Newtown

By Charles Hayslett,
CEO Hayslett Group

                I’ll confess.  When news of the Newtown slaughter broke on Friday, my first cynical reaction was: it won’t matter.  Nothing will change. 

                Maybe I was wrong. 

                If public revulsion at the massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators might have been expected, the reaction of a political community in thrall to the gun lobby has been nothing short of stunning.  We may have reached a turning point, if not a tipping point.

                This is not, by the way, a blog about the pros or cons of gun rights in America – although, full disclosure, I am one who has long thought our country’s policies on this issue are, for lack of a more technical term, nuts.  Even Old West saloon keepers had the good sense to make customers check their guns at the door.  A couple of years ago the Georgia General Assembly made it legal for Georgians to pack heat in bars.

                But already I digress.  This is, rather, intended as a brief disquisition about what may be a unique moment in the history of managing public issues and crises of this type.  Rarely if ever has a single event so clearly and dramatically changed the dynamics of such an important public policy issue.  When the smoke finally clears, there will be books, seminars, speeches, polls, case studies and op-ed columns aplenty about what happened and why.

                How will it turn out?  I don’t know; it’s too early to tell.  Until Newtown, it was pretty much game over and the National Rifle Association and the pro-gun lobby had won.  As New York Times columnist Gail Collins noted after the Aurora massacre in July, the NRA long ago reached a point where it had to make up things to lobby for – “like the right to bear arms in airport lobbies.”

                And, indeed, public opinion has clearly been shifting away from gun restrictions for quite a while.  In his current post, Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport lists many of the all-too-familiar shootings between 1999 and 2012, and adds: “Despite all of these incidents over the past 13 years, Americans have, in general, become less likely to say that the country needs stricter gun control laws. In February 1999, the last poll before the Columbine shooting, 60% of Americans said the nation needed stricter gun control laws (this was in response to three options given to respondents in Gallup’s basic trend question: more strict, less strict, or kept as is). Within days of Columbine, an April 26-27 survey showed a slight increase to 66% in 1999. From that point on, the “more strict” percentage began to decline. It fell below 50% for the first time in October 2008. Last year it was 43% in October, the all-time low.”

                While it may be too early to speculate about the long-term impact of Newtown, it’s not too early to think – from the perspective of issues and crisis management – about the major forces and factors that will shape whatever that outcome is.  Here’s my short list:

Ø  Sustained political leadership.  This is obvious but still needs to be listed first.  President Obama has signaled his intention to press the issue, but he already had a full plate before Newtown and there are practical questions about how much time, energy and political capital he can afford to invest in the issue.  He’ll have plenty of help from New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others, but it’s hard to see anything happening if he steps back.  I don’t think he will.  Look for the issue to come up in his second inaugural and the State of the Union.

Ø  Whether gun control advocates can reframe the debate.  As the polling data cited above and recent public policy trends make clear, the fight for “gun control” has been lost.  The challenge now is whether it’s possible to reframe the issue and the debate.  We’re already beginning to hear political pundits and others talk about “gun safety” and see thoughtful discussions about balancing Second Amendment rights with legitimate public safety concerns.  In this morning’s AJC, Jay Bookman has an excellent column suggesting that the policy path we’ve taken on drunk driving in recent years can be a blueprint for gun safety.

Ø  How quickly things happen.  As horrific as Newtown was, it still has a limited shelf life as a news story and as an important public issue.  It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes before it falls off the front page and out of the national consciousness – and that will happen.  If President Obama and his allies can’t get the ball rolling by the time that happens, nothing will happen.

Ø  How business and markets react over the medium- and long-term.  This is perhaps the single most interesting post-Newtown development.  The private equity firm Cerberus announced yesterday that it will sell its stake in the company that manufactured the Bushmaster .223 used to kill many of the Sandy Hook first graders, and I caught a blurb on the news last night to the effect that a major sporting goods store near Newtown was taking down its gun display.  Here you have businesses putting brand considerations ahead of the bottom line. 

