Adam Dooley, President of Dooley Communications, was recently interviewed by Uniter reporter Kristy Rydz on communications and corporate social responsibility. The question: can companies that pollute credibly call themselves environmentally sensitive?

The story examines the dilemma and wonders if some corporate efforts are only so much ‘greenwashing’.

What’s your view?

I pity the communications people around Newfoundland and Labrador premier Danny Williams. He’s a blowhard at the best of times, but how do you handle his decision to have relatively simple heart surgery in the United States.

Choosing to pay for a U.S. hospital over a ‘free’ Canadian one is akin to poking a finger in an open wound.It says loudly that one of our country’s most prominent leaders has more faith in U.S. hospitals than our own. Simultaneously, it has dragged a taboo topic into the spotlight: those who can afford it, go to the U.S. for serious health issues. There’s no other way to put it.

His message is clear: Canada’s health care system is second rate and pity the poor suckers who have to stay at home to wait (and wait and wait) to use it.

It would have been a stroke of genius if he had intended to drive home those points in a very public manner, but Williams continues to strike the oft-repeated chord of Canadian politicians:

“I have the utmost confidence in our health-care system, I certainly do,” the 60-year-old said (in the Globe and Mail), perched on a leather chair in his condominium in Sarasota, Fla. “It’s a bum rap for someone to turn around and say, ‘Oh, Williams does not have confidence in his own health-care system because he has to leave the province.’ ”

A bum rap, eh? No, the only one who got the bum rap was the PR person who has to try to keep lipstick on this pig.

Williams’ “ass”-inine actions follow on the heels of popular mixed martial arts fighter Brock Lesnar’s condemnation of a Manitoba hospital last month. Lesnar went to a Brandon hospital in the middle of a diverticulitis attack. Unsatisfied with how he was being treated, his wife drove him to North Dakota for treatment instead.

Credibility is the most valuable commodity in public communications. These public dismissals of our hospitals only reinforce the general public’s too frequently miserable experiences with health care in Canada. Whether you’re in Brandon, Manitoba or St. John’s, Newfoundland… or Ottawa … it’s must now be a lot harder to pitch a positive story about our hospitals.

Last week’s Tiger Woods apology-cum-public flagellation was nothing if not a great case study for students of communications. The golf great continues to get awful advice (perhaps he’s acting as his own PR counsel?) on how to rehabilitate his image following last fall’s sex scandal.

From the cheapskate podium and ‘community theatre’ backdrop to the phony delivery of his ‘lines’, Tiger’s apology just drew attention to just how far he’s fallen. And deservedly so. While critics of PR say it’s all about spin and lying, this is a perfect example of one PR maxim I follow: “never lie.” Lies are almost always found out, or at least sniffed at. They obliterate credibility. Yet, here was a guy who told whopper after whopper. Pretending to be a pillar of integrity, morals and discipline, he made tens of millions of dollars on his image and has justly lost millions as his image has been stripped bare… much like his skanky mistresses, I suppose.

An apology was necessary. It should have come last fall, but it didn’t. In this case, he would have been better off giving an exclusive interview to a friendly source. The Oprah show would have been perfect. It would have given him the opportunity to tell his side of the story more fully and it could have showed him to be more human.

But aside from Tiger’s image and marital rehab, there were also lessons on how organizations need to deal with episodes like this.

Ernie Els complained that staging the apology in the middle of one of the World Golf Championship tournaments was  selfish. He was right, and PGA Tour commissioner Tom Finchem apologized to Els and other players saying: “You can never communicate too much in this business, and when you don’t, you usually pay a price. And that was a good example.”

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for Tiger. As my mother used to say, he’s made his bed and now he has to lie in it. That bed might not be as uncomfortable if he had been following good communications advice from the start. The same goes for the PGA Tour, which needs to make an extra effort now to adjust its marketing and branding. It can’t be considered Tiger’s tour any longer. If it is, then the tour will risk battering its image just as badly as Tiger has hurt already his.

The Winnipeg youth soccer community erupted in drama last week as the city’s community centres announced they were setting up a new youth soccer league to rival the one run by the Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association (WYSA).

