to directly attack his opponent. He refused. The public is tired of games. Williams listened.

Are you listening or are you hearing?

Whether it is a political campaign or consumer product, the public is much more sensitive to who is listening and who is not. Generally, you can tell the difference in whether they react to what they hear or respond because they are listening.

Case in point: the Obama administration thinks that they didn't communicate their response to the BP oil spill clearly enough. So, he reacts by defending what the government did do. He's not listening. People don't care about what they did do or whose "ass" he intends to kick. They want someone to clean up the spill. Use hair. Use hay. Use air filters. Just clean it up and stop making it worse.

Writing Skills: Public Trust In Education Falls Short

Harris Interactive, one of the world's leading custom market research firms, recently conducted a poll to determine how Americans feel about 16 quality of life issues across the country. What was especially striking to me was that colleges and universities ranked high (65 percent), but the public school systems ranked low (32 percent).

Keeping in mind that SAT and ACT scores are not meant to test for achievement and are generally taken only by students considering college, the public might have a case. We took a look to see how well the brightest students were performing.

Between 1990-91 and 2008-09, SAT test scores peaked between 2003-05 and then began to decline. Writing has steadily declined since 2006 across the board. Contrary, ACT scores peaked sharply in 2007, before declining again in 2008.

2009 SAT Test Scores

• National Critical Reading Average 501
• Nevada Critical Reading Average 501

• National Mathematics Average 515
• Nevada Mathematics Average 505

• National Writing Average 493
• Nevada Writing Average 479

2009 ACT Test Scores

• National English 20.6
• Nevada English 20.5

• National Math 21.0
• Nevada Math 21.4

• National Reading 21.4
• Nevada Reading 22.0

• National Science 20.9
• Nevada Science 21

Specific to my state, Nevada has consistently dropped in SAT performance, with 42 percent of the students taking the test last year. And while it scored 21.5 on the ACT, only 30 percent of students took the test. This represents a relatively low percentage of college bound students, especially when compared to some states where up to 70 of students test.

Is The State by State Public School System Broken?

Some people think so. In fact, the public school systems rank low enough in public opinion that national initiatives, such as the Common Core State Standards Initiative, are working toward standardizing the educational system on a national level on a voluntary state-by-state basis. I'm not writing about this in depth today. It's a complex issue. At a glance, I can say I had no issues with the recommended literature.

More to the point, people in Nevada clearly feel the school system is broken, particularly in Clark County. And from my own perspective as a parent with a child in the public school system, I've noticed the best teachers tend to deviate from the system that is currently in place. The least effective tend to adhere rigidly to the system. So do systems really work?

In addition to being a parent, I also teach a few educational outreach classes part time at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In most university settings, teachers are generally free to teach the subject matter any way they would like. And from what the students tell me, the educational process is hit and miss as a result. Some teachers lend nothing to the experience. So maybe the real problem is the teachers?

Modern Solutions For Teaching Education.

It seems to me, much like any communication program, you need to balance educational goals and needs. You need a solid system; but you also need teachers that know when to deviate or supplement that system based on the needs of each class.

This Saturday, I will be teaching a half-day program on "Editing and Proofreading Your Work." The class is designed to improve clarity, consistency, and correct usage in your personal, literary, commercial, or business writing. The class was constructed from scratch, but I deviate from the material every year based on in-class feedback. The result is a program that never repeats.

It seems to me that the structure of the class works much the same way modern education works best. While much of the foundation is built upon grammar basics, the class is adapted toward communication, integrating the Associated Press Stylebook and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White (among others).

For example, given the limited time I have with students, I might mention subordinate clauses, independent clauses, antecedents, etc. in passing. But that is not the focus of the class. I really want students to be able to apply the instruction on a daily basis by thinking about the sentences they write. Memorizing terminology or rote memorizing rules tends to be less effective than learning to analyze a single sentence for clarity and by exercising critical thinking skills.

Over the years, however, I found something else. Students that learn to apply the examples tend to learn the grammatical terms anyway. So, it allows the students, especially those that lack proficiency in writing, to learn by application as opposed to memorization.

In other words, if this was a class in a public school system, they would first learn to write better essays and then learn what an antecedent is through the application. The problem with many systems today is they attempt to do it backward, stressing the importance of the antecedent first.

Think of what we're asking student brains to do with traditional instruction. It requires us to strip a sentence of comprehension, overlay unrelated semi-memorized terminology, reconstruct it, double-check with comprehension, and then repeat. Instead, I like to teach students to recognize when a sentence lacks clarity, pinpoint the problem, and correct it based on style suggestions. In the process, they learn the terms anyway.

Anyone interested in the class can register online or call 702.895.3394. You can also contact Michelle Baker if you have any questions (check the class listing for her contact information).

But, in closing, I'd rather leave people with a different thought. Public education is failing if the majority of high school students score just better than 1,000 on an SAT, and 21 on the ACT. Most colleges won't accept those scores. So we might prize our universities, but what good are they if only about 20 percent of all students can be admitted without an educational handicap? Your guess is as good as mine.

Growing Businesses: Slow And Steady

If you are looking for any signs of economic recovery, think small. Small business is continuing to grow at a slow and steady pace despite economic challenges and some uncertainty over the impact of the financial overhaul bill that serves as a contrast to the Federal Reserve's call for increased small business lending.

According to the 2010 Small Business Scorecard/May by SurePayroll, small business hiring continued to increase slightly in May (+0.3 percent over April), bringing the year-to-date increase in hiring to 3.7 percent. The reason is simple enough. There is a psychology behind the optimism.

Small Business Scorecard By Region

• Midwest, up 4.3 percent with Illinois leading growth
• Northeast, up 2.3 percent with no distinguishable leader
• South, up 3.5 percent with California leading growth
• West, up 3.9 percent with Texas leading growth

In most states, the trade-off for improved employment is smaller salaries and slightly diminished optimism (down from 68 percent to 63 percent from April to May) as small businesses accept greater risks to take their companies to the next level.

