Ten years ago, I was living and working in Colorado for Jefferson County Public Schools. I left a startup in the Seattle area for the school district communications department where I was a twenty-something school district administrator primarily responsible for research and “high tech” communications. It was an unbelievably enriching time both personally and professionally. While I’ll always love Colorado, much of my memory of my professional time there is dominated by crisis communications.
Crises of varying degrees hit organizations every day and while even seemingly mild crises can threaten the future existence of the organization, the severity of the situation is heightened when there is loss of life. With the shootings at Columbine High School, Jefferson County Public Schools was forced to respond to the unthinkable and by any account, a major crisis.
Most crises hit seemingly out of nowhere and communications teams are forced to radically reprioritize scheduled activities and in some cases drop everything to address the crisis immediately and thoroughly. The communications team at Jefferson County Public Schools learned this first hand on April 20, 1999.
Tuesday, April 20 began with the “Good News Breakfast,” an annual gathering to celebrate positive happenings in the school district. Most of the communications staff (there were a total of four communications professionals and two support staff in the communications department at the time of the crisis) went directly from the breakfast to our weekly staff meeting. As we were completing our staff meeting, a call came in from KOA Radio (the region’s largest news radio station) asking for any information about a reported shooting at Columbine High School.
Columbine is one of 17 district high schools within Jefferson County. Jefferson County Public Schools is the largest district in the state of Colorado and one of the largest districts in the country with 18 middle schools and 92 elementary schools and 20 option and charter schools serving approximately 90,000 students at the time.
When the call from the radio station was received, we notified the area administrator responsible for Columbine High School, and then attempted to contact the school. When we couldn’t get through to Columbine staff, the head of the communications team and the area administrator traveled the 12 miles to the school. What they found upon arriving at Columbine was worse than they imagined and was continuing to unfold.
The two arrived at Columbine to streets blocked with emergency response vehicles and students and staff evacuating the school. Stories were emerging of multiple student-shooters roaming the school with bombs and terrorizing and shooting indiscriminately.
Upon arriving at the scene, they requested an additional member of the communications team join them on the scene to act as a liaison with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office –- the agency in command of the scene. The district communications office was now divided into two teams. Two pros on site, communicating with responding agencies, students, staff parents, and the media on the scene. The remaining two communications professionals (myself and a seasoned pro) and two support staff remained at the district office to coordinate district response efforts and communicate with local police, students, staff not on the scene as well as communicate the district response and gather additional information.
While Columbine had a crisis plan and crisis training, and the communication team had managed a wide variety of school and district crises; nothing prepared us for what was unfolded. One of the first steps taken by myself and the team at the district office was to contact other schools where school shootings had occurred. These contacts proved invaluable to the superintendent as she attempted to guide the organization through the tragedy.
We also contacted other trusted school public relations professionals to come to the Jefferson County Public Schools district office and assist with local, regional, national and international media relations.
The superintendent convened district leadership including representatives of the PTA, Board of Education, employee unions and the other district-based communications pro. At the meeting, the group mapped out tasks and parties responsible for the first 24 and 48 hours, first week and ongoing.
This left myself and the support staff, with the help of other district employees to provide information to police about suspected shooters; coordinate school busses to evacuate students; set up and communicate an information hotline manned by district personnel to answer questions, assist parents, and receive donations –- all calls that had been flooding the communications office. This left the communications office phones available for media relations. The volume of calls swamped and temporarily crashed the district phone system. Communications coordinated with other district department personnel to contact all students and staff of Columbine in an attempt to account for everyone who may have been inside the building on April 20.
At this time, the on-site (at Columbine) communications team was collecting and relaying information between Columbine staff, police and the district offices; giving media interviews; and manning the alternative meeting place where parents could pick up students. Myself and the district office team conveyed information and updates to principals at other district schools and department heads to share in meetings with district staff. At the end of the first day (roughly 2:00 a.m.), the communications team convened to exchange information, discuss what worked and what did not and to plan for the upcoming day.