Both organizations are case studies of how poor communications practices have led to distrust and anger among stakeholder groups, which has decimated goodwill on all sides.In fact, now that its secret plans for a new league are out in the open, the Greater Council of Winnipeg Community Centres has admitted that it only pursued this action because WYSA refused to meet. GCWCC says it has asked for meetings with WYSA numerous times only to have their requests rebuffed or the meetings cancelled.

WYSA was turning turtle, pulling itself in to its shell and refusing to discuss legitimate concerns of a major stakeholder group. After all, a large portion of WYSA’s revenue comes from community centres and - as a soccer convenor for Lord Roberts Community Centre, I know they do have some legitimate concerns.

1. WYSA is worthy of its reputation for high-handed arrogance, running a cumbersome bureaucracy that needlessly wastes volunteer time, and which focuses more on premier programs while virtually ignoring rec league soccer.

2. The district soccer clubs (such as Winnipeg South End United) run great premier soccer programs, but they do so at the expense of recreational soccer leagues. District clubs such as WSEU annually decimate rec leagues by recruiting community centre players to fill their developmental leagues.  That practice is commonly (and rightly) viewed by convenors and parents in the south district as nothing but a charade designed to drive revenues to pay for premier programs.

3. Soccer fees have risen steadily over the past few years. When challenged about fees, WYSA and the district clubs appear reluctant to offer clear explanations for the increases or for where all the money is going in the first place. (I`m always sceptical of budget line items labelled `miscellaneous.`)

Not talking about these things won’t make them go away.But then GCWCC is no better. In fact, they took their strategy from the same playbook: plot in secret for years about how to get even with WYSA, don’t bother to consult with your own stakeholders, don’t do any substantive research… just bluster your way into setting up a new league. That’ll teach ‘em. Now they’ll have to talk, eh, what?

As it was presented to the Manitoba Soccer Association annual general meeting on Saturday, GCWCC says its new league will be cheaper and will somehow bring hundreds of new players into the fold (though they were shockingly spare on details on this score). The folks at GCWCC freely admit that they want to return to the good old days when community centres ran youth sports in this town (without asking why they deservedly lost that role to more specialized organizations over the last 30 years).

If I wasn’t involved in the soccer world myself, and if I didn’t love the game and want my kids to play it, I’d probably just laugh.It’s shockingly bad planning that community centres - who take their power from the people - didn’t bother to consult with anyone outside of an inner circle. There was no attempt to canvass parents, players, soccer convenors, etc. for ideas on how to improve the game. As a result, the new league will have a hard time claiming legitimacy.

The biggest problem in Winnipeg soccer is that there are too many competing fiefdoms, each trying to build themselves into empires on the backs of a shrinking pool of players. The GCWCC proposal is nothing more than a power play to try to wrest control over soccer from other organizations and, at the same time, drive more revenues into community centres.

On the other side, WYSA’s ‘my way or the highway’ attitude suffers from the same delusion of power. They want to run soccer without the hassle or inconvenience of being questioned about their decisions.

The real story is the one being lost as adults fight so hard to protect their turf: the kids are being ignored as everyone wrestles for bigger slices of their parents’ cheques. I believe that we need a great simplification of soccer. We should forget about who ‘controls’ the league and worry about how to get a better one.

GCWCC is right about one thing – we should encourage a bigger, less expensive rec league – but we don’t need a new, rival league to get this done. (All that will do is drain more volunteer time, goodwill and trust out of the system.) We need WYSA to climb down off its high horse and make it happen. Reduce player fees and administration and embrace the notion that we’re all working for the common good of a single pool of players.

We also need a system that requires less volunteer power to run. That means doing more to centralize and streamline registration, team building and player development in each district. For that, the community centres need to recognize that they are just as guilty of abusing volunteer time. The current system is wildly convoluted, creating an unnecessary workload on convenors, treasurers and community centre managers as they swap and transfer players around the city (and we won`t even touch on the issue of fields in this city). The only reason for this system`s existence is because that’s the way things have always been done in Winnipeg … a terrible justification of a stupid system.