One Quick Tip For Developing Businesses

As small businesses grow, owners quickly learn they have to wear many hats. Most of them serve as human resources director, purchasing agent, sales agent, bookkeeper, etc., etc. In fact, the number one complaint I hear from many business owners is that they eventually feel pulled away from the passion that prompted them to open their business in the first place.

Even with marketing, social media may have opened up a low cost opportunity that is being readily adopted, but relatively few really have time to follow the "owner online" model prescribed by some social media experts and authors.

Likewise, most small business tips smack of common sense that still can't be executed, e.g., avoid distractions, limit e-mail usage, organize time slots, and tackle the big rocks first. Sure, such tips work but only on a tactical basis. But to succeed strategically, business owners should focus on two things: what they love to do and their overall vision for the company.

Sure, they need to learn some basics across several subjects to ensure they hire the right people and outsource to the right consultants or small businesses. But they don't have to wear all those hats. They only have to wear one, besides whatever it is that they love to do, and that is the hat of an executive who is capable of hiring people who take on dual roles within the company. It's a strategy worth detailing later this week.

Pretending At Freshness: Fresh Content Project

In the film industry, most producers know that you can have a good script and still produce a bad movie. However, if you have a bad script, you can't hope to produce a good movie. Communication works much the same way.

You cannot spin bad actions into positive perception. You can, however, change negative perception by communicating positive action. Even then, it's still hard work. In fact, it can be extremely hard to change public perception when the communication is grounded in truth and results are self-evident, never mind trying to paint a smiley face on sludge.

Ergo, you can adopt social media and still come up short when the focus is on creating the perception of a following (without actually having one). You can give customers every product choice under the sun and gain nothing more than overstocked inventory. You can attempt to spin away a crisis, but all it does is add more fuel to slipping public trust as the oil washes on up on southern beaches.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of May 24

• Social Media in Small Business is Anything But Small.
Brian Solis recaps the Small Business Success Index (SBSI) by the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business with Network Solutions. The study reveals that social media adoption by small business has doubled in the past year, with an emphasis on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The primary reason is to identify and track new customers, but several small businesses are looking to do much more in terms of understanding customers and engaging them.

• Four Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Campaign Sucks.
While small business is adopting social media, it doesn't mean everybody is adopting it right. Dave Fleet pulls together four of the most common reasons social media doesn't always work for business. His list includes investing too little into the effort, scrapping programs too soon, misidentifying the environment as a paid medium, and treating it as a one-way communication tool. He's right. In an effort to establish a presence, businesses assume they can attract an audience too fast with very little effort.

• What Will Top Kill?
At the 36-day mark of the BP oil spill, Geoff Livingston provides a balanced accounting of BP communication efforts. He notes that while its communication improved, much of those improvements occurred too late in the crisis to be effective. The result has been a loss of public trust not only in BP but also the Obama administration, which allowed the company to control most of the communication. Eventually, the administration learned that while the public blames BP, they expected more than oversight from the administration.

• Cut Products, Boost Sales
As someone who writes with a focus on neuromarketing, Roger Dooley frequently hits upon little known facts within the communication and marketing field. While some people are content to attempt to cater to customers by giving them an infinite amount of choices, the science behind the marketing shows the opposite might be true. By reducing the number of selections, sales actually increase. However, Dooley also does a great job in balancing out the analysis. Some low volume products are supported by highly engaged and passionate consumers.

• BP: 2010’s Most Irresponsible Corporate Citizen
After BP claimed it acted responsibly in its attempts to correct the spill, Geoff Livingston analyzes whether or not it can own that statement. Of course it can't. In a virtual repeat of what Toyota did wrong earlier this year, BP was too slow to shore up its crisis communication but too fast in proclaiming a success to stop the problem. Livingston pinpoints seven examples of why the BP communication not only failed but also served to make the public even angrier.

Planning For Disaster: Communicators And PR Must Step Up

While my grandparents were poor by most definitions, my grandfather would go to great lengths to protect one of the last remnants of his family's possessions in the north woods town of Minocqua, Wisconsin. It was a summer cottage, for which he mortgaged his city home in Milwaukee every year in order to keep and maintain it until he retired. My uncle also owned a nearby home.

As one of the few four-season families in the area, my uncle was a natural leader. In addition to being to a small business owner, he served as a volunteer fire chief, mayor, and led teams to mark snowmobile trails across the partially frozen lake every winter. My grandfather, who was a former engineer and seasonal painter, was much the same.

Both men had experience in disaster planning. Coming from a small somewhat isolated community, it was a skill set that could not be left to other people. I even remember my grandfather putting his skills to good use when tornadoes interrupted a Boy Scout paper drive in the heart of Milwaukee. People immediately turned to him to lead.

Nowadays, there are fewer men like my uncle and grandfather, especially in urban areas. Disaster response tends to be left to professionals. But in considering the Gulf Coast catastrophe, it seems we need more citizens to understand response.

In fact, looking back on my recent guest host conversation on The El Show with Geoff Livingston, I think we might have invested some time on disaster planning beyond discussing how communicators can address unethical behavior. Communicators, even public relations professionals, need to establish a role within any disaster planning. It's vital that they do.

The Four Basic Tenets Of Disaster Planning.

1. Mitigation. Mitigation focuses on long-term measures to reduce or eliminate risk. These might include technologies or policies, set in place by companies or government.

2. Preparedness. Planning, organizing, training, evaluating, and improving activities that will ensure the proper coordination of efforts during a disaster.

3. Response. Response includes the mobilization of all necessary emergency services and first responders in the disaster area. Organized response requires a structure (leadership) and agility (creativeness).

4. Recovery. Recovery aims to restore the affected area to its previous state before the disaster. This almost always occurs after a disaster; it is the opportunity to assess where mitigation, preparedness, and response broke down.

Where Disaster Planning Broke Down With The Spill.