Ø  How the NRA and its allies respond.  It bears mentioning that these folks know what they’re doing.  They’ve successfully pressed the expansion of gun rights for decades, and they will not go quietly into the night.  For now, they’ve gone into bunker mode; they’ve gone dark on social media and have made no substantive comments about Newtown, except to say on their website that they’ll hold a “major news conference” on Friday.  They may not have faced a firestorm like Newtown before, but this is not their first rodeo. 

               

                Again, it’s too early to predict how events will unfold from here.  But these are some of the topics you’ll be reading about as it does.

HG Wins IABC Awards for Public Health and Healthcare projects

By Dori Mendel
Senior Account Manager, Hayslett Group

Hayslett Group took home three IABC flame awards at the 2012 IABC awards gala, including two Gold Flames and a Bronze Flame. One of the Gold Flames was for a quarterly healthcare event for Gwinnett Medical Center titled “Take the Pledge for a Healthy Heart,” and the other Gold Flame was for Partner Up! For Public Health’s student video contest. The Bronze Flame was awarded for Partner Up! For Public Health’s 2012 Health & Economic Power ratings.

“It’s always an honor to have your work recognized, especially among other successful peers,” said Charlie Hayslett, CEO of Hayslett Group. “These awards underscore HG’s ongoing commitment to our clients and our constant effort to create innovative and compelling work.”

For more on the IABC Golden Flames, visit http://atlanta.iabc.com/awards/.

What all budding orators can learn from Bill Clinton

By Charles Hayslett
CEO, Hayslett Group   

I actually remember the first time I saw Bill Clinton give a speech.  It was in late 1991 or early ‘92 and I was working for BellSouth Corporation.  At the time, I was managing one of the company’s communications organizations, but my first assignment, nearly 10 years earlier, had been as its senior speechwriter.  It was work I enjoyed and seemed to have a fair knack for, and it had left me with a deep appreciation for good speechwriting and speechmakers.

So it was, that after tossing and turning and unable to sleep in a hotel room in Birmingham, Ala., where I had gone for a meeting with some South Central Bell colleagues, I finally turned on the TV and began scanning the channels until I came, believe it or not, to C-SPAN and a rerun of a speech by this young governor (and presidential hopeful) from Arkansas to a business group somewhere in Ohio.

Now I don’t know what this says about me, but I was almost immediately captivated – by a C-SPAN rerun of a speech at two o’clock in the morning by a small-state governor whom I had heard of but didn’t know much about.

Did I mention that the speech was about Medicaid?

That recollection came back to me last Wednesday night as I watched now former President Clinton deliver the nominating speech for President Obama at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.  Politics aside, I think even Clinton’s harshest critics would agree that he is one of the premier political orators of this or any other era. 

Obviously, the Clinton I watched at the DNC was older, thinner and grayer than the pudgy Southern governor I first noticed in the wee hours of a Birmingham morning 20 years ago.  But elements of his Medicaid talk to that group of Ohio business people two decades past echoed in the Charlotte convention hall Wednesday night, and I found myself thinking about lessons we could draw from Clinton’s speechifying.

True enough, Clinton comes to every podium with a level of natural oratorical talent that few can ever hope to match.  But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had to work at it, or that more mortal speakers can’t draw useful lessons from the master.  I point to three.

Know your stuff.  The thing that really captivated me early that morning in Birmingham was Clinton’s command of his subject matter.  He was speaking without either a TelePrompTer or a printed text.  I couldn’t even see evidence of a stray envelope with notes scribbled on the back.  (Old speechwriters learn to look for these kinds of things.)  Yet he worked his way deliberately and energetically through what we would all come to recognize as one of his patented multi-point policy speeches (and, yes, he could go on too long at times; I didn’t say he was perfect).  Who knew Medicaid could be interesting at 2 a.m.? 

That same ability was on display Wednesday night in Charlotte.  I know he was working from a TelePrompTer this time around, but after a few minutes I realized I couldn’t tell that he was using it (you usually can, and I could with most other speakers).  What’s more, he clearly ad libbed at several points in the speech – and sometimes at length.  But because he knew the subject matter, he could make it work.

