Every message is both broadcasted and, hopefully, received. As “broadcasters” it’s important to start with relevant content and then craft a message that provides a clear signal (vs. noise) to the intended receivers.  But to successfully communicate, it is just as important to understand the influences and environmental factors that affect your audience and how they will process the  message. Failure to do so adds noise to the signal and may very well obfuscate the content, no matter how strong.

Check out Ellen Goodman’s syndicated column published on Thanksgiving day. She laments, and rightly so, how an otherwise great communications opportunity built around important information ended up with an outcome very different from the one intended.

This is a post about the three basic rules of crisis communications and how a week just doesn’t go by these days (or so it seems) in which we aren’t witness to either complete disregard for, or blatant violation of, these PR basics.

The rules are:

1. Tell the truth

2. Tell it all

3. Tell it now

Easy to remember. Easy to say. Not so easy to follow, evidently. I haven’t cared much about some of the more recent and notable examples of companies, politicians and athletes (and their PR firms) who don’t seem to know or remember these rules because, frankly, a Governor disappearing on the Appalachian Trail or to Argentina or to the moon or wherever with his mistress just isn’t that interesting to me.

That was until last week. Last week was a sad one for Red Sox Nation. Boston Red Sox DH, clubhouse leader, ninth-inning hero, and all-around mensch David Ortiz was implicated as a user of performance enhancing drugs in the 2003 investigation led by Former Secretary of State George Mitchell. Big Papi was on the list! NOOoooooo …

[pause here to gather myself]

See, I’m a sports fan. Among professional sports I am a baseball fan first. And to me there is only the Boston Red Sox. I am a lifelong citizen of the Nation. My family is multi-generational that way. My grandfather, an immigrant to this country in 1919, embraced baseball and the Red Sox almost immediately as a way to Americanize himself. Both my parents grew up in Western Massachusetts, a stronghold of the Fenway Faithful. My wife’s family is from Boston’s South Shore … ’nuff said. If nothing else, damn it, my kids are going follow suit. My first live experience with professional baseball was at Game 2 of the ‘75 World Series (my father, grandfather, cousin and me — Sox lost 3-2 with a long rain delay. Didn’t care. At all.) We live in Red Sox country and most of us at KG Partners are fans. Yes, sadly, we have a few followers of the soulless, evil empire (the one with the new soulless, overpriced stadium a couple hundred miles southwest of here). For this we make them feel pretty bad about themselves. That’s a matter of policy (see chapter three of our employee handbook).

Speaking of the Yankees, the same thing happened to Alex Rodriguez earlier this year. That was a big deal too, but it was tempered by the fact that most baseball fans already see A-Rod as, well, a punk. Guilty before proven innocent. That’s what happens when you go on “60 Minutes”, deny it, then get caught and have to admit it. Manny Ramirez, Papi’s teammate and partner in their 3-4 power combo for all those years was also implicated in the same leak last week. But, nothing but a collective yawn could be heard in New England after that news (Manny left Boston last year on not-so-friendly terms with fans and was caught red-handed for steroid use earlier this season.)

But Ortiz? How could this be? He’s one of the good guys. A straight shooter, right? Never pimped his run around the bases no matter how dramatic the homer. Never mouthed off. Never complained about playing hurt. It is very, very (very) hard to become a “favorite” sports figure in Boston, but Ortiz was able to pull it off — something to do with helping his team win not one, but two World Series titles after an 86-year drought.

Now they have me. I’m paying full attention to this scandal. I rifle each morning through three newspapers for more reporting and analysis on the story, watch local, national and cable news, scour the Internet … maybe waiting for the report to be rescinded by The New York Times (riiiiiight). And, did I really think the hometown hero would actually stand up and: a. tell the truth, b. tell it all, and c. tell it now? I was kinda hoping….

Back to Earth.

Only David Ortiz (and maybe his lawyers and suppliers) know for sure what he did or did not do. It’s simple - he either did or he didn’t take steroids. It’s one or the other. No third choice. David Ortiz, just like every other player in the same situation, has only two options: tell the truth and come clean, or don’t. If he took steroids but says he didn’t then he’s lying (see rule #1). If he didn’t take steroids, then there’s really no lie to be told and he should volunteer to take an immediate drug test and be done with it (this is close to what he suggested to the media about steroid use in MLB before the season began this year … oops).

But here’s the thing: at a point in any crisis — which happens in about the amount of time it takes a baseball to get over the Green Monster — what really happened doesn’t quite matter. At that point, we all assume he did it. In fact, we’re sure he did and we get more convinced every time he opens his mouth and says something other than, “I didn’t do it and I will take a test right now to prove it.” Or, alternatively, “I did it, I’m sorry, and I will take a test right now to prove that I am now clean.”