At that first of what would be many late night meetings, the team made two significant decisions. The first was the decision to utilize volunteer PR professionals. On April 20, several of our colleagues in school PR from across Colorado dropped what they were doing and came to help. They manned the district communications office phones and answered questions from media around the world about the size of the district, number of kids that attended Columbine, etc. The volunteers had proven exceedingly helpful and while their skills were not used very efficiently the first day, the communication team put together a program to better utilize this invaluable help. The communication team created media kits for use by the PR professionals to provide inquiring media with basic information about the school and district. There was a snag in this plan in that most of the volunteers came from smaller area districts where they were the only PR professional. In the days immediately following the tragedy at Columbine copycat incidences arose and the volunteers were needed in their home districts. To overcome this, the Jefferson County Public Schools communication team enlisted help from friends and colleagues from other districts across the country we had met through the National School Public Relations Association. Some of the volunteers were able to come for a few days. Some stayed for longer. Some were not able to come, but could provide support and advice via email and phone conversations. All were given specific tasks and all performed beyond what could have been reasonably asked.
The second decision made in that first late-night planning meeting was equally important. The communication team decided to move our base of operation from the district office to Columbine. The district office is nearly 12 miles from Columbine High School. Local, national and international media parked satellite trucks and set up quasi-permanent locations primarily in Clement Park, adjacent to the school. In the first few days of the crisis, the district was giving or participating in media conferences throughout the day every day. This, in addition to personal interviews and coordinating interviews for school and district staff, took all day and eliminated any opportunity to go back to the district office. This, combined with the need to meet regularly with the other responding agencies, made it necessary to move the district command center as close to Columbine as possible.
The communications team was able to secure a space inside a library adjacent to Clement Park and Columbine High School. The library staff agreed to temporarily close the library to the public for use as a command center by responding agencies. The Jefferson County Public Schools portion of the communications center included:
The phone company, in addition to setting up a T1 line within 24 hours of our request, set up a temporary cell tower in the park to accommodate the increased cell phone traffic.
The communications staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as federal, state and local law enforcement brought and assembled their own additional equipment in the public library.
During that first week, there were also a tremendous number of copycat incidents within the district and across the country. None resulted in loss of life. I was often the one to respond to those incidences. Before April 20, similar incidents received little to no media coverage, but in the days and week proceeding the tragedy at Columbine, nearly every instance was covered thoroughly by local and sometimes national broadcast media and required a PR professional on site.
We worked roughly 20 hours a day for six weeks without a day off.
The first strategies established by the communication team were primarily for media relations. Through the media is the fastest way to communicate to a large audience and while we continued to use other forms of communication, mass media was the primary mode, especially early on as the crisis was unfolding. The strategies or guiding principals the team established to guide their decision making regarding interview priority and who to provide to the media were as follows:
All decisions were based on one underlying question: “Does it help the Columbine students, staff and community heal and return to normal?” As with other communication programs, the team designated one district spokesperson (the superintendent) and one school spokesperson (the principal). The goal to “speak with one clear voice” is easier met when one person is doing the talking. Other district personnel spoke to specific issues as appropriate, but the primary spokespersons – Superintendent Jane Hammond and Principal Frank DeAngelis were the voice of the district and school respectively.
To achieve those goals is difficult in the best of times, but in crisis situations, the demand for information and people to deliver that information compounds. The communication team established some mechanisms that helped achieve their goal. First was the designation of an “air traffic controller.” This person was responsible for taking all media interview requests. Requests were coming in faster than one person could handle so the team created interview request forms that any volunteer could fill out and then pass on to the air traffic controller. The air traffic controller then prioritized the requests and set up the interviews.
In nearly all stages of the crisis the air traffic controller was a volunteer. Assigning this important role to a volunteer (seasoned PR pro) was not obvious to the team initially, but because the district staff communications team were often pulled out of the command center to do interviews or attend meetings, etc. We decided the most effective person to perform that important function was a long-term volunteer.
There were requests from across the country and internationally so the prioritization method was also key. The team rated the local media as the highest priority. The rationale being that the communication team had relationships with those media, those media would be around after the crisis and they too were part of the community. Included with the local media were the small neighborhood publications.
Second, were the national media with local correspondents. We called them “local-nationals.” Denver is a relatively large media market and is the biggest market in a large region. For that reason, many local correspondents live in the local community and report for national media. Third, were the national media and fourth were local affiliates from other parts of the country and fifth was international media.
A significant challenge we faced was balancing the media’s need for information and access with the community’s need to grieve in piece and begin to move forward –- something we found to be difficult with what seemed an omni-present media. To achieve our goal, we hosted a series of “summits” with the media to establish “pools” to cover events.
Before each major milestone like graduation or the first day of school, we invited media representatives to come together to discuss their needs for stories and coverage. Of course, the media did not share story ideas and angles, but most understood that all of them covering a memorial ceremony or special event would be exceedingly cumbersome and invasive. Most agreed to participate in modified media pools. We worked with the media to structure coverage of a given event such that each media outlet would provide a component needed for the coverage and all would share the footage. For example, one provided helicopter coverage, another provided satellite time another a camera crew, etc. This method enabled the media to cover an event and the community felt better about the coverage being less overpowering and invasive.