1. Mitigation. It seems obvious that neither the government nor BP (and subcontractors) had properly mitigated the potential for such a disaster. While policies were in place, it seems clear the regulatory agency did not have the technical expertise to oversee the procedural breakdown that led to increased risk at Deepwater Horizon.

2. Preparedness. To date, it seems obvious that the preparedness is almost non-existent. While the initial response saved most of the crew aboard the rig, neither BP nor the federal government has a plan for a large-scale coastal disaster. While this incident seems to have been caused by negligence, it strikes me as appalling that the government is largely unprepared for such a disaster.

3. Response. Given the failure of emergency response in the wake of Katrina, which was largely due to a complete breakdown in communications technology (I know because I've worked with the National Emergency Number Association, among other emergency response associations), it is perplexing that a new administration consisting of people who were hypercritical of and capitalized on Katrina would have done nothing to improve their ability to respond to a crisis. There is no communications technology breakdown this time. But there is a complete breakdown in appropriate federal leadership and agility over the response.

4. Recovery. Recovery is not simply litigation as our government has recently demonstrated as the answer for every problem ranging from the border issues in Arizona to the Gulf Coast oil spill. There is an apparent need to understand where the government's disaster planning continues to break down, not only with this administration but also prior administrations. The fundamental responsibility of any government is to protect its people — not from themselves — but from threats beyond the control of citizens. This time around it seems negligence played a role in the breakdown, but what about next time?

Where Any Communicator Can Effectively Play A Role.

Communicators, along with public relations professionals, have a real opportunity here to place a greater emphasis on tangible skills over manipulating public procedures. But to do it, they move beyond push marketing and puffery and embrace the much harder work that used to fall to people like my grandfather and uncle.

In many cases, they won't learn these skills from a textbook or building social media communities. It requires an ability to move from behind the desk, meet with and appreciate the men and women on the front lines, collect their input and consolidate it into a workable plan that anyone can follow.

More importantly, through their investigative work, communicators need to provide the oversight within their companies to point out where mitigation, response, and recovery is especially weak. Nothing needs to be smoothed over. If anything, people tasked with this work need to be as hard as nails, providing proper assessments to the executive team.

As I mentioned last week, bad PR is only a symptom of bad planning, I hope this helps move the conversation away from understanding and toward proactive responsibility. Communicators need not only be internal reporters, they can cut themselves from the same cloth as my grandfather and uncle.

Where Any Citizen Can Effectively Play A Role.

I might offer up the same advice to anyone. It seems apparent that while many local governments and some state governments have disaster response plans that we can count on, these plans are not scalable in the face of a disaster such as Gulf Coast oil spill, the aftermath of Katrina, the border breakdown in Arizona, or even the flooding in Tennessee.

Once they become too big for local and state agencies, the federal government is ill-equipped to respond beyond providing oversight. That means there is a greater need for citizens, each and every one of us, to have enough skills — like my grandfather and uncle did — to protect ourselves and our families in the wake of a disaster.

After all, if I was writing a family disaster plan today, the most obvious conclusion I would have to draw upon from the recovery efforts so far is that there are organizations doing all sorts of things that increase the risks to our health and happiness. And when their own mitigation breaks down, they do not have a plan to save you. We are on our own.

Considering Spin: Obama Administration

"Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don't know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred." — President Obama

Depending on whose accounting of the Gulf Coast oil spill you read, the Obama administration was either on top of the crisis from day one or it was woefully behind. The truth, as it often is nowadays, is somewhere in the middle.

The differences in how the story is reported relates to whether you include the federal government in the timeline, the Obama administration, or the President himself; whether you accept statements over actions; and whether you account for the results.

"From the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort." — President Obama

While the U.S. Coast Guard was on scene from day one, most federal agencies represented were merely overseeing BP efforts.

It wasn't until April 29, nine days after the accident and four days after the unified command inaccurately estimated the leak was spewing 1,000 barrels or 42,000 gallons a day (which was estimated at five times as much and later much more), that the Obama administration recognized the spill to be of national significance.

The reporting reveals how much of the communication would be handled from that point forward. On April 25, the unified command provided the inaccurate oil leak estimate, which included federal officials. On April 28, federal officials say BP provided an inaccurate estimate.

Meanwhile, the same press conference Media Matters uses to build its case to prove the administration was in control of the situation paints an obvious picture. The President was "following the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico," the EPA was monitoring, and the secretary of the Interior accurately describes the operations as one of "anticipating," "planning," and providing "oversight."

April 29 is also the day President Obama pledges "every single available resource," including the U.S. military, to contain the spreading spill. He will visit the Gulf Coast to see cleanup efforts firsthand three days later. At the same time, almost every communication from the White House reinforces that the cleanup responsibility belongs to BP.

Almost a full month after Obama made the pledge, Bobby Jindal, Louisiana governor, said that he and other Gulf Coast governors were “taking matters into our own hands.” On June 2, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley questioned why parts of the Gulf Coast are left unprotected. On the same day, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is no longer downplaying the crisis. And while Florida continues to invest in tourism advertising free unlicensed fishing weekends while it can, the fishing industry has already been called a disaster.

Worse, the Gulf Coast may no longer be the only region to be impacted. There is growing concern that oil will reach the Atlantic Coast.

And yet, during President Obama's second visit to the area on May 28, with the prospect of the Top Kill procedure working, he declared "I am the president and the buck stops with me." Shortly after the procedure failed, the President launched a public relations offensive against BP and started to see the accident as an opportunity to press for an energy reform plan.

"I'm confident people are going to look back and say this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis." — President Obama.

According to a release by the Global Language Monitor’s NarrativeTracker, President Obama's confidence ought to be shaken. Overwhelmingly, the public sees the the administration was slow to respond and more than half still don't believe the administration is in control.

• 95 percent of the social media conversations characterize President Obama as "slow to respond."
• Despite what President Obama has said, 52 percent still believe that BP is in charge of the spill containment.
• Most people compare the spill to Exxon Valdez, not Hurricane Katrina, which was a natural disaster.
• The public is split in deciding whether or not Obama is hands on or hands off on this event.