Either way, this is how a PR crisis moves to its conclusion faster and with a much better result for all. That way we will all re-learn how to feel good (even great) about him, Baseball and ourselves. Any statement, especially the long ones, that says anything else only prolongs the issue (we want it to go away), ensures that the media will pay closer attention for a longer time (again, make it go way), and makes it harder to dig out of a reputational hole.

This is an issue that sports, government, business and our free-press society will be dealing with for a long time. Crisis victims and perpetrators alike all wish the media wouldn’t dwell on their misfortunes, mistakes and mismanagement as much as it likes to. We can help ourselves, however. Remember the conversation with your mom or dad when the baseball, Frisbee or, in my case, basketball went through the window? Even on that level we knew the outcome could be either unhappy but quick, or really unhappy and really long. It all depended on our choice to tell the truth, tell it all and tell it now. Or not. How soon we forget.

-Dave Goldberg

…but we all knew that shelling out billions to GM was a bad idea, didn’t we?. Check out my post from last November. Here’s today’s letter from Chairman Kent Kresa to shareholders. Shares are up today (as of 1:25 in the afternoon). They’re now worth $.87.

In classic blog fashion (classic?), I’m going to blog about an article I just read that was written by someone else who was reporting on a story about something that already happened…

It’s about that unfortunate incident at a North Carolina Domino’s pizza franchise — the one that was recorded on video and posted on YouTube for the entire online world to see — and then bled into the off-line world of TV, radio, print, etc. It was unsettling to say the least and you can see it yourself on YouTube. Basically, a sandwich maker stuck a piece of cheese up his nose and then placed it on a customer’s sandwich … lots of laughter in the background. Then he faux-farted (I think) on a piece of salami for placement on said sandwich. More laughter. Definitely makes you think twice about ordering from Domino’s or any delivery food company for that matter. Disgusting.*

That said, a blogger whose post I read shortly after the whole thing came down predicted the end of the Dominoes brand — 50 years in the making, brought down in a minute. I personally think that conclusion goes too far. A bad mark on the brand, yes. Its complete demise? Not from a single video made by a couple of dumb kids at a store in North Carolina, even if it did spread like the plague on the internet.

As you’d expect, PR Week covered Domino’s now-much maligned PR response to the incident on the cover of its April 20th issue. The headline: “Crisis forces Domino’s to revamp social media plan.” The article covers Domino’s typical and very corporate crisis tactics: fire the employees, contain the story to those already aware, put out a statement…you know the drill. But, they didn’t reach out into the broader online world. They neglected the very community who were most exposed to, and at most risk from, the video (not to mention those who had accelerated the virility of it in the first place.) It wasn’t until some unbelievable amount of time after the video broke — 48 hours! — that Domino’s changed strategy (note to self: write a post about how ridiculously fast we’re expected to move these days.)

Let’s see what the folks at Domino’s might have been thinking here: brand crisis starts and grows exponentially online via social media … What to do, what do do … got it! Let’s issue a press release. Brilliant. They finally got some good advice from none other than their ad agency who evidently could no longer stand idly by and watch its client implode. The article calls out that Domino’s doesn’t have professional PR agency representation. Instead, all PR is handled in-house. They go it alone.

This brings me to my point (finally!) I am sure Domino’s has very talented PR pros inside the company. I have nothing but respect for internal PR resources. Many of our PR clients are in-house professionals who do excellent work and, so as not to throw myself under the bus, I used to have one of those internal PR departments at a really big company. But the big lesson here is this: in times of crisis (and during the good times too) use a PR firm people!!!. Internal PR pros know their employers’ businesses well and will fall on a sword to protect its reputation. This is their job. PR firms recognize hard-to-see opportunities and risk, and bring to the table points of view that internal resources sometimes can’t because they’re too close to the company. This is our job. Together, we have all angles covered. Working as a cohesive team we can generate more creative ideas, execute with more accuracy and, having seen both sides of the world myself, generate better, more meaningful results.

This is especially true during crises when internal PR departments are often too busy fighting brush fires and taking direction from (many) different people to pause and look at the situation objectively. In Domino’s case, the fact that the “classic” corporate response was, as we say, a sound only a dog could hear, was lost on everyone inside. If Domino’s had professional, third-party PR representation before the cheese-up-the-nose scandal they would have most likely: a. had a crisis communications plan in place that most certainly would have included social media outreach and, b. had a partner on whom to rely to solve complex PR problems in the heat of the flames while they manned the hoses. This works, trust me.

Conclusion: if you’re an inside marketing/PR manager who is charged with stewarding the reputation of your company and the value of your brand (one that took millions or perhaps billions of dollars to build), think seriously about searching for, and securing, a PR firm — crisis specialists or full-service — whatever fits your needs. Or, think about your life the day your brand gets devastated by a YouTube video or the night following the report on NBC Nightly News. No thank you.

