StevenSilvers.com

Health care reform: Blaming bad communications doesn't fix bad attitudes

In the spin following the GOP’s game-changing Senate win in Massachusetts, the White House defended its beleaguered health care legislation with an old standard: What we have here is a failure to communicate.

"We lost some of that sense,” President Obama told ABC News, “…of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

That talking point has been played down since then.  Good thing, too.  Because it’s terrible PR.

Think of health care reform as a high-profile but controversial consumer product being introduced into a marketplace of extreme fans and critics (like New Coke or Windows Vista).  Blaming a flat-out rejection on poor communications might seem a safe strategy. You hold yourself accountable but without faulting your intentions.

It’s not that your product’s bad. It’s the stupid packaging.

Except a lot of people will instead think you’re saying, “It’s the packaging, stupid.”

Your competitors will do everything they can to promote that interpretation.  As MSNBC points out, administration opponents are literally institutionalizing the word “arrogance” in reference to what Massachusetts voters were complaining about and how the White House has responded to it.

At the core of almost every public’s fear and loathing are legitimate issues.  You may think your smarts in creating a value-added product trumps all that.  They don’t. 

You can’t win people who think you’re dismissing them.  Even if you suspect they don’t have a clue what you’re really selling.
. . . . . . . . . .

Here's the full version of the health care reform bill.

For your informed consent, here are all 1,990 pages of the House health care bill with the seemingly impossible but possibly amazing promise, “To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.” 

Or the shorter, more immediately achievable title, “To give Americans a good reason not to watch St. Louis play Detroit this weekend.”
. . . . . . . . . .

Scattered links of interest

Twitter’s ROI (Forbes.com)
There is a potential danger in that too many people will employ Twitter as a short-cut for customer service.”

Prepare now for “resume tsunami” (Ogilvy Impact)
“With a variety of signs pointing, if somewhat tentatively, toward an economic recovery, it’s not too soon for companies to begin thinking about how they’ll keep their top performers.”

We need a swine flu newsroom (Newsvetter)
“In matters concerning life and death I don't want to be forced to rely (solely) on a news media obsessed with body counts and hot zones.”

PRSA’s meaningless condemnation (O’Dwyer’s Blog)
“…How about revealing the source of your anger? Who in the world are you talking about?”
. . . . . . . . . .

Submit links to scatterbox@stevensilvers.com

Get on President Obama's email update list

Drop a note to WhiteHouse.Gov and you'll be added to President Obama's email blast list.

The White House is using official letter-looking emails -- like this one about health care reform -- "as a way to directly communicate about important issues and opportunities." 

The email letters include links to other White House web sites designed to educate and build support for various administration initiatives.

You can get on the official Obama email updates list by clicking here.
. . . . . . . . . .

Internet scammers run like pigs to the Swine Flu trough

Washington Post blogger Brian Krebs reports that spammers and scammers are working overtime to profit from public fears of a Swine Flu epidemic.

Just days after the first headlines, more than two percent of all Internet spam tried to get people to click on hundreds of new Swine Flu-labeled sites selling everything from "survival guides" to fake prescription drugs.
. . . . . . . . .

When the past becomes today's crisis

History is one of the trickiest areas of crisis management. Even with the most sincere intentions, an organization's presentation of the past can explode in emotionally charged controversy.

Here's a perfect example:

Many veterans are fighting the Indianapolis Veteran Administration hospital's decision to remove an old newspaper from a historical display because it contained the headline, "Japs Surrender."  The hospital replaced the newspaper with one simply headlined, "Peace."

The newspaper had been on display for ten years until a new employee complained that it was offensive.  The VA Ethics Office agreed that the hospital did the right thing to avoid creating a hostile work environment.

Supporters of the decision to yank the newspaper remind people that Congress passed a resolution in 1986 acknowledging that the term "Jap" is racially derogatory and offensive.

That doesn't fly with angry veterans and others who have inundated the hospital, media and government offices with protests.

"Any Marine will tell you that, in this day and age, they damn well know the term 'Jap' is a rude and insulting remark -- that is not the issue," a decorated Vietnam vet told one news outlet.  "But you've got people here who are trying to change history."

It's a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't controversy.

And it's a reminder.  Your crisis plan must not only consider how you respond to events that might happen in the future, but also how you represent events that did happen long ago.
. . . . . . . . . .