So where is the middle? The federal government (specifically, the U.S. Coast Guard) was on top of the spill from day one. The Obama administration merely positioned itself as an armchair player. Politically, it seemed like the safe bet. If things went well, the administration could claim being on top of it. If things went bad, they could blame BP. The communication bears this out.

As for public perception, it has become a result unto itself. With a catastrophe this large, the only possible way the public might be confused over who is in charge is a direct result of the communication delivered by the administration. As for the President himself, his schedule suggests he is correct in that this has been his administration's top priority, but not necessarily his priority.

And now? The most obvious priority is finding the right scapegoat. Even the international press sees it for what it is, with the President's reported "rage" framed up as just another sign of weakness. BP might be responsible for the spill, but it is not responsible for a plan that reads like more spin than response.

Other Reactions Around The Web.

• Welcome to the Obama BP Spin War.
• Obama Begins Spill-To-Bill Pivot.
• Oil-Spill Spin: Who Can You Trust? (Obama Is Not Even On The List)
• James Carville Slams Obama on Oil Spill.
• How Washington Just Worsened the Gulf Oil Spill.

Making Choices: 10 Steps To Improve Oil Spill Communication

On any other day, I might pen a post much like Bob Conrad, communications officer for the Nevada Department of Conservation of Natural Resources. The oil spill is a consequence of attempting to maintain ever sprawling and increasingly complex human systems.

He's right, much like he was right to cite the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill crisis. It's comparative in that it was the worst our country had ever seen when 200,000 gallons of crude oil bubbled to the surface and was spread into an 800-square mile slick by winds and swells. As a comparative model, it demonstrates how far we have evolved from the roots of our industrial ignorance.

"I don't like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life," Fred Hartly, president of Union Oil Co., had said in 1969. "I don't like to call it a disaster, because there has been no loss of human life. I am amazed at the publicity for the loss of a few birds."

"It is sad that it was necessary that Santa Barbara should be the example that had to bring it to the attention of the American people," reflected U.S. President Richard Nixon. "What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and of the land in a more effective way and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future. The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people."

By comparison, the roles seem almost reversed, with BP demonstrating it understands the consequences of its actions and has accepted responsibility to clean up the spill. Whereas the current administration for lack of a plan, has turned toward vilification.

The oil isn't the only containment that needs to be stopped. The runaway communication is equally poisonous.

Ten Steps To Improve Oil Spill Communication.

Step 1. Centralize The Spokesperson. A few weeks ago, someone else might have been better suited to be the primary speaker on the Deep Horizon Response, but today it seems clear U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen has the compassion and captured the respect of the media. He understands that there is no time for politics. He is focused on the crisis.

Step 2. Reorganize The Unified Command Communication. With U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen in the lead, the responsibility of communication is best placed in a cooperative role between the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who can coordinate specific communication from other agencies as needed. There is no need to duplicate resources with multiple communication channels.

Step 3. Make BP A Principal Partner In The Response. Currently, the administration waffles back and forth from positioning BP as the response leader and public enemy number one depending on public outcry. There is no need. BP has accepted responsibility, and while its own communication seems tempered below transparency, it is exceedingly clear that the United States needs its partnership and cooperation to end the crisis. They've hired more than 20,000 people to help.

Step 4. Establish A Response Advisory Counsel. The administration should have already pooled the best scientific, environmental, and industry minds to address the crisis. They need to do it now. There are likely innovations that can be applicable in responding to the crisis, people who can provide counsel to the people on the ground, under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Step 5. Establish An Economic Advisory Committee. The full scope of the crisis has yet to be fully imagined. Some economic experts are already cautioning that the environmental disaster has enough economic consequence to cause a double dip recession as entire coastal industries have been shut down. Their warnings deserve attention.

Step 6. Save Investigations Until After The Cleanup. While some investigations will no doubt be conducted during the crisis, the emphasis of finding fault in a tragedy is a waste of resources and public attention. Rather than rally the public to smell for blood in the water, it seems more productive to channel their passion to be part of the solution. Every swipe at BP right now is a swipe at the people most capable to fund the cleanup.

Step 7. Coordinate State Action. Some point people from the Unified Command should be dispatched to coordinate regional environmental cleanup efforts with a direct line of internal communication. Given the push back on some members of the press and environmental scientists by non-BP crews, it is clear there are near autonomous groups making up their own rules. It's expected without leadership. They need to be organized and given expressed clear rules. Each state can be involved by coordinating the various local environmental groups and general public under these point people.

Step 8. Direct The Public. Fanning public anger, frustration, and outcry is useless. Instead, more effort and attention need to be coordinated to provide the public with productive action. The bigger picture, beyond political posturing, is that the country is faced with an environmental crisis with consequences that can only be guessed at. Everyday heroes are being made daily as they clean up the spill.

Step 9. Kill The Politicizing. One of the worst communication atrocities made during this crisis to date was a feeble attempt to rub the spill into the noses of those who believe in a limited government. Comments such as "See, you need us now" is a childish comparison to government interventions such as banning Happy Meal toys. This type of crisis is precisely where the government is supposed to take a leadership role in contrast to the encroachment inside our homes.

Step 10. Be Responsible Instead Of Repugnant. When a crisis like this occurs, the knee jerk reaction is to over regulate in response nowadays. Lack of regulation didn't cause the oil spill, but it seems apparent that a breakdown of regulatory oversight contributed. Responsible action would be to reform agencies after the crisis rather than eliminate their ability to function by restructuring them during the crisis.

The Gulf Coast Oil Spill is a tragedy. It is the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States. However, let's keep in mind that the "worst" line has been crossed dozens of times before Deep Horizon. And while it is unfortunate, it is also very likely they will be crossed a dozens or more times in our future despite any regulatory bodies and safety measures put in place. That is the price of nurturing massive human systems.

