Bueller, Bueller?

The World Wide Web seems to have made the world not so wide anymore. With a click or a swipe we can easily get connected to different countries, languages, cultures and even planets.  Social media theorist Clay Shirky, discusses how the media landscape of the 20^th century dramatically changed with the invention of the internet and how this lead to “the largest increase in expressive capability in human history”.  It falls in line with historical changes on communication such as the printing press, telephone, television and radio. It has changed how we communicate with each other personally, in masses and how we relate as a society.  It has changed how we watch television, get our news, and listen to music and a whole host of other activities.  A 2015 Pew Research Center poll shows about sixty-one percent of Millennials state they get political news on Facebook in a given week, a much larger percentage than turn to any other news source. We’ve seen in the last two elections how social media and the internet have played key roles in the political process. So how is a strategic communicator to harness this information and power?

In order to develop a digital strategy that is effective for your organization you must learn the best ways to grab the attention in an ever-buzzing, fast moving, always changing digital world. Forbes writer Neil Patel discusses a few digital strategies that marketers should consider in their digital marketing plans. Strategies such as moving to content marketing as opposed to outbound marketing are shown to be far more effective. The Content Marketing institute defines content marketing as 

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action”.

Your content should be interactive. It should engage your target audience.  It can be in the form of a podcast, infographic or any other format that consumers find relevant and want to share. WiseGEEK.com defines interactive media as “in its broadest sense, is any source of information that forces direct participation from the consumer”.  Examples include everything from video gaming, social media, quizzes and infographics. You can see them in the device sitting on your table at Applebee’s which allows you to play games, order food, look at the specials and pay all while sitting at your table.  Or take a look at the iAd video below. 

Social media is a great platform that should be included in your digital strategy. Clever ideas such as the Cisco Integrated Workforce Experience that was implemented in 2010 are great ways to incorporate social media even on an internal level. Cisco built an internal social media network designed to enable internal and external partnerships and decision making. It gave real time news feed which provided updates on employees’ status and information about significant projects and customer interactions (hbr.org 2011). Social media can also be a great avenue to gain insight about what is important to your target audience. What are their interests? What content instigates action from them? My organization recently reviewed our social media analytics and one thing we discovered was that there was more interaction when we posted human interest stories. There are a lot of places where patients and their families can get statistics about cancer. But what they really seemed interested in were the stories of hope or just unique features relating to cancer. As we began planning our 2017 social media strategy, one thing I said to my team was that I wanted them to think about the things they are most likely to interact with on social media. What kinds of content caught their attention or did they see floating around on sites like Facebook, besides talking dogs and dancing kittens. Then our task was to take the core components that lead to the attraction of the content and see if it had a place in our social media plan. As we all saw from Dallas resident Ana-Alecia Ayala who posted videos of her and her friend dancing during chemotherapy, cancer doesn’t always have to be serious. 

Her video went viral and was an inspiration to many battling cancer. So look at your organization and how you can use social media channels to create interest in your products and/or services.

Other ways strategic communicators can use the digital world to develop smarter communications and marketing plans is by collecting and analyzing data from the analytical tools available to dig deeper into consumer’s digital habits. Tools like Google® Analytics and Facebook® Analytics can give you great insight into the demographics of your target audience.  Data can be pulled from any electronic device with web capability. By looking at trends and patterns, you can see how your audience behaves in the digital world.  Adage.com lists four ways you can measure your social media: identify your key performance indicators (KPIs), align your social media goals with your business objectives, set up Google Analytics to track conversions and assign values to your KPIs. Those values can measure things like how much do you earn from each customer on average? How much is each potential visit worth to you based on the percentage that converts? How much is the average purchase through your site? How much would you end up paying if you were to use ads to achieve the same social media results? And finally benchmark against your competitors. (adage.com, 2016)

There truly is a world wide web out there filled with a million ways to inform, educate and entertain us. Strategic communicators must find creative ways to harness these resources sift through the clutter and create communications strategies that engage consumers.  Communication strategies have to be more sophisticated and use a variety of platforms.  All statistics seem to point towards mobile devices and PC’s being where the majority of consumers get their information. So ask yourself, are your digital communications interactive? Do they draw your audience in and make them want to learn more about your organization. If not, then maybe it’s time to utilize some of the strategies mentioned today. Otherwise you might as well be saying "Bueller, Bueller" to your customers. 