* As a very serious, grown-up marketing professional I am obviously troubled by the brand crisis and vast public relations storm that ensued for Domino’s. But if I put myself in the shoes of a 17 year-old kid working late at night at a pizza place with nothing to do but make sandwiches? … ok, kinda funny. No excuse mind you (but funny). Hey, if this happened in a Farrelly Brothers movie we’d all be howling with laughter.

-Dave Goldberg

Ok, let me know if I heard this correctly. We’re going to give $25 billion of taxpayers’ money to GM so they can continue to lose $2 billion of it each month. I’m no math genius but that means they will lose all of it in…let’s see…divide 12 into…carry the…bring the remainder over…A YEAR! (Right?) To be fair, if they simultaneously implemented massive cost cutting measures they could make it last another entire six months!

I agree we have to do something. If GM ceases to exist, so does the entire U.S. automobile industry (how far behind can Ford and Chrysler be?) This doesn’t just mean the end of the Big-3; it means the end of an entire supply chain — hundreds of companies employing hundreds of thousands of people. The U.S. needs this industry and it is in a very bad place. When I think about the government writing GM a check for $25 billion (a very, very…very small portion of which is mine) I get, well, angry. The word “insanity” comes to my mind.

If I believed for a minute that the decision makers who run GM could take $25 billion and magically reverse thirty years of bad decisions in order to save an industry of strategic importance, I would say go for it. But we’re talking about massive reengineering, retooling, reorganization and, hardest and most improbable of all, cultural change. Therefore, the $25 billion will be used to simply keep GM operating as is - “keeping the lights on”, so to speak. It’s going to take something much harder than a handout to stop the bleeding and fix this industry. So what would work? Let’s seeeeee…how about selling more cars? Brilliant!

So here’s an idea: why not use $25 billion to actually help GM (and the others) sell more cars? Here’re the basics of how it might work:

1. Keep the lights on. Write a check to GM for something south of $25 billion, say, $10 billion. Sadly, GM is at that place where only a huge infusion of cash can keep them alive in the short-term. This is necessary to keep the production lines going for a while. If GM up-ends and can’t make cars then they can’t sell them either.

2. Give the rest of it to me (and all the other taxpayers, of course) in the form of tax incentives to buy an American car. Give me the opportunity to actually get something of value for helping to bail out the industry, like a car! If the thousands of American households who buy Japanese and European cars every year are offered a meaningful incentive to instead buy American, we will hear a loud, collective, “hmmmm”, as the nation pauses to consider the offer. Hey, we’re Americans. We love incentives, especially the tax kind.

Now I can’t ignore one of the main reasons why our domestic auto industry is in the shape it’s in: decades of poor quality and design vis-a-vis imported alternatives. This debate will continue; however, U.S. automobiles are now comparable in quality to most foreign-built cars and have come a long way on the design front. Look it up. Again, motivate me to shop, test drive and be impressed, and I might just buy.

3. Make it meaningful. I’m not talking about a tax break of a few hundred dollars here. I’m talking about a real incentive. How about $5,000? I don’t know about you, but for that I would not only seriously consider an American car, but I might even accelerate my next purchase by a year of so to get one. Not everyone will take advantage of the offer for a variety of reasons, but for arguments sake, at that level of incentive the industry could make up to (more math here) three million incremental car sales! Now THAT would keep the lights on.

4. Sweeten the deal. How about added tax breaks if I buy the fuel efficient variety? Yes, GM, Ford and Chrysler make them too. This way we help solve another big problem we face.

5. Make credit available. Remember that other bailout that’s underway? That one is about getting the banks to make loans again. How about car loans? Can we tell the banks that a certain amount of the $700 billion has to be for auto loans to people buying American cars? For $700 billion we can tell them to do lots of things.

6. Lower the boom. Taxpayers have to get angry about this. Sure we might get a deal on a car, but honestly we’d rather not be in this situation. If the above worked, then GM and the others will still be in business and generating life-giving cash by doing what they’re supposed be doing (making and selling cars) and not by draining the Treasury. But the underlying problems at these companies will still exist. These companies have to get competitive and self-sufficient so they can continue after the life lines run out (I’m not advocating an evergreen program). I don’t know enough about the people running GM at the moment to know whether they’re the architects of this death spiral, but they are accountable regardless. $25 billion buys a lot of influence over decisions and decision makers. Time to use some of it. It wouldn’t be the first time.

So there you have it. We save an important industry, we use taxpayers’ dollars responsibly, we incent positive behaviors in the system, and we stimulate the economy.

That’s “Goldberg” with an “e” if you’re writing up the Nobel Prize submission.