Finally, soccer should follow the lead of hockey with its widely accepted tiering system for players. Only the top players make the premier teams, all others are placed according to their abilities, with the large majority playing in the lower tiers. This will go a long way to improving the players’ enjoyment of the game as it decreases the potential for lopsided contests that leave players dejected and looking for a way out of the sport.

I was shocked and dismayed at the cavalier disregard GCWCC and WYSA seem to be treating the kids they purport to serve. GCWCC has made matters worse with its new league. The only silver lining is that this may force WYSA to reform its ways. The alternative is a rapid and sad degeneration of soccer here just as it enjoys massive popularity everywhere else in the world. A pox on both their houses, I say.

If either side employed good communications strategies, none of this would have happened and we’d all be happily planning for another season instead of trying to clean up a nasty mess.

So the government has screwed you over. Your frustration is palpable. It rises to the surface as soon as anyone mentions the name of a certain minister or a bureaucrat. You can’t resist taking a shot at them every opportunity you get. But as the old saying goes: if you get into a pissing match with a skunk, you might win, but you’ll both end up smelling badly.

I spend a lot of my time advising clients about what and what not to say in public about a wide variety of issues. But media training and effective media relations is as much about how you say things too.

It is rarely (if ever) a good strategy to get into a highly charged, public confrontation. Our job is to influence the opinions, perceptions and behaviour of targeted audiences. We can’t do that job effectively if we appear to be irrational, angry or bitter. On the contrary, if you’re in a public battle, we want to show through our public utterances that we are more credible than our opposition. We’re the opinion leaders. We deserve our audiences’ respect and attention.

As is almost always the case with good corporate communications and public relations, it comes down to this: remember your audience!

That is just one of the important lessons we cover in our media training sessions. Dooley Communications has led media training for a wide variety of organizations in Winnipeg, Manitoba and across Canada, helping front line employees to executives better handle the pressures of representing their organizations in public.

A video showed up on YouTube this week that’s a prime example of how one unhappy customer can create a commotion like never before. United Breaks Guitars illustrates how important it is for companies to realize new media is giving average customers very powerful voices.

As the story goes Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, were on a flight from Halifax to Nebraska. During the connection in Chicago the band watched through the plane’s windows as luggage handlers threw around his guitar case containing his $3,500 Taylor guitar. Once he arrived in Omaha and claimed his luggage he was not surprised to find his guitar broken – so began his nine month fight with the airline for compensation.

After it was explained in no uncertain terms there was nothing UA could do, Dave Carroll made the last person he talked to at the airline a promise. He said he would write and produce three songs about his experience with UA and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. His goal is to reach 1 million views within the first year. This is the first installation in the trilogy and has already been viewed almost 500,000 times in the first 48 hours. These views are followed by almost 5,000 comments describing bad experiences with UA and other short messages of support to continue the good fight.

We have all been in this position – we are unhappy with the way we are being treated but feel helpless. Even if we do boycott the giant company in question our few dollars don’t impact its bottom line, therefore they don’t seem to care. But with the advent of new media websites designed to disseminate user-generated content to the masses quickly and freely it is now possible for any unhappy customer to cause a stir forcing a company to pay attention.

As a PR consultant and a consumer, I understand both sides of the story. As much as I am glad individuals have a tool like YouTube to tell their stories, I feel for companies that are unprepared to deal with this new form of unhappy consumers. Companies need to realize that the days of ignoring a complaint because it is just one person is over, those late in realizing this are more likely to become victims of crusades like the one Carroll is on.

The phenomenon is called a swarm and it is a  scary prospect for many companies who fear they’ll fall victim to this sort of attack. But on the other side of great adversity there is also great opportunity. The rule of thumb is to engage your complaining customers urgently, sincerely and in the medium they’re using. Apologize for transgressions if there are any and make amends quickly and professionally. If the complaint demands a new way of business for you and your industry, and if it makes sense, why not consider becoming an industry leader? Be the first to tackle the issue. For UA, can the company forge a better policy to deal with damaged luggage? By responding in the appropriate manner to Carroll’s complaint UA may even be able to win over the many other dissatisfied customers who have logged comments in support of the anti-UA effort.