Even so, while we cannot control the crisis we might face as individuals, industries, or nations, we can always manage how we react to them. Simply put, the response to a crisis need not be as tragic as the crisis itself. That is a choice. In the past, our nation has had dozens of leaders who made the right ones. Nowadays, we can only hope. But it doesn't seem likely.

Lacking Leadership: Minerals Management Service

With the Obama administration facing its first crisis without a discernible opponent to discredit, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently offered up one solution. Blame Bush for the Minerals Management Service, which is the regulatory agency that oversees offshore drilling.

This time around, the excuse seems as desperate as her disgust over being asked whether she would donate hair to help. The reason her allegations seem disingenuous only requires a quick review of the facts.

Minerals Management Service Backgrounder

In the Gulf Coast, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) is partly responsible because it was the one agency that could have pulled the plug on the bad decisions being made. The agency didn't. Even when BP sent unusual rapid-fire requests to modify permits, the agency seemed to keep pace, approving some within as little as five minutes.

Neither BP nor Transocean has commented on the permit changes. And despite the promises of an administration to be more forthcoming and transparent, MMS declines to comment too. Perhaps nobody is talking because they all know the risks.

Sure, MMS had a track record of problems that came to light after the inspector general published a devastating report in 2008. The report revealed ethical lapses related to the MMS royalty collection program and officials at its Lakewood office who had engaged in drug use and sexual activities with industry insiders. But those problems do not necessarily lead to the crisis.

Contrary, according to previous statements from Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, the agency had already been beaten into submission with reprimands, terminations, and criminal prosecutions. Salazar himself took the lead in reforming what he described as a corrupt culture. But after his house cleaning, it seems Salazar failed to fix the damage.

As soon as Elizabeth Birnbaum, who recently resigned, took charge of MMS about 10 months ago, she found a demoralized agency ill-equipped to meet the new priority of renewable energy. Clicking on the link to the MMS DOI Strategic Plan seems to confirm it. The return reads "file not found."

While there is no plan, it does seem Birnbaum cared and was trying to manage the leaderless agency, funneling most of her energy into offshore wind projects in the Atlantic. And, she wasn't afraid to speak on the Gulf Coast crisis. In fact, she was preparing to testify before a congressional panel about the agency's role in handling BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But Salazar's office didn't want her to testify. She resigned shortly after.

The Missed Opportunity For MMS

Despite its own negligence that contributed to the Deepwater Horizon crisis, standard communication protocol would have called for MMS to take charge of its communication much like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took charge of the crisis created by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) in 2009. So why didn't it?

House Speaker Pelosi already provides the answer. Allowing MMS to become the point team on the crisis communication would have circumvented the administration's ability to deflect responsibility.

So instead of MMS (or the EPA as an alternative) taking the communication lead, the Department of the Interior all but silenced MMS before proceeding to break it up into parts. In place of a centralized communication channel, like we saw with the FDA or even FEMA in the wake of Katrina, the public is given a collection of sometimes contradictory statements about the crisis and who is in control.

Even at the special Deepwater Horizon Response Web site, it is unclear who is responsible for managing the content. It's every agency for themselves. There is no leadership.

Sure, the Deepwater Horizon Response site includes the 15 different agencies and companies that make up the Unified Command, but it does not assign any particular agency or company responsible for updates. While U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen is now identified as the national incident commander, he was also the first to honestly admit that the federal government was not broadly "in charge."

It was this candid, honest response that prompted the American Spectator to call him the only adult on-scene commander for this disaster. Clearly, he ought to be charge if for no other reason than to stop the non-communication coming from Department of Interior, The White House, and other agencies. (Even this weekend, I received a news release from the EPA with nothing more than a visitation tally count among the President and other cabinet members.)

Why all the confusion? The reality seems to be that no one is in control of the spill or the cleanup. And the sheer lack of a centralized communication plan can only be indicative of a top-down failure to establish any centralized leadership.

The international community is just now seizing on this fact, noting that U.S. authorities took unnecessarily long to define the incident as a national disaster and failed to appreciate early enough that BP had no ready and obvious solution for stopping the leak. For them, it's all too obvious in the speeches being delivered by President Obama.

Obama seems to be waffling on whether to call BP a partner or public enemy number one. In one speech, he even drove home the point that his administration was in control but then stressed BP was letting him down as it called the shots. It can't be both. Or can it?

As investigations continue, the administration can expect the questions will become more and more difficult. The international community is already asking why the Obama administration was poised to open up more offshore drilling when they weren't confident in the regulatory agency overseeing it and without an emergency oil spill response plan.

So far, instead of answering those questions, President Obama has pledged to bring those responsible to justice. Ironically, such a move might include his administration; if not for the leak, then for the containment of it.

A special thanks to Geoff Livingston for inviting me to discuss some of these issues on his online radio show, EL Show, today. Tomorrow, we'll present some ideas on how the administration could attempt to turn the crisis communication failure around.

Remembering Those Who Lived: Memorial Day

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived." — General George S. Patton

The death of Marine Cpl. Jacob C. Leicht from Texas marked a grim reminder for most Americans that freedom comes at a price that is often paid by others. He was the 1,000th soldier killed in Afghanistan. In Iraq, the number of deaths reached 1,000 in October 2004. The Washington Post chronicles the fallen whereas the words of President Abraham Lincoln, written before the first Memorial Day (originally Decoration Day), remain among the most quoted for all those who came before them. I leave them for you today.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. — President Abraham Lincoln

What else can be said, except to ask ourselves daily whether we still hold such resolve in high regard, that those men and women who have laid down their lives have done so in the name of freedom. We may hope.

Considering Content: Fresh Content Project

Over the last five years, dozens of bloggers have pinpointed four of the most critical elements — content, engagement, participation, community — for a "successful" and sustainable social media program. And yet, only a few of them understand that none of these elements exists in a bubble. They have to work together, plus one more.