It's Mobile Baby Yeah

"It's Mobile Baby, Yeah"

Mobile communication is where it’s at. In the 2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, time users spent in digital media was 51% as compared to 42% spent on a desktop.

 The 2016 US Mobile App Report by ComScore showed that digital media time has grown more than fifty percent in the past three years and that ninety percent of that growth was due to mobile apps. 

Mobile apps are approaching sixty percent of total digital time spent (comScore 2016). We don’t need statistics to prove this point to us. How many times are we in public or even in our own homes and see a version of the picture below?

Statistics have been showing the trend for years that eventually mobile will overtake PC’s and that is exactly what has transpired. Dollars spent in mobile digital ads is increasing as well. Mobile Marketing Magazine predicted a fifty percent increase in 2016 spend in digital advertising dollars on mobile platforms. But as we move to the mobile age, organizations must evaluate their mobile strategy in order to keep from becoming a “me too” in the world of mobile applications.

According to Nielson, apps account for eighty-nine percent of mobile media time. Consumers use apps to do everything from personal banking, shopping, research and a myriad of other activities. The challenge for organizations is to find that unique mobile application that engages users and becomes a useful tool, not just another application sitting in the digital space with no real purpose other than to say “we have a mobile app”.  Entrepreneur.com posted an article in July 2014 by Contributor Rahul Varsheya, “6 Common traits of the Biggest Aps”. In his article, Varsheya discusses that successful mobile apps must solve a problem, be easy to use, not using a cross platform, being regularly updated, have strong support and be treated like a business.

When organizations decide to create mobile apps the first question they must ask is what value does this bring to my customers?  What problems will it solve or why would your customers want to use this application. In my organization I recently pitched the idea of developing a mobile app where cancer patients across the country could connect through an application similar to Instagram®.  Patients could check in when they go to receive chemotherapy or visit their oncologists. They could post pictures or short videos of their experience. Being diagnosed with cancer can be a very lonely journey, even when you are surrounded by family. I know from first-hand experience. If cancer patients had a way to share their experiences within a cancer community, perhaps they would feel less alone in their journey. They could also choose to share on social media, but could keep their posts within the cancer community app as well. This application would solve the problem of their being a social network dedicated solely to cancer patients and for cancer patients. There are apps out there that provide resources for cancer patients but none that I have found that are solely dedicated to bringing cancer patients together through social media.

Ease of use was the next characteristic Varsheya mentioned. By using an Instagram type of platform, the app should be easy to use and have a familiar style that consumers would be used to.  This is why I chose the Instagram style platform. It allows for simple posts consisting of pictures or short videos but also allows other Followers to interact through Likes and Comments. It’s a platform type that is widely used and would be familiar to most users.  It would also adhere to Varsheya’s third principle of not being a cross plat-form with any other application.

The fourth characteristic Varsheya references are the commitment to update it frequently.  As the cancer community application evolved, it could be modified to meet the needs of the cancer patient community.  Perhaps patients might want the ability to share articles or information they find useful in their cancer care. One frustrating thing to me about Instagram is that you cannot share direct url links. In order to be able to consistently update the application and have it evolve to meet your customers’ needs you must tap into his fifth principle of having strong support. You must have a way for customers to interact with you for feedback and technical issues. A customer knowing someone is there to resolve their issues or listen to their comments is vital in the success for a digital application. How many of us have downloaded apps, had an issue and subsequently deleted the app because there wasn’t adequate customer support?

