REPUTATION IS WHAT PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE

There are many firms offering "reputation management" services, to assist hotels and restaurants in overcoming negative online reviews.  There is a huge industry involved in the combatting of negative online feedback, to the point where many only see the issue as one of the search results. There are volumes of resources concerning how to "astroturf" Trip Advisor or Yelp,  how to censor and remove negative complaints or using SEO tactics to influence results. 

In a future post, I plan to discuss more ethically based forms of reputation management, focussing upon responding to customer complaints, correcting incorrect information, and leveraging guest feedback to influence service development. In this article, I would like to address the often neglected and lost art of reputation management in terms of more traditional Public Relations. 

BACKGROUND

Reputation management was once solely a public relations term, that dealt with outreach designed to positively influence an individual's or business's image or reputation either in print or by word of mouth. PR Pioneer Edward Bernays famously stated, "Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.'' His work provided inspiration to the "spin doctors" and campaign consultants of the era, such as Hitler's Dr. Goebbels.

In later years, the public relations trade recovered from that lamentable example. My favorite example of an ethical PR practitioner was the father of the modern professional sports league, Pete Rozelle. Along with overseeing the growth of the NFL to today's monolithic proportions, Commissioner Rozelle pioneered two innovations we are well familiar with. One was NFL properties, which in this day and age has seen merchandise royalties become a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for the league. His other masterstroke was NFL Films, an enterprise that reached the same artistic heights for football films, that Leni Riefenstahl achieved in depicting the 1936 Olympics for the Nazi regime, or the great Bud Greenspan did for the Olympiads in our time.

 

The only major PR misstep Commissioner Rozelle made in his thirty-year tenure was his decision made in 1963 to play NFL games on the weekend of the Kennedy assassination. In that debate in years since it seems that assessment was actually a bad rap. Not reported at the time was that Rozelle had actually called his USF classmate, who was Kennedy's press secretary (Pierre Salinger), and was told that Bobby Kennedy's thought was that the country needed the games that Sunday. In the many years between that weekend and his passing, Pete Rozelle never said a word in his defense, even after a disgruntled fan sucker-punched him over it, that tragic weekend in Yankee Stadium.

There is a reason why Pete Rozelle's story matters greatly in discussing how important it is to manage a hotel asset's reputation. It was because of the words he heard while attending a summer day camp as a young boy. The campers had gathered for ''a little talk'' by one of the counselors, who pointed out that ''Character is what you are. Reputation is what people think you are. If your reputation is bad, you might as well have bad character - the one is useless without the other.''

Pete Rozelle lived that message throughout his entire career in PR and as NFL Commissioner. In this era of online reviews and rampant social media use, a bad reputation in a market is even harder to overcome and to turn around for hotel assets. The following are some ideas to assist this process.

REPUTATION MANAGEMENT in the 3D world 

I was young in my Hotel Director of Sales career, for a property that played host to visiting teams coming to play one of America's football powerhouses. The early season opponent was dispatched as usual, in a game scheduled as a tune-up game for one and a revenue source for the losers.

Sadly, the "whipping" was accompanied by a great deal of vomiting on the sidelines, and afterward, the soon to be fired coach blamed the hotel in the media for allegedly giving his team food poisoning. Sadly nobody seemed to have cared about the subsequent stories, that clearly stated that it was a flu bug caught before the visitors arrived that was the culprit. I recollect pulling out the exculpatory evidence for months after the event to show catering clients.

Sadly, most properties are not lucky enough to have press coverage that absolves the operators of a property from a PR mess. Bad press at least has the hopes of a retraction, but bad word of mouth in a market lives on forever. In each hotel market, there is a bad name attached to an asset that never fades, even after a sale, re-flags, management changes, and exorcisms. Occasionally it's the product of a public relations fail, or because a competitor simply plays dirty.

Usually, the issues are based in a form of reality, such as one horror story where a Guest Service agent was seen cold-cocking a restaurant server asking for change, as a group passed through the lobby. My personal favorite was a historic property that became a clubhouse for its town's "good old boys" to the extent that its outlets were boycotted by women in the community, because of their aversion to being groped by the septuagenarian members of the City Council.