There were certainly media that disliked this method and there were parents and community members upset that the communication team allowed any media at all, but for the most part this solution satisfied both sides.
This intense media scrutiny availed many opportunities for missteps, mistakes and general screw-ups. For this reason, the communication team enacted what they called the “Sam Donaldson sessions.” During the crisis, there was a time crunch. The team had to do all the things that communication teams typically have to do to successfully get their message across, but they had less time. Usually, when time is short, time for media training / preparation is nonexistent. We leaned early on that this preparation was critical. We dedicated precious time in the “Sam Donaldson sessions” to do that critical work. During these sessions, the person preparing to be interviewed or give a media briefing would be peppered with questions by a panel of communication team members. The intent of the panelists was to rattle the interviewee and they asked the hard questions – always tougher and ruder than any media person ever did. This training proved invaluable to all members of the team. Not only did it prepare the interviewee, but also helped us better anticipate the kinds of questions to which we needed answers.
When a tragedy strikes and there is loss of life, there is a strong need for people to come together to give and receive support, to remember those that were lost, to try to figure out why, and to just be together. There were a series of events in the wake of the tragedy at Columbine that attempted to provide that forum. Some were private funerals. There were very public memorials where national figures came to share in the community’s sorrow. Both the Vice President and the President of the United States visited. These, in addition to events like Columbine graduation, the first day of school, and homecoming, presented the communications team with an event management role.
Of course some of these, like the funerals, only required a district or school representative to speak. Others were full-scale events and required event management, media coordination, staging, invitations, etc. These were all roles for the our team. The team had to work with other school and district personnel to decide what was appropriate, whom to invite, what kind of media coverage would be acceptable if any and much more.
Initially, many in the community and the staff wondered why the media should be invited to cover any of the events. What would it serve? Was the communication team too closely identified with the media and losing sight of the interests of the community? We consulted with experts in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) who told us that each time the image of the students evacuating the school was shown, students, staff and people in the community were being retraumatized. The experts recommended working with the media to provide new footage that could be used when reporting updates on the story. The PTSD experts suggested replacing those negative images with positive ones.
We understood that especially the broadcast media would show footage while talking about milestones like graduation and the first day of school so we knew we had to work together with the media to provide those positive images. We went as far as to create a logo for the one-year anniversary in an attempt to change the images the media was broadcasting. The logo was used by the Denver area media.
The events were also helpful in illustrating to the country that Columbine was not a synonym for tragedy, but a high school with a long, rich history. No event better illustrated that the students and staff of Columbine still had their spirit better than when President Bill Clinton visited one month after the shootings. While students were in the auditorium waiting for the President to arrive some began to chant “WE ARE… Columbine.” The chanting grew to pep-assembly-like volume. The President heard the chanting when he arrived and when he got up to address the students; he asked that they repeat the chant. The chanting reflected the positive outlook of the community and the need to stay strong for each other.
The most important lesson learned was more of a clarification of the most important asset a PR professional has -– relationships. Strong relationships within the communication team, within the organization, with other agencies, with community leaders, and especially with students and parents can make or break a successful crisis communication program. The organizations and people with whom the relationships were strong prior to the tragedy made for an ease of communication that did not exist with the organizations and people where the relationship was not as strong.
The communication team also learned that there is no place for pride in a crisis. Every team member did every job. Everyone was needed and every task was important.
Another important decision was to meet daily to think and plan. The meetings usually occurred in the middle of the night and at the end of a long day, but they proved invaluable, as that was when all planning and decision-making occurred. Without the sessions, the team would have simply gone out each day and responded to whatever happened that day, meanwhile falling farther and farther behind. Strategizing allowed the team to assess what was working and what wasn’t and plan for the following day or days.
The stress and pressure of the situation took its toll on the team and some members had health problems as a result. Most team members worked from first thing in the morning to late at night for six weeks straight without a day off. The long hours and stress took their toll. In the moment, it is difficult to send people home because in a crisis there is always more to do than can be done, but the team could have done more to recognize the impact of the stress on themselves and others.
I shared some of these in my post about Dominos’ crisis response, but I think they are worth repeating.
I could go on and there is definitely more to talk about and share. What’s most important is that we remember Cassie, Steven, Corey, Kelly, Matt, Daniel M., Daniel R., Rachel, Isaiah, John, Lauren, Kyle, and Coach Dave and we do everything we can to live well and make sure it never happens again.
