Unless you have been living under a rock, you are now probably aware of a software company called Astronomer, which was introduced to most of us through a very… revealing Coldplay concert video involving its now ex-CEO a few weeks back.
Astronomer went headfirst into that storm by acknowledging everything that happened, first with a very heartfelt statement from their new acting CEO. It then employed the services of actor Ryan Reynolds’ ad agency, Maximum Effort, to take it from there with actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and the rest is history.
There was another software company (total coincidence, btw!), CrowdStrike, whose update last year triggered the largest IT outage ever, affecting just about every industry – radio included. They acknowledged the issue and handled the outage quickly. They offered “customer commitment packages” (read: free extensions and add-ons), which bounced them back fast with customer retention at 97%. Just a couple of examples of fast and effective crisis management.
If you’ve been in radio for a while, odds are you have lived through a slip-up of your own. How did you handle it?
Back when The Sopranos was a huge hit series on HBO each Sunday night, one of the radio prep services would provide weekly excerpts for stations to use on the following Monday – our morning show being one of them. On a particular Monday, our morning talent ran an excerpt, without previewing, because he assumed the service edited every piece. If you remember the show, about every other word was not radio-friendly. The excerpt that aired contained the worst of all four-letter words, much to the surprise of the morning talent and his Program Director (me!). The phones started ringing and the emails started flowing.
Within minutes of what happened, the talent and I met and decided to acknowledge what happened immediately, take full blame, issue an apology, and move on. I did the same with listener emails and some texts. By 9a, the whole incident had blown over, and we were back to business as usual. We didn’t explain it away or even blame the prep service.
Acknowledge what happened and take responsibility – don’t avoid it, don’t belabor it.
One important aspect throughout all this is that Astronomer, CrowdStrike, and the morning show stayed true to their brand despite the initial negative attention. Astronomer used Ms. Paltrow to sell specific benefits. CrowdStrike repaired the problem and offered the packages for all its customers. The morning show went back to entertaining.
Pivot quickly to what you do best.
If something negative goes viral about a show or the station, find ways to drive that attention into some form of engagement through behind-the-scenes content. You see how not to do it with Paramount’s, CBS-TV’s parent company, dealing with the President’s lawsuit against its 60 Minutes program. Rather than fight it, they settled, leaving staff and viewers with lots of questions that have yet to be adequately answered, all politics aside.
When a station I was programming ended the run of a 15+ year morning show, socials blew up with lots of negative comments, as you would expect. That same day, our Digital director recommended I go on Google Chat and make myself available, as the station PD, for a specific, extended period to answer all questions from the audience about what happened.
We came clean and didn’t ignore any listeners on the chat. The one hour we had scheduled for the chat was over in less than 45 minutes. We turned anger into dialogue with an openness that wound up having a disarming effect.
Whether it’s a billion-dollar cybersecurity outage or a bad audio clip or, heaven forbid, a compromising video, the rules are the same: respond quickly, take the heat, speak in human terms, and move on. When life gives you a lemon, make some lemonade.