Finally, as strategic communicators we must remember to treat the application as a business. While having a purpose or solving a problem for our customers can be part of the goal, it cannot be the only goal. Questions like how we can use the application to increase revenue or brand awareness are just a few of the questions we should be asking as we develop our mobile application strategy. In the case of the cancer community application, part of my proposal would add an additional revenue stream to our business as well as increase national brand recognition. By partnering with pharmaceutical companies or other cancer organizations for advertising campaigns on the application, we could at least create an additional; revenue source. We could promote national brand awareness through the advertisement of the application through grass roots efforts in our clinics as well as a digital and social media adverting campaign.

The mobile application and mobile communication arena is the fastest growing sector when it comes to not only user time spent but also advertising dollars spent. With almost sixty percent of users total digital time being spent on mobile apps, organizations cannot afford to ignore this platform. As you can see from the picture below, I use apps to creatively capture the important moments in my life. 

Smart organizations will incorporate a mobile strategy into their marketing and communications plan. The best strategies will be the ones who pay attention to the characteristics of those who have been successful in the mobile communications field.  So what will the mobile future of your organization look like?

 

Moving at the Speed of Light

 We are in the digital age. Technology is changing faster than we can keep up. The fact that the 45^th President of the United States asked if he should keep his personal Twitter account is just one example of how the digital world has changed the way we communicate. I think we will see a decline in officially press releases through print media, but more given through social media with links to videos or documents. So with the convergence of digital media in our world today, how can strategic communicators use this platform to advance our messages? 

In Tom Wheeler’s Book “Net Effects: The Past, Present and Future of Our Networks” he says 

“What is clear about our network revolution, however, is that the new information networks are the new economy. Whereas earlier networks enabled the economic activities of their era, our network revolution defines virtually all aspects of the current economy.”

 This is so true. Never before have we seen technology define so many aspects of our lives and define the way we live, work and function as a society.  As strategic communicators our challenge is to find innovative ways to use this technology to the advantage of our organizations.  How you position your E-Commerce brand or your social media strategy could mean the difference between you being profitable and delivering to shareholders or you having a very different conversation when the fiscal year is up. Strategic communicators must figure out how to make their organization valuable in the barrage of information thrown at consumers on a regular basis. Wheeler mentions a USA Today article that says “Technology was supposed to free us and make our lives easier, but it’s done the opposite. It’s creating havoc in our lives. Everyone is overwhelmed and stressed out.”

So how can strategic communicators become be both artisans and industrialists in this new age of digital technology? How can we utilize the digital networks to streamline our respective fields?  Wheeler uses a great example in healthcare where “…new networks create the opportunity to transform medical treatment from an ex post experience dealing with a presented problem, to an ex ante experience that anticipates the problem and prevents or mitigates it- at a significantly lower cost. They offer, in other words, a new combination: the bigness of scale economics with the personalization of the individual design. The power of mass production meets the individual artisan”.  In my field of cancer care, precision medicine is where the treatment of cancer is heading. Technology has allowed oncologists to tailor a patient’s treatment based on biomedical markers based on their genetic, proteinaceous, and metabolic profile. According to the American Cancer Society’s Cutting Edge Cancer Science Series from April 2015,

 “researchers have learned over time is that cancer can arise from any number of genetic malfunctions, and often is due to a combination of errors, that ultimately lead to the out-of-control cell growth that causes tumors to grow and spread. This knowledge has allowed doctors to sometimes move cancer treatment from a broad-brush approach – using radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy to wipe out cancer and taking out normal healthy cells in the process – to a more targeted technique”. 

The digital age has allowed researchers and oncologists to share research findings and treatment protocols and their outcomes. The networks of today allow for data to be tracked, collected and examined in order to find data points of significance that impact cancer care. As a strategic communicator in the field of oncology, my role is to help my organization find the best ways to empower patients and healthcare providers through this new technology. Arming patients with the latest news on clinical trials and how to become a part of them or that they have a choice in their cancer treatment and how to know which oncologist is right for them.

From a provider standpoint, what resources can we provide as an organization to address their needs as a healthcare provider? Providing an understanding the new reimbursement models from CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) may ease the anxiety of a rural physician who doesn’t have a large staff committed to staying on top of physician requirements for the program.