Dominos Pizza employees posted a YouTube video of themselves at work at a Conover, N.C. Dominos. One films the other intentionally sneezing on a sandwich, putting the cheese in their nose and doing other unseemly things to the food before delivering it presumably in :30 or less.
According to the New York Times,
“By Wednesday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. References to it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for “Dominos,” and discussions about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter.”
(Update: the original video has been removed from YouTube)
This isn’t a crisis like a natural disaster or a shooting (the latter I’ve been thinking about a lot lately as we approach the 10 year anniversary
of the Columbine shootings). This is, however, a brand crisis.
Companies need to be constantly monitoring their brands online such that they can address crises such as this one head on and as it’s happening. Motrin is an example of how social media can go wrong.
Dominoes, however, responded quickly and appropriately. The company very quickly had its own video on YouTube — a very good response to the original video. This is a lesson in crisis management — especially online crisis management. One lesson few large companies understand with crises online or spreading through social media is NOT to issue a press release. Instead speak directly to people on the medium where the crisis is happening. For Dominos, that was YouTube.
The original video was removed from YouTube, but duplicates have since been re-added.
From the NYT:
By Wednesday afternoon, Domino’s had created a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to address the comments, and it had presented its chief executive in a video on YouTube by evening.
Dominos did several things very well and a few things not so well.
What Dominos did well:
1. Dominos responded swiftly, appropriately, on the media where the crisis was happening (I’m dealing with the social media crisis here and am not addressing what Dominos did or didn’t do with customers of the store where the video originated)
2. The president of Dominos USA was the spokesperson. Always address communications with the right spokesperson. Of course, that’s not always the CEO nor should it be. Dominos recognized the significance of the situation and used the right spokesperson.
3. The Dominos uses conversational language and is noticeably frustrated with the individuals that did this. He was “sickened.” His level of outrage over what they’ve done is appropriate. His delivery is familiar, not stuffy. He’s not in a suit and not in a board room setting.
4. Instead of being frustrated that the initial video was viewed millions of times, he thanks the social media community for bringing it to his attention.
5. Over address the problem: He communicates that Dominos shut down the store and is cleaning it “from top to botom.” He goes on to share that Dominos is reviewing hiring practices ”across the board.” He hammers their focus on cleanliness and high quality food. He also shares that Federal felony warrants are out for the arrest of the workers who have already been fired.
6. He does well what many companies in crisis forget. He reiterates what Dominos is in business to do.
7. He thanks viewers of the video for “sticking with us.” Also good, he stuck with addressing the crisis at hand and how Dominos is working to correct it. He did not start offering.
What could have been better:
1. The Dominos president is clearly reading from a prompter or cue cards. Preparing remarks and sticking to the script is a safe way to go, but it doesn’t feel as heartfelt and the outrage can fall flat when read.
2. Dominos set up a Twitter account to interact with people discussing the YouTube video there. In a crisis is not the time to be creating relationships. Brands should be building those relationships all the time so than when and if a crisis occurs, the brand can quickly address from a position of trust.
Other things to consider:
Robert Scoble led a conversation about Dominos’ response on FriendFeed.
Wordle is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text, sites or blogs. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the provided text. It’s a great visual representation of recent coverage, your company blog, or what you’ve been tweeting about most recently. With a Wordle word cloud, you can create a powerful visualization that gives readers a sense of what you write about.
Here’s the word cloud for recent posts on MEDIAdeluge.
You can personalize your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
ReadWriteWeb, the Web Technology news blog, announced today:
“Susan Scrupski (a.k.a. “ITSinsider”) has joined ReadWriteWeb as VP Enterprise Content and Programs. Starting today, Susan will assume responsibility for building our editorial and expertise in applying the principals of Web 2.0 to the Enterprise. With a focus on how the Web is disrupting traditional business processes and operations, ourEnterprise channel (which will soon be re-launched with a new design) will focus on new products, case studies, and innovative developments involving Web strategy and execution in a B2B context.”
ReadWriteWeb is one or our favorites here at MEDIAdeluge. It’s great to see they are doing well and expanding the staff. Any self described “snarky e2.0 guild master… Skater mom, NJ shore lover,” promised to add some interesting color to RWW.
Susan (@ITSinsider) joins fonder Richard MacManus (@RWW), Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk), and Bernard Lunn (@bernardlunn) on the full-time staff at RWW.