As media changes and evolves, the rules of PR change as well. Companies need to know what is happening with their brands at all times. Just as the assaults are getting more imaginative the responses must be as equally as inspired to win over a very fickle public that loves to see someone sticking it to the man.

For companies, brands, organizations and people that ever doubted the value of social media as a powerful means of communication, the events of the last week in Iran must be an eye opening experience. Since the Iranian government has expelled almost all foreign correspondents the only news getting out of the country is being sent via social networks, namely Twitter.

What makes this particular situation different is that the content being shared on social networks is not remaining just on the social networks. Images and videos from inside Iran are being broadcast on television channels around the world – from CNN, to the BBC, to CBC.

The world is seeing the Iranian situation through the eyes of the Iranians. The news is coming from people living the event, not just reporting on it. This new free way to share information instantly around the world is forcing the Iranian government that has been accused of illegitimate actions in the past, to take notice and tread a little more carefully (witness the call for a review of some election returns by the clerics who run things there).
Some people and news outlets have called this the tipping point for Iran. Many feel that if ever Iran was going to throw off the cloak of old world thinking and reenter the world stage as a positive contributor that time is now.

Recent movements for positive change - the falling of the Berlin wall, the solidarity movement in Poland, the end of apartheid - have all come by way of people coming together, joining in the fight for change and slowly gaining the upper hand. It took communication; it took people understanding and drawing strength from their neighbours. With new technologies that enable anyone, anywhere in the world to instantly share their experiences through photos, videos or even their own voice, these movements now have the ability to do in days what used to take years.

It is hard to imagine this happening so quickly had it not been for Twitter, the killer social network with the silly name. Almost over night, a world that looked down on Iran has come to hope for it, to hope for its people. Some say that this could have all been possible without social media and they are right. Major change has happened many other times in our history without social media. However, a big contributor to the movement in Iran gaining momentum so quickly is because the people inside the country did not feel alone, they knew their messages were and are getting out and the people of the world are listening.

Many people are calling social networks a trend, and some aspects of it are trendy. There will always be a newer, hipper social network to be a part of, but social networks will always be there. The opportunities for communication that new media affords the world are just to great to ignore.

If you’re unsure how new media and social networks can benefit your business or organization, give Adam Dooley a call at 204-291-4092. We’d love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you to discuss the potential.

Throughout his seven Tour de France victories, Lance Armstrong earned adulation from around the world. And why not? He came back from cancer and transformed himself from a middle-of-the-pack racer to the best cyclist the world has ever seen.

Not surprisingly, his success fuelled whispers of steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. Books and magazine articles have been written alleging his transgressions and several high profile legal battles have ensued. It doesn’t matter how many times he has denied the rumours. And it doesn’t matter which authority has come to his defence. People are inclined to either believe the worst or put an asterix next to his achievements.

And then along came Twitter.

And how does the micro-blog social network help him? Let me count the ways.

Armstrong has been on Twitter for several months now and has become one of the most followed people on the network. Twitter allows him to communicate instantly several times a day to his nearly half a million ‘followers.’ So when he recently crashed during a Spanish race breaking his collar bone, he was able to relay the news nearly as fast as the news networks.

I’m alive! Broken clavicle (right). Hurts like hell for now. Surgery in a couple of days. Thanks for all the well wishes.

For the past week or so he’s reported on his subsequent surgery, return to the United States and ongoing recovery. He’s also posted links to video messages and continued to promote his other main passion - fighting cancer through his Livestrong Foundation.

But where Twitter has really helped is with the drug tests. Twitter has given Armstrong a tool to broadcast to the world exactly when and where he is being visited by drug testers. You need only follow him for a few days to notice the frequency of the visits. Here are a few tweets following his March 17th test:

March 17:

Yet another “surprise” anti-doping control. 24th one. This one from the French authorities. Urine, blood, and hair! Classic..

So I’m clear - never complaining about these tests. Def part of the job. Feel targeted? Of course. But anything to prove I’m clean. Onward.