So while living in a digital age opens us up to a wealth of information, it’s what we do with that information and how we use it to benefit our organization that makes it valuable.

A part of this now digital age come questions such as privacy and accessibility. Strategic communicators must consider this part of the equation when developing a communications strategy for your organization. If you are a part of a healthcare organization HIPPA governs patient privacy. You must take this into consideration anytime you are creating pieces that involve patients or their data. A strategy to offer alternative methods for obtaining information may be relevant if accessibility is a factor for your audience. Providing print material, multiple languages and downloads are just one way our organization helps rural practices address this issue of digital accessibility.

In conclusion, strategic communicators must embrace the digital age. They must also develop a strategy for their organization on how to effectively use the platforms made available by digital networking. The “how” is as important as the “what” at times.  How the President of the United States chooses to use his Twitter account is far more impactful to the nation than the platform itself. How the healthcare community chooses to use the power of this new digital network can greatly impact the way we treat horrible diseases such as cancer. How we address issues such as privacy and accessibility are also part of the equation. By embracing the good and the bad digital technology brings to our world will allow us to create communication strategies that make put our organization on the forefront of their respective fields. Strategic communicators must stay on top of the ever changing digital world and how to best use these changes for our organizations. 

Television: The Man in the Mirror

How does television reflect the conscience and values of our culture? It’s hard to find anything on television worth watching these days. Reality television, gory dramas like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead seem to be all the rage. According to television executive Lauren Zalaznick, studies show that the content on television reflects the values of America. In her Ted Talk she discusses how since the 1960’s multiple studies show a correlation between how the culture was feeling and its values and what programs were rated the highest on television. Comfort shows like Bonanza, Andy Griffith and such were popular until the late sixties when events like the Vietnam War, Watergate and other event begin to push the demand for Irreverent televisions shows like Mash and Archie Bunker. Those shows are mild irreverence compared to what we see in movies and television today. Even women have gotten in on the irreverent behavior. Amy Schumer has made a career out of being crude and impudent as possible. I shudder to think what primetime television will look like when my children are adults.

Is all hope lost? Will we ever see wholesome family values reign supreme on television again?

In her December 13, 2016 Fox News article, Diana Falzone reported that the wholesome family network The Hallmark Channel had seen a forty-six percent increase in viewership in 2016 according to Nielson. Maybe that’s a sign that America is looking for something more family friendly to entertain them. The success of shows like Dancing with the Stars seems to suggest a pull towards the nostalgic, perhaps a longing for a time when life was simpler. Even Disney grabbed a hold of the past in launching its show “Girl Meets World” which is a spin off from the 90’s show “Boy Meets World”. Netflix launched “Fuller House”, a spinoff of the 80’s show “Full House”.

In today’s world, the younger generation is watching less and less of traditional television. They have the ability to watch any movie or television show whenever they choose on an array of devices. Geoff Weiss reports in a June 2016 article for tubefilter.com that Nielson reports fifty-two percent of American homes have a streaming device. How will this phenomena change the television landscape? Will the younger generation eventually get tired of the gore and violent shows and want television shows that comfort them or offer comedic relief? Or will those be a thing of the past? Only time will tell.

As strategic communicators we need to pay attention to what is being reflected on television. What is American identifying with? Which types of television is resonating with what demographic? For instance, do Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials,  that seem more about getting in touch with the spiritual or philosophical side of its viewers really reach the target demographic for Lincoln? If so, should you brand try a more philosophic “touchy-feely” approach? Or if you are going after a younger demographic such as a millennial then Toyota’s “You Don’t Own Me” campaign or Jeeps “Free to Be” campaign 