Three out of five of these posts touch on what can easily be considered the fifth element, best defined as a mix of innovation and leadership. Listening to some social media experts, you might miss it as they tend to drone on about being submissive to consumers. These authors, on the other hand, get it right. At some point, you have to lead.

The other two posts are perfect examples, as they take the lead in dispelling two common social media myths: that extensions like blogspot, wordpress, and typepad are always bad and affiliate marketing does not always have to be considered evil. At the same time, you might also take away that content, engagement, participation, community, and leadership/innovation trump whether or not you have a blog extension or participate in an affiliate marketing program.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of May 17

• Don't Just Show Up (Participation), Step It Up (Innovation).
Christina Kerley calls it right when she writes that communicators ought not to be overly dazzled by the various platforms that serve up content on the Web. They are innovation, but the creation, content, and communities applied to the space can be equally innovative. Participation is always an excellent first step to understand an existing online community, but it requires more than participation from marketers to shine.

• Affiliate Marketing And Its Bad Reputation.
"Affiliate marketing had a bad reputation, the history of which seems to echo forward," writes Chris Brogan. "A lot of the blogging crowd, especially those with a PR background strongly dislike the use of affiliate marketing." The conversation stems in part from the age-old argument of just how much editorial needs to be separated from advertising, with Brogan falling on the pro-affiliate marketing side with proper disclosure. Public relations hates it sometimes because they like to get ink free.

• A First-Ever Look At The Top Blogger.com Wordpress.com & Typepad.com Blogs.
Jason Falls provides an in-depth review of various subdomains, blogs which have an extension attributed to the online software that powers them. (This blog did for years, until a few weeks ago). In reviewing the various top blogs that still retain their extensions, it seems extensions have little bearing on cumulative Postrank engagement scores as opposed to the size of the audiences that authors reach.

• 10 Ways To Be Referential.
Referential means containing a reference or pointing to and involving a referent. And Adam Singer provides 10 ways to become a referent, including being consistent within a topic field, taking a lead position in conversations, and sharing little known ideas or accepting an unpopular view. His tenth point is the best for bloggers: analyze and contextualize the information from your unique vantage point. The next fresh pick provides the example.

• 10 Things Julius Caesar Could Have Taught Us About Business, Marketing, Leadership.
By blending his own views and history with an emphasis on quotes and concepts from Julius Caesar, Olivier Blanchard delivers an entertaining and engaging piece of prose that still makes sense of the average business person or blogger today. The second point, that people want to be led and not controlled, is especially timely. There are plenty of people — business owners, executives, and even parents — who have a difficult time understanding the difference between the two. Blanchard and Caesar help put it into perspective.

Shifting Communication: Transocean Acts Under Siege

Much like Halliburton, the Transocean Web site remains unchanged by the Gulf Coast oil spill.

The most haunting page of all falls under the tab of responsibility. "At Transocean, we firmly believe that the safety of people underpins our success. Our safety vision above covers all our drilling units and shore-based facilities worldwide." And then there is the promise in big bold letters splash across the page as the header.

"Our operations will be conducted in an incident-free workplace, all the time, everywhere."

It's not just a headline by Transocean. It's also the company's vision statement.

Just off the front page, the only section mentioning drilling rig Deepwater Horizon is under news releases. All of its communication there has been a steady stream of releases, with an emphasis on the event from April 21 to April 26. April 26 marks the day that Transocean communication decisively changes.

The Communication Snap At Transocean.

What changed? Transocean shifts from crisis communication to increasingly defensive protectionism. After sending a message to investors that the total insured value of the rig is $560 million on April 26, releases shift to a limitation of liability petition for approximately $26 million as a necessary step to protect the interests of its employees, its shareholders and the company.

After that decisive turn, most communication becomes reactionary to rumors and the news reporting on those rumors, including the alleged distribution of any incident response forms that promised cash for cooperation. Four days later, Cheryl D. Richard, senior vice president of human resources and IT, announces her pending retirement.

The next and last communication, on May 25, responds to what it calls erroneous reports relating to its "shareholders' approval of a dividend and its intent to avoid liability arising from the Deepwater Horizon incident or to profit from such incident." The release goes on to say that "Transocean will honor all of its legal obligations arising from the Deepwater Horizon accident."

A statement seems to contradict its limitation of liability petition. Meanwhile, the company's online newsletter Beacon, appears frozen in winter 2010, filled with letters of praise. It's biannual employee publication is frozen even earlier; the last available issue published in 2008.

Coincidently, perhaps, 2008 also seems to represent a shift in company behavior. Between 2008 and 2009, Transocean went from a hot stock pick to a company that seemed to move away from the aforementioned safety-laced vision. The company had five management appointments, two vice president appointments, and a change in the nation where it is incorporated. It moved from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland.

The Transocean Connection To The Spill.

For those who might not know, Transocean was the owner and operator of Deepwater Horizon. As such, Lamar McKay, the president and chairman of BP, has alluded that the blame belongs there (despite BP accepting responsibility for the cleanup). Transocean CEO Steve Newman responded by saying it was not the time for finger pointing ... before attempting to shift blame away from his own embattled company.

If there is any truth to some of the stories surfacing in papers today, the Deep Horizon incident plays out like many construction contractor-subcontractor relationships.

Subcontractors sometimes drag their feet, which places pressure on the supervising contractor to exert influence. In one summary offered up by the Huffington Post, which criticizes the absence of two key testimony witness, it seems to be the most logical scenario, with "Donald Vidrine, BP's 'company man,' overruled the rig's chief mechanic and driller and pushed to speed up the process by remove the drilling mud faster to save BP money on the day of the tragic explosion."

It would make sense, given many of the initial delays were related to the Halliburton slowdown. However, there is one write-up that smacks of perception. If oil rigs are anything like ships, BP could probably not overrule a chief mechanic and put Transocean at risk unless the owner-operator was predisposed or ordered to follow contractual obligations and ignore the company's eroding vision to allow safety to lead to success.