Other issues to overcome may be adverse events such when a crime or accidental death occurs in a building. In an era where many assets are owned by absentee owners or those living overseas, xenophobia and bigotry and mean people can cause a toxic narrative to occur about an asset, and perhaps owners and key figures have had some epic human relations fails. And then there are those pesky anecdotal stories such as that chef immortalized on "YouTube" getting hammered with hotel guests and refusing to leave their room. 

All of these are really difficult situations to overcome. One can weep and wail in a sea of denial and anger, or one can decide to turn the situation around. For that, there is a solution. 

THE ART OF THE MEA CULPA. 

The January 7th edition of the Harvard Business Review advocates for the art of the public apology. Since then we have seen a half-hearted and insincere "mea culpa" go very badly as immortalized by Brian Williams. Through an effective and sincere effort to address past misdeeds, service fails, and miscellaneous errors, a hospitality organization can do much to repair past damage. Trying to employ what Nixon's team termed a "limited hangout" strategy, seldom works. Through the issues with Roger Goodell's handling of the Ray Rice controversy, the NFL leaned by the time of "Deflategate", that no matter how good the PR team, there is only one chance, to tell the truth.

Like it or not, we are often in a position of apologizing for past sins to a variety of audiences. They could be offended individuals, community leaders, and opinion makers, or corporate clients. Though the failings of the past may not be ours in terms of commission, we "own" them all in having to make amends. As a consequence, a PR strategy needs to include consideration of some often inconvenient truths. 

For a one time slip, a timely public apology is a great start. For those situations caused by repeated failures, the only answer is identifying as many offended parties as possible.

Screwing up is a part of the human experience, and a property consisting of all-too-human beings is going to have its share of failures. Being able to address these moments is a rare commodity in the business planet. And if one is persistent enough, the original sin will be mitigated by the perception of an organization trying to redeem itself.

The devil in the details is the ongoing commitment an organization has in changing and mending its ways.  As the saying goes, one has only one opportunity to get a second chance. 

MANY BLESSINGS - NOEL 

OUR LATEST DOMESTIC TERRORIST

For a variety of reasons, both happy and sad, I have taken a long break from posting here. Part of that reason was my arrival in a place, where I had lost the capacity for outrage and shock at all the darkness in the world.

After the events in Charleston Wednesday night, I was physically sickened. Having lived in Charleston, I more than once attended services in the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The same church where the massacre of nine black people by yet another person addled by "strong conservative beliefs," has just taken place. 

Once again, the concept of terrorism is defined downward when the gun lobby and their rightist enablers have their spin control machine engaged. It goes like this.

1- State that the shooter was mentally ill. 

2- Speak in terms that confuse domestic terrorism with a commitment to “heritage and tradition” 

3- Say that the murderer was a sadly confused soul who only tried to take his country back, in the light of the 2008 and 2012 election results. 

4- Since the bowl cut Dylann Roof has been (thankfully) captured, life in the right-wing can go on.

5- Consistently pound the message that their America is under attack by alien forces. 

6- Emphasize we are lucky, that we do not see more images like this, given the intolerable norm of leftist control of the media and White House.

7- Make certain to let everybody know that the victim and survivors have "thoughts and prayers" coming their way. 

Roof used a weapon that was given to him as a 21st Birthday gift by his father. (That begs the question: Did daddy ever notice that jacket with the apartheid era flags?) Did pops ever read the news, that Adam (Sandy Hook) Lanza was always accompanied to the range by his about to be murdered, mother? I watched the news for one clue of how Dylann Roof was raised, in order to justify being given a weapon after a couple of brushes with the law?

For those of us who endured listening to a parent talking hate around the family, it was only because of revulsion that we avoided the same mindset. It's easy to picture millions of parents watching the local news, hearing of rape, and as a reflex, concluding a black man had to be involved. 

Parents who are prejudiced, who voice it all the time, usually produce those who follow suit as adults. Their lessons of hate, become why their children hate. I cannot see a moral difference between Isis teaching their kids to hate Christians and Jews and the people we speak of in our land. It has nothing to do with color and everything to do with hate. That's the stark reality. We live in a nation where fewer and fewer parents teach their children to love.