which focuses on the ability to be unique and free hit a home run with its target audiences. Fantasy shows like “Westworld” and “Game of Thrones” seems to suggest audiences want to escape their reality. Perhaps a reflection of the unpredictable times we live in. Perhaps the Presidential election, civil unrest with Black Lives Matter, violence against the police and general corruption indicates Americans are wanting to escape into worlds that do not remind them in any way of modern times. Hopefully we will begin to see a period of stability in our nation which will give the next generation the desire for the "Leave It To Beaver" type of shows. One thing that was very interesting to me in the Ted Talk from Lauren Zalaznick was the one constant over the decades were strong mother figures in television. June Cleaver in the fifties, Lucille Ball in the sixties and even Murphy Brown in the 80's. While the looks and issues these mothers faced may have evolved over the decades, their desire to be good mothers to their children was the constant. Perhaps at the end of the day we are all looking for those comforts we only get through maternal nurturing anyway. 

Have a Pizza and Some Beer

Communication is essential in all aspects of life. It is defined as “the effective conveying of ideas or feelings or a means of connection between people and places” according to Google. Effective communication can make or break business and personal relationships. Throughout my studies this term I have explored topics such as effective listening and inspiring vision. I’ve learned about smart strategies for communicating during a crisis and effective leadership. Throughout each of these topics I have tried to examine my behaviors and strategies professionally as well as personally because essentially isn’t that what higher education should be about?

I have to laugh when I hear about initiatives like creating safe spaces on college campuses because opposing views are just too stressful for students to hear. How can you truly give a knowledgeable opinion on any topic without first being educated on that subject matter? In reflecting on the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor this past week I thought what a stark contrast to the generation we have today. When I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree back in the old days before the concept of safe spaces and pony ride therapy for stressed out college kids, I was exposed to many different topics by professors from all walks of life. As a side note, we ate too much pizza and drank too much beer to cope with our “life stress”.

Men of WWII 

Anyway, I had a physical science professor who was supposedly an atheist who cut off his finger as a test to see if God existed. I didn’t find him scary or feel I needed play dough therapy in order to cope, I was fascinated by him and his view of the world from the perspective of science. When I encountered an English professor who said the bible was simply a book of stories and metaphors I didn’t abandon my religion. It inspired me to dig deeper to discover why I believe what I believe. In my ripe old age of forty-two I have come to believe you should constantly be learning. My children make fun of me because one of my favorite shows is Aerial America on the Smithsonian channel. But I enjoy it because it’s a beautiful exhibition of our great nation and I have learned so many interesting facts like the real von Trapp family settled in Stowe, Vermont in the 1940’s.

So my point to this week’s blog is that we should never fear education or expanding our views. It makes us more well-rounded and gives us the ability to see the world as the complex place it is rather than our two dimensional bubble of everything that this pleasing to our narrow palate.

Don't Be the One Left Drowning

“If a Marketer and an IRS agent were both drowning, and you could only save one of them, would you go to lunch or read the paper?” Unfortunately, this can be the attitude professional marketer’s face on a regular basis within their organization. Marketing departments are viewed as the team that makes things look pretty.

This challenge is exacerbated by marketing departments failing to show true measurable outcomes and how those affect the bottom line. Your CFO is likely to see value because your Facebook page has two thousand followers unless you can show him or her how that creates value for your business.
Fortunately, in today’s world measuring marketing impressions has never been easier. Clicks, visits, bounce rates and other metrics can be meticulously measured through analytics provided by sources such as Google. Customer engagement can be tracked through Hashtags and Shares. We have focus groups and surveys that can help us keep our fingers on the pulse of the public to measure how a campaign will be perceived before it ever hits the universal market. Today’s marketing campaigns can be measured in quantitative forms better and more than ever before.