The Psychology Of Influence And Erosion Of Communication.

If you worked as a pizza delivery driver and the boss told you to drive 20 miles per hour over the speed limit to shave 15 minutes off the delivery time, you might be inclined to say no. Some people might even say hell no. On Deepwater Horizon, Transocean said yes.

Once again, it seems Milgram was right. The question that ought to be asked is what convinced a chief mechanic and driller to change his mind? Was it mounting pressure from BP? Was it the lack of communication or a direct order from his company? Or was it the authorization to proceed from the regulatory agency's approval to proceed?

Answer that question andprimary party responsibility seems to land squarely. However, that is not to say the balance of participants are to be exonerated. Guilt doesn't wash off as well as oil.

From the perspective of communication alone, Transocean seems to have the most to lose. It's clearly the most defensive, sometimes flailing about. There must be a reason. Sometimes those actions are the sign of inexperienced communicators or crisis counsel. Other times, it's merely an admission that the company hasn't been observing its vision for the better part of two years.

We'll pick up on our crisis communication evaluation next Tuesday. Mostly, we're just thrilled the real priority, plugging the leak, seems to be working. In the interim, consider some other worthwhile perspectives.

• Geoff Livingston pinpoints where BP communication becomes muddled. It's an excellent point-by-point resource primer.

• Patrick Kinney of Gaffney Bennet Public Relations talks to Lynn Neary about BP's public response to the Gulf oil spill. Kinney worked for Ogilvy Public Relations when it helped BP rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum."

• Chris Maloney pens one post that pinpoints what BP seems to be doing right since taking full responsibility for the spill. His writeup is a bit more tempered than those who gave BP a B on crisis communication. (A "B," really? Not in my class.)

Communicating Zip: Why Halliburton Is Quiet

When you visit the Halliburton Web site, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, business continues as usual.

The board declared a 2010 second quarter dividend of nine cents ($0.09) a share on the company’s common stock, the Gulf of Mexico remains "one of the world's most prolific producing areas," the company was busy presenting at the 2010 UBS Global Oil and Gas Conference, and the deep water drilling section of the site concludes "our experience speaks for itself."

Mostly, with exception to the prepared statement (one release away from being bumped off the home page) that was delivered by Tim Probert, president, Global Business Lines and chief Health, Safety and Environmental officer, Halliburton, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico already reads like a memory rather than a current event. It's not.

The Halliburton Connection To The Spill.

Halliburton connection to the crisis is that it was responsible for sealing the well. The casing to seal the well was installed several days before the explosion. (CNN provides one of the better investigation time lines for April 20, if you are interested.)

What makes the casing significant is most accounts point to gas leaking through the casing just hours before the explosion. This seems to be supported by BP briefs as rig workers tried to close valves on the blowout preventer at least twice.

However, there are four points to consider related to the casing. Only one point falls squarely on Halliburton.

1. BP's decision to install a single barrier option made the best economic case.
2. There are some contentions that the Halliburton work was taking longer than usual and possibly improperly constructed .
3. BP seems to have made a decision to perform some tasks related to the last plug in reverse order, something that would require MMS approval.
4. BP officials had made a decision to run only six of 21 tests to ensure the drill pipe was properly centered; an uneven drill pipe could have contributed to the instability of the installation.

The Halliburton Postion And Communication Strategy.

The Halliburton position is that it was following Transocean’s orders (as dictated by BP) and is "contractually bound to comply with the well owner’s instructions on all matters relating to the performance of all work-related activities." It has simultaneously defended its work while also claiming it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.

In terms of ongoing communication, other than saying it is cooperating with investigations and releasing its investigation statement, the company is silent. While Halliburton is providing some intervention support to help secure the damaged well and planning and services associated with drilling relief well operations, details are absent.

Public relations professionals and crisis communicators generally hate this communication approach. The reality is that such little communication from Halliburton is indicative of a subcontractor role. Crisis communicators don't generally teach it, but subcontractors generally attempt to position themselves as subordinates.

The benefit for the subcontractor is limited responsibility for the communication. The benefit for the contractor is greater message control. In this case, Halliburton has mostly used its communication to send a message to BP and Transocean. That message is clear: it's your show unless you try to toss us under the bus.

Halliburton Communication Overview.

• Of the three companies, Halliburton is in the best possible position to escape the bulk of the backlash. It seems to know it, because even if the investigation shows its work may be the primary cause, the primary cause on its own did not result in a disaster. Several decisions leading up to and after the installation seem to have led to significant lapses in safety.

• The subcontractor communication strategy — based on the observation that the general public is not the customer — is becoming an arcane practice. While subcontractors have been traditionally exempt from the most rules of communication, the general public has become increasingly critical of subcontractors since the advent of social media.

• There are still weaknesses in Halliburton's communication. Given prior public exposure, the public is beginning to remember its name as a controversial and untrustworthy corporate citizen. Further, the excuse, "just following orders," seems as thin as medical personnel who relied on it during another crisis we covered two years ago.

• The most challenging concept for communicators to grasp is that the greatest threat to Halliburton is not tied to public pressure. It is only tied to how future contractors perceive their communication and cooperation during the crisis.

Since the company's survival rate is mostly based on how contractors view their cooperation, it seems likely that this company will once again survive controversy while employing a situational communication strategy that most communicators would not recommend. What could it do better?

Even for a subcontractor remaining mostly silent, Halliburton could have shored up communication on four fronts. Among them: communicating policies to ensure safe working conditions despite contractor "orders," avoiding any speculation in the testimony as opposed to what can only be called selective speculation, providing BP updates to roll on their site despite their own silence, and better communicating its role in cleanup efforts as a BP partner in being part of the solution.

In 2009, Halliburton’s total cash and in-kind donations amounted to $572 million. It would only make sense to earmark some of these funds toward a cleanup effort the company is at least partly responsible for.

Managing Crisis: Bad PR Is Only A Symptom

Any time a crisis involves a natural disaster, environmental catastrophe, or drawn-out tragedy, there is only one point of discussion.