Bottom photo: Historic newspaper display at Indianapolis VA hospital (Courtesy Indy.Com )

The skinny on government anti-obesity efforts

Can so-called "obesity taxes" get Americans to stop eating so much bad food?

Maybe.  Business Week reports that recent studies show kids weigh more if they live in communities where fruits and vegetables are more expensive.  Another study finds that the more alcohol costs, the less American consumers drink it.

With U.S. obesity rates and related health costs sky-rocketing, findings like these are helping push along the kind of government-funded behavioral change campaigns that convinced most Americans to not smoke and buckle their seat belts.

Many states already have taxes on vending machine sweets and sugary sodas.  And New York City won a key victory when a federal appeals court upheld regulations requiring many chain restaurants to include calorie information on menus and menu boards.  Restaurant owners argued that the city violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to emphasize calories over other buying decisions like savory goodness.  That didn't go down well with the judges.

Even so, local and state governments hoping to influence healthy behavior face many challenges.  At the same time time New York City is forcing consumers to be more aware of what they eat, the state is proposing to raise sales taxes.

On health clubs.
. . . . . .

RELATED NEWS

Washington Post  |  Initiative Takes Aim At Obesity In Children

"A coalition of health groups and insurance companies yesterday unveiled an initiative, billed as the first of its kind, to help battle one of the nation's biggest health problems: childhood obesity.

Officials of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a joint effort of the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, said the initiative is designed to give children better access to health care to fight obesity. Participating insurance companies would pay for at least four visits to a dietitian and four visits to a physician each year to provide guidance to children and their parents on how to eat better and take other steps to reduce and control their weight."

Repeating an ugly negative to save the brand

A crisis in your industry can become a PR problem for your company too.

This is particularly true in food-borne illness situations.  Media coverage of government warnings and companies pulling products of grocery shelves all add to the public's fears about what they eat.  Every product in a category becomes suspect, if not guilty by association.

When the FDA recalled deadly spinach from one area of California, consumers stopped using the vegetable almost completely.  That followed with a virtual boycott in 2008's tomatoes scare, though the government never proved a link.  The investigation later fingered cilantro and peppers.

The salmonella outbreak and food recall caused by Peanut Corporation of America has generated similar panic.  Though the company's production is only a small percentage of an $800 million industry, national sales of peanut butter have dropped 25 percent.

In response, big brands like Jif and Peter Pan are taking the typically unthinkable position of repeating a very nasty negative.  They're using newspaper ads, media publicity, coupons, web sites -- anything to convince consumers that they're the good guys.

Search "peanut butter" and you might see this astonishing banner ad:

Forget wholesomeness and great taste.  Today's marketing message is that our product won't turn your insides into a festering cesspool.

With 1,000 tainted peanut products already identified, this crisis could set a recall record for human foods.

And for some companies, that makes the ugly hard sell necessary to keep their innocent brands from being seriously maimed.
. . . . . . . . . .

Celebrate freedom with a performance-enhancing melon publicity research stunt.

Just in time for the long July 4th weekend, the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M University announced that watermelon has some of the same manly benefits as Viagra.

The center's web site says it exists to "support and strengthen the total vegetable industry through research."

Yea. This will pump things up a bit.
. . . . . . . . .

Generalities are generally the wrong way to answer a crisis.

There's an old PR saying that you should never repeat a negative. I personally think it's an outdated idea.

But it's why many organizations respond to a crisis without actually acknowledging the events or allegations they're responding to.

In the information age this omission strategy just makes things worse. Take for example the flare-up that followed after a Veterans Administration supervisor in Texas sent an email suggesting that staff reduce costs by not diagnosing returning war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. VA Affairs Secretary James Peake made a live video speech for VA employees around the country in which he praised them for their good work. Then he told them to be careful what they put in their emails, saying they never know who might see them. He made no mention of the controversial email or its contents.

As the story broke nationally, thousands of VA staffers wondered what their boss had been trying to tell them. Was he saying that the VA is not cutting costs by limiting PTSD cases? Or was he saying he didn't want any more of them to get caught talking about it?

Peake issued a statement later saying that Texas email was "inappropriate" and did not reflect VA policy. But with politicians and editorial pages screaming for investigations, the damage to credibility from inside the VA was already done.

 There are many ways to look guilty in the court of public opinion. Answering controversies with generalities is one of the most certain.
. . . . . . . . . .

• CBS News | Obama Demands VA Investigation Into PTSD Diagnoses
• OPED News | OFF WITH HER HEAD?
• Slate | PTSD Bingo