Websites like Ted.com are great examples of seeing how quantifiable results impact business. In March 2016 there were over 2,400 TedTalks available and in 2012 over one billion views (Ted.com). The website has won seven Webby Awards, a Peabody Award and an OMMA Award for video sharing (Webbyawards.com, Ted.com). Social engagement is what Ted.com does best. Engagementlabs.com evaluated the quantitative results of the NCAA March Madness sponsors in 2016. By using their “eValue” analytics they evaluated how each brand performed during the playoffs. Northwestern Mutual upset giant Coca Cola by effectively marketing using the following:

• Leveraging their association with the March Madness tournament to expand their reach and catch the attention of tournament fans.
• Tying key brand messages to the tournament to stay top of mind for tournament viewers.
• Tapping into human emotion with motivational March Madness-related content to connect better with their audiences.
• Employing relevant hashtags to capture audience attention across various channels.
• Following the tournament in real-time to stay ahead of viewers who were staying updated via social. (engagementlabs.com)

This is a fun look at the overall impact of a marketing campaign. Here is the link to the article:

https://www.engagementlabs.com/media-madness-2016-the-evalue-social-media-bracket/

So what are some of the quantitative parameters marketers should evaluate? Forbes writer Jason DeMers’ 2014 article “10 Online Marketing Metrics You Need to be Measuring” gives a great overview of the criteria you should be evaluating for your website. DeMers discusses how Total Visits “will give you a “big picture” idea of how well your campaign is driving traffic” while New Sessions will tell you how many new visitors you have coming to your site and how many of them are returning. He goes on to talk about even deeper measurements like Channel Specific Traffic, Bounce Rate, Conversions and Close Rate. Taking an in depth look at all of these can help your team evaluate the effectiveness of your website. My team used these elements to determine we had too much interference keeping visitors from getting to the main page we wanted them to visit. We were able to evaluate where on the page visitors were leaving and therefore how we needed to better position our pages and buttons that led to a call to action.

Social media is a relative new world of marketing and strategic communication. As has been discussed ad nauseam, too many organizations base their success on social media simply by their number of followers. Well having 20,000 followers on Twitter does you no good if those followers aren’t engaged. You are basically like a teenage girl just trying to gather as many followers as possible in order to have the bragging rights of “I have a gazillion followers”. Yet, no one cares really what your organization has to say.

There is tons of material available to guide marketing professionals on what they should be evaluating in their social media campaigns. In evaluating parameters like Reach which incorporate followers but also take it a step further to look at the number of Likes and Views to see how many people are really paying attention to what you have to say. Then by going a step further and looking at Engagement you can see just how compelling your communications were. How many people shred, retweeted or commented on your organizations posts?  Recently I wrote a personal blog about self-image and posted it really more for a couple of friends of mine who were really struggling with this issue. I was amazed at the engagement over this simple little blog that I thought only a couple of people would read. The page view is at close to 2,000 with tons of comments, likes and shares. Apparently, this topic resonated with a lot of women and even a couple of men.  When you are developing social media campaigns professionally you have to evaluate how and how often you are truly engaging your audience. Are you posting the same boring topics your competitors are posting? Would you be compelled to like, comment or share your posts? As I write this blog I am putting together my business unit’s social media plan for 2017. I want to evaluate the how and why but I also need to set some quantitative goals and parameters in order to judge our success. I am evaluating our sales goals and business unit objectives in order to develop a campaign that can help support those goals and initiatives. BY developing our social media campaign with these objectives in mind, I can relay these parameters and the quantitative results back to leadership in order to show that marketing does play an important role in the business efforts and results and is there for more than just to make things look pretty.

Marketers can make campaigns look pretty, however if they fail to produce a desired action then they are pretty much like the Hope Diamond sitting in the Natural Museum of History in Washington, D.C.. It’s great to admire but can never be worn and put to use. So when developing marketing campaigns be sure you are looking at as many measurable results as possible. Create value in what you do and maybe just maybe someone will think you are worth diving in to save.