When is it going to stop?

Transparency? It doesn't matter. Who is at fault? It doesn't matter. Is the federal government doing enough? It doesn't matter.

Sure, those questions are bound to be asked and asked again. Thirty-seven days is a long time to be in the midst of a crisis with multiple events. And during that time, when specific event coverage can no longer hold viewer interest, investigations start and second tier questions bubble up. But all stories always come back to that singular question. When is it going to stop?

It's the primary reason that for any communication offered up by one of the world's largest energy companies, it always circles back to live shots of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the ocean floor. It always ends with oil washing up on the shore. It always comes back to the impact on animals and sea life or the disruption of life for residents who live within the path.

This isn't "Obama's Katrina" as some people like to call it. Katrina was over, from the time it was upgraded to a tropical storm, in five days.

The oil spill is not an event. It's multiple events.

If there is one fatal flaw in the communication strategy by BP, the Obama administration, and dozens of other vested and guilty parties, it is that they have neglected to see the obvious. This crisis is not a singular event. It's a multiple event crisis, with each event requiring a different set of answers for first tier questions.

• Provide updates and estimates related to the time and date of the event.
• Determine the what, when, where, how, and why.
• Determine who will be involved and to what extent.
• Determine the public or environmental risk of each event.
• Determine the extent of any property damage and loss of life.
• Determine which authorities will be on the scene of each event.
• Estimate and create action plans when each specific crisis will be resolved.
• Keep providing updates, with any positive outcomes, until it is resolved.

Isolating each event related to the crisis is critical if anyone hopes to manage it. Otherwise, the culmination of unrelated events will overwhelm any singular or tag team entity much like Toyota's sometimes unrelated recalls that eventually added up into a company that lost its way.

As a visual, the greater mass of the oil crisis might be likened to a giant blob that BP is attempting to hold up on its own while other vested parties stand by hoping for the best. It's not possible. Crisis and communication blobs do not act like solid mass. They act more like oil. It slips. It drips. And eventually it will coat everyone involved. It doesn't matter who gets more soiled.

Instead, the entire crisis needs to be broken up into parts. There is the leak, which was the initial cause of the crisis. There is the oil that has already seeped into the ocean, killing wildlife, damaging fishermen, and halting tourism. There are scores of smaller events that impact specific ecosystems, local communities, and residents.

The first tier priority is to stop the leak. Until then, nothing else matters.


The second tier, which occurs simultaneously, is to contain the spread of the oil and disperse it. BP is managing this effort, but relying on support from the Coast Guard and hired local fishermen. The results to date are mixed, with some unexpected consequences to the individuals exposed to chemicals.

The third tier are the dozens of events that occur anywhere oil washes up on shore. BP is attempting to mange this aspect of the spill as well. It's clearly not working, with impacted states beginning to take the heat for not doing enough.

A reorganization of the entire process is badly needed. BP clearly needs to focus its energy on stopping the leak. The federal government needed to and still needs to step up responsibility and take action on mitigating the the impact of the oil that has already escaped instead of attempting to armchair quarterback the scene with conflicting messages. And local state governments ought to have taken the lead on individual events, with support from various environmental groups, to keep the beaches clear and clean up as the oil made landfall.

Sure, BP could still act as consultants on the second and third tier events, increasing its presence as each event is resolved. And they ought not to be acting alone. Some of the companies that have a partial responsibility are all but silent on the issue.

And the blame game? Who cares about that?

Considering the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf Coast, the top kill solution (if it works) is only the beginning of the environmental events to come. The blame will eventually come to light as investigations continue. What will also be the subject of great debate is why the federal government sought to look like it was in control early on, but then demonstrated only a presence.

Public relations alone cannot solve such a crisis alone. Neither can the various boycotts. If anything, boycotts could make the situation worse despite the reasons some people say to move ahead.

Healthier ways to participate in the crisis at this time include any number of efforts. One beneficiary of a satirical Twitter account BPGlobalPR is to raise funds for the Gulf Restoration Network. The boycotts, if any, can wait until after the spill.

Public relations is always reliant on the actual plan.

When any plan to deal with a crisis is bad, the symptom is improper communication. For its part, BP has attempted to keep communication channels flowing, but it is clearly holding back. They seem to be focused on a singular thought that if they fix everything and then prove themselves to be only partly to blame, then they may be able to justify the clean green logo.

However, as Geoff Livingston points out, that is not the case. He writes that the collective "crisis PR has been terrible with missteps on resolution, horrific transparency on possible solutions, false accounting of actual daily oil spill amounts, the policing of beaches to prevent media reporting, bickering between BP and the EPA, dispersants’ negative impact, a new climate bill that endorses further off-shore drilling, 19 new off-shore drilling licenses since Deep Horizon, etc., etc., on and on."

He says the crisis might be insurmountable for the company. I'm not sure yet, but only because BP is much more than BP. BP is Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, and even the Wild Bean Cafe. It's also a leader in biofuel technology. It's investing in solar technology. It's investing in wind. It's investing in emerging coal conversion technologies. And the list goes on.

You won't read about many of these efforts for the time being. BP is smart enough to keep the focus where is belongs, but there is more to the company than meets the eye. Where it is less adept, obviously, is in its ability to work beyond its internal sphere. Perhaps they think they are too big to do that nowadays. But they are not the only ones.

Generally, in the past, sometimes the federal government would be slow to take charge and delegate a national disaster. But ultimately, the federal government would. This time around, the crisis plan matches the PR plan. Every stakeholder in the oil spill crisis has its own message. And while it is said in many different ways, the underlying theme is "not me."

Other voices around the Web with a focus on communication.

• The Dirty Business of BP's Corporate Reputation Clean Up by Jennifer Janviere.
• Its Fake Twitter Stream Has Twice the Followers of the Real Thing by Jim Edwards
• How Not To Get “Brandjacked” Like BP Global PR by Olivier Blanchard