March 18:

I’m hearing from a lot of folks that there’s a lot of press clips re: my hair test/drug test yesterday and I was surprised and asking ?’s.

First off, I’m never surprised anymore. What does surprise me is that AFLD feels the need to publicly comment on confidential matters. (AFLD = the French anti-doping agency)

The Tweets about the ongoing drug tests are illuminating. Taking Armstrong at his word, they’re almost always a suprise; testers are frequently awaiting him at his home or hotel just after training rides; they come at odd times and are conducted by multiple agencies.

Reporting these events as they happen is a powerful means to rehabilitate his reputation to those who question whether he’s clean. Simply reporting after the fact that he’s been tested x times over x days by x agencies just doesn’t have the same credibility as reading about the tests as they happen.

I’ve always wanted to believe in Armstrong. His story is so good that it’s hard not to pull for him. I really hope he recovers from his current injury in time to compete at this year’s Tour de France and I hope he goes on to win for a record eighth time. If he does, and if he continues to use Twitter the way he has been, his reputation will be polished to a high gloss shine.

What a blunder. What a perfect case study in what NOT to post to your professional blog. Yesterday, Jeremiah Owyang, a senior Forrester Research analyst, posted an item that attacked Mzinga, a company he follows.

Gah, it’s painful stuff to read. It’s clear within the first two sentences that this is a post that should never have been published. Relying on hearsay, this respected social media industry analyst hints that Mzinga is a shaky company on the verge of falling apart.

He never lays out the evidence of the company’s failings - surely there must be something bad - because he says he doesn’t want to start rumours. Yet he succeeds in doing only that by dealing solely with innuendo… and then, in a rhetorical flourish that only a self-important analyst could write: I strongly recommend that any Mzinga clients or prospects stall any additional movement till they brief me next Monday.

Really? I mean, really? Lawyers, start your engines.

The blog post blazed a fast and broad trail through the Twitterverse and the comments that followed the original post correctly blasted Owyang. It was an irresponsible post made without much, if any, forethought. Owyang responded quickly, to his credit, but with only a weak apology.

There are times in everyone’s professional life when you want to strike out publicly at a client, or a vendor or a rival. In almost every case, it’s best to keep your mouth shut at least until you have all the information (and often afterward too).

Maybe he was frustrated with a perceived lack of response from the company and he wanted to use his bully post to whip the company into line. That’s something my first journalism instructor Mack Laing called the phallic typewriter syndrome. Maybe Owyang was tired and wasn’t thinking clearly. Or maybe he was just plain sloppy.

Always take care in what you write and how you write it.

In my book, good communications is vital to sound decision making in business. Trying to separate  business management from corporate communications and public relations is like a surgeon removing a vital organ without caring to find a replacement. It kills companies as surely as a botched transplant will kill a patient. And like incompetent doctors, CEOs and other executives that continue to lead their companies without regard to how they communicate their strategies and actions deserve to be fired… immediately.

Take AIG for a particularly egregious example.  Over the past few days, the company has been pilloried for its decision to pay out $165 million in bonuses to employees despite the fact the company is currently on life support thanks to taxpayer-funded bailouts. Compounding this incredibly wrong-headed move is that some of the bonuses apparently went to the derivatives traders who almost single-handedly reduced the former insurance heavyweight to a welfare case.

Anyone with an instinct for public relations strategy could tell you that the decision to pay the bonuses was a bad one. Anybody with an understanding of how corporations need to interact and communicate with people today would have instantly recognized the folly of proceeding with the payouts. If something smells this badly from a communications perspective, it’s almost always a bad business decision.

Good businesses act with integrity. When good businesses  speak, they do so honestly with a view to enhancing their reputations. What good businesses do in the face of difficult circumstances reveals the character of their management teams.

If AIG were a good business with a good management team it would have found another way.

This isn’t a matter of upholding contracts. Insurance companies routinely challenge policies on flimsier grounds than congress is currently challenging these bonuses. It’s a matter of doing what’s right and managing the business for the many (the shareholders, the customers and the employees), not just for the privileged few.

I think AIG’s true character has been revealed. Time to break up the company and let someone else run the show.