Try posting on Facebook that Dylann Roof is a "domestic terrorist." Many responses will state he was simply “mentally ill” and accuse the poster of driving hate. At the same time, the definition of "terrorist" to these folks is an Arab in a cave, with a rag around his head, tied down by inner tubes. As we are bombarded by memes like that one appended above, Mr. Roff is accorded terms like “misguided separatist." How we can allow the term terrorist to be defined downward so adroitly? How can we allow the record to be distorted with such precision?

This disturbed creature sat with his victims for an hour in their church, While they worshiped God and prayed, he waited. And of course, no one thought to ask him why he was there, because the doors of a church are always open. Nine people killed, including the pastor. A 5-year old girl had to play dead in order to survive. The gunman told his victims he was letting them live so she could tell what happened.

Roof is now in custody. But in the extremist's parallel universe, we are not hearing that it's depraved and evil to walk into a church and kill people. We are actually being told the pastor is at fault for not packing heat. For the love of everything normal and good, If we're not safe in our church, where are we safe? 

Here is the “Blame the victim” position of the NRA types in a nutshell, “And he voted against concealed-carry. Eight of his church members who might be alive if he had expressly allowed members to carry handguns in church are dead. Innocent people died because of his position on a political issue.” Prepare for the new movement to arm our clergy to the teeth. On “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning, co-host Steve Doocy said it was “extraordinary” that Police Chief Gregory Mullen referred to the massacre as a “hate crime.”

This act echoes the Sikh temple shootings in Oak Creek just three years ago, and the Birmingham Church bombings of fifty-two years ago. There should not be grey areas in the racist terror versus nut job debate when the killer reloads five times and says, "You're taking over our country, and you have to go," But the rightists try. Faux news tried to frame the carnage as an “attack on faith”. As Rolling Stone states, “It makes about as much sense as declaring 9/11 an act of architectural critique, but GOP presidential candidates picked up and ran with a theme that depicts white conservatives as targets just as much as the people dead on the church floor.”

We live in an era of pre-emptive rightist media strikes. When the President deplores another senseless act of violence, it is defined as politicizing the event. The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue, and has given them an easy enemy politicized, racialized, and indivisible. 

These elements can't afford to allow rational discussions of these events, because if we do, we might notice that their bastardized reading of the Second Amendment has created a thought process that the Constitution "legitimizes" an armed insurrection against the government it created, as long as the terrorists claim it’s in the name of patriotism. At the same time, they have defined the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and opposition to their American order. This is no longer an argument about whether one party's beliefs are beneficial or harmful. It's an attitude that labels one party so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is condoning a usurpation. 

Democrats and minorities have become their “Untermenschen” We are guilty of their new American subversion, just like the Jews of Germany were the “backstabbers” that lost the First World War. From the days of Goebbels, It’s always been about hate speech and coded language, and the big lie. We are told to fear the same social media tools they use when ISIS leverages them. But just like their fellow rightists in the Levant, they recruit freely amongst the most alienated and rejected subsets of Western Society. And just like ISIL, these domestic terrorists are leading these misfits to believe they can convert a house of God into a killing ground.

If the wrong personality hears the wong voices, a church becomes a place where one can feel empowered to spill blood everywhere. Dylann Roof arrived at that church because he was bombarded by the concept that it’s okay to do that because he immersed himself into that worldview online.

Dylann Roof sat in that Bible Study for an hour, because he heard Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck on the radio more clearly than the Scriptures being discussed in front of him. Dylann Roof opened fire because the lunacy was endorsed by Faux News, where they talk about things that they call news, claim to be fair and balanced, but they’re really not. Dylann Roof bought that coded language, the hate speech, and how they talk about the president as if he’s not the president. Dylann Roof arrived at a place, where churchgoers are said to be not really churchgoers or humans if they just happen to be the wrong color or wrong beliefs. And let’s not bullshit ourselves, that’s exactly what this sick and evil young man acted upon.

MANY BLESSINGS - NOEL

PS - I tried to find some footage of how the nation reacted after the horror of Birmingham in 1963. I wanted to portray that there was a time where killing folks in a church was met with the appropriate horror, shock, and grief. I also found in this search compelling footage from later that year after the Kennedy Assassination. I cannot help but feel we have regressed in the last 52 years.