Crisis Averted

“Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential.”  states Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle and oh how true this is. Whether in life or business how you manage a crisis reveals a lot about your character and ability to weather the storms that come at you. I remember when I was a senior in high school and preparing to try out for majorette with the Sound of the South at Troy and I was having difficulty with a particular part of a routine. I was frustrated and sat down on the ground and begin to cry. About that time my father walked outside and asked what the problem was. I told him. He looked at me and said “Well you have two choices. You can sit here and cry about it and not accomplish a thing or you can get up and keep working at it until you get it right”. For some reason, those words have stuck with me throughout my life. Trying times will come and you have a choice in how you choose to react. Strategic communications in times of crisis is no different. You can’t “sit there and cry about it”, you have to have a game plan to deal with the crisis at hand and the impact it will have on your organization in the future. As Neil Chapman says in his 2011 Chartered Institute of Public Relations interview on the BP oil spill that resulted from the Deepwater Horizon explosion, “there’s not much you can say to make it better, but a lot you can say to make it worse”. He goes on to talk about how all of the different agencies involved in the incident and cleanup had to work together communicate effectively in order to get things back on track.  They had to repair the damage done to BP’s reputation. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward issued an apology and then a campaign followed discussing BP’s ongoing commitment to restoration and amends.

There are numerous examples of companies who faced crisis situations and chose to face the situation head on. In the study “Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies: The Role of Human Resource Development” by Lynn Perry Wooten and Erika Hayes James, they examined leadership competencies during crisis situations. Alaska Airlines, Ford and Merck were a few of the companies whose executives exhibited most of the five phases of crisis management well. Consequently, all of those companies came out of those crisis situations faring well. Many of these organizations are stronger than before the crisis situation.
Now let’s consider a new public relations crisis of sorts fresh out of the headlines. A couple of days ago an unruly fan got an up close encounter with country music star Luke Bryan. According to video footage and news reports, the fan was flipping off the singer and continuously making rude comments. Apparently Luke Bryan had enough so he came off stage and had a brief physical altercation with the fan. As his publicist now what? What are your next moves? His team issued a statement saying “"A man in [the] front row was making crude hand gestures toward Luke during his performance," the statement reads. “It was insulting not only to him, but more importantly to the men, women and families sitting around him who were there to support and celebrate Charlie Daniels and the efforts of raising money for the military veterans -- some of who were in the audience. The concert security personnel saw the man's disruptive actions of the event and he was escorted out."

The media began with reports that the star “punched” the fan. Eonlinenews.com’s headline read “Here's Why Luke Bryan Punched a Fan in the Middle of His Concert”, however from the video it looks more like he really just shoved the man’s head. Nonetheless, Luke Bryan’s public relations team now has an issue to handle. In keeping with the discussion of the five phases of crisis management discussed earlier let’s discuss how some of these may fit this situation. Looking at Signal Detection, thankfully there does not seem to be a history of confrontations with fans for Luke Bryan. In fact, according to reports from 2013 (WKBR) and 2015 (whiskeyriff.com) Bryan has a history of criticizing violence at his shows and events. However, considering he got directly involved in breaking up a fight in 2013, it would seem the singer does have a history of stepping into situations he should let his event security handle. This leads to the next step of Preparation and Prevention, by allowing his event security to handle these situations, he can avoid potentially reputation damaging scenarios not to mention some that could result in legal issues. We know in our litigious society, people are always looking for a reason to sue a big celebrity and make a quick buck. I think Luke Bryan’s publicist handled Damage Control and Containment well. Instead of simply looking like Luke Bryan was defending his honor; the situation was made to look like he was defending the honor of veterans and their families, since the concert was in their honor. Using the Evading Responsibility through provocation component of the Image Restoration Theory, his team is able to suggest his response was warranted because of the fans actions. This is a perfect strategy especially for the typical country music fan. According to a 2004 Gallup survey, over sixty percent of country music fans identified themselves as Republicans which tends to support a strong military and veterans benefits. The typical “good ol’ country boy” won’t see a whole lot wrong with Luke Bryan “defending” the honor of military veterans and their families.

In conclusion, crisis management is a comprised of many different elements but the biggest piece is what you say and how you say it. Devising the right message, with the right tone, delivering it at the right time and following up with comparable actions will go a long way in managing a crisis situation. Whether you are BP, Merck or Luke Bryan, trusting your communications teams to craft that message is crucial. Strong crisis management plans can hopefully minimize the damage and help keep another crisis averted.