Draw power from your audience.  As a newspaper reporter covering politics many years ago, time and again I covered campaign events where candidates were able to establish a visceral connection with their audiences that had a literally energizing effect on the speaker; I’ve seen political candidates who I knew were bone-tired grow stronger and stronger as their speech went on.  That may be easier to do in a friendly political setting than, say, a corporate business forum – but it needn’t be.  Good speakers understand – whether naturally or through experience – that part of their responsibility is to engage their audience on a human level.  That’s easier to do, obviously, if they’re not having to pour all of their mental energy into reading a speech or presenting a text-heavy PowerPoint presentation; to the degree that they “know their stuff,” they’ve got that much extra psychic energy to put into establishing a human connection with their audience – to talk not just to them, but with them.  Clinton managed that at several points Wednesday night; at moments it seemed he wasn’t just delivering a speech to the thousands of people in the convention hall, he was having a personal conversation with each and every one of them.

Then give some of that power back.  This is probably the hardest of the three Clintonian lessons to learn and apply.  I know it’s the most difficult to articulate and explain, and maybe you’ve got to see it to believe it.  But the best speakers understand that generating energy in an audience – and then absorbing it in ways that strengthen the speaker and elevate the speech – is just the first part of the deal.  The real payoff comes when a speaker learns how to return a measure of that power and energy – to engage and motivate the audience in ways that make them participants in a conversation rather than mere listeners.  For Bill Clinton and a handful of other great orators, that ability may be a natural part of their DNA.  But even they have to work on it.

Most of us may have to work on it a little more.  My hunch is you’ll find it’s worth it the first time you leave a podium to the loud applause that lets you know you really got your message across.  Then and only then will you understand that speechmaking is a uniquely powerful means of communication that no other tactic or channel can quite match.

           

The Real Questions at Chick-fil-A: How did this happen? And how can they stop it from happening again?

By Charles Hayslett
CEO, Hayslett Group

Time was you didn’t mix business with politics or religion, let alone both.  Times have changed.  Dan Cathy, president of Chick-fil-A and son of company founder Truett Cathy, recently grabbed both of those third rails not once but twice with back-to-back public pronouncements aligning the $4 billion-a-year fast-food company in support of traditional marriage and in opposition to gay marriage.

His statements – at least one of which would have made Pat Robertson proud – touched off the predictable media firestorm, complete with much handwringing from marketing and PR types about damage to the venerable Atlanta brand.   At the AJC, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich is having a field day lampooning Chick-fil-A and its cows.

For what it’s worth, I think Chick-fil-A has gotten the initial PR strategy about right.  Put out a bland statement professing respect for all people regardless of, well, anything and everything – and then shut up, hunker down, and ride it out.  This too shall pass.

That said, there are a handful of important questions still to be answered.  How did this happen?  What if anything can be done to prevent it from happening again?  And will there be long-term damage to the Chick-fil-A brand?

To take the last question first, probably not a lot.  Yes, this incident will be out there on Google forever, but Chick-fil-A’s SEO people will probably bury the reference in fairly short order.  One marketing analyst was quoted in today’s AJC suggesting the flap could cost Chick-fil-A up to two percent in sales volume.  That’s about $80 million a year, or, by my rough calculation, something on the order of 15 million chicken sandwiches. 

Maybe they’ll take that kind of hit, but I doubt it – especially when you look at the (very Red, socially conservative, Southern) markets served by Chick-fil-A.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see their sales go up.  Increasingly, it seems the country is divided not just between Red and Blue states, but Red and Blue marketplaces.

Yes, they’re taking some flack in important expansion markets outside the South, and they’ll have to figure out how to make nice in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco.  And they’ll have to do damage control with at least some franchisees.  But they’ll be able to handle all that.

As they get past the firestorm, somebody will no doubt focus internally on my first two questions (somebody no doubt already is).  Chick-fil-A has never been a client of ours (and probably never will be after this blog), but I’ve known a good number of PR and media-savvy people who have worked for and with the company, and they’re all capable folks.  It’s hard to believe any of them would have put Dan Cathy up for an interview knowing he was going to deliver a politically charged, anti-gay message.  This is, trust me, the kind of incident that drives a corporate PR manager’s liquor bill through the roof.

If either or both of the interviews were cleared through the PR department and PR knew what Cathy was going to say, then either a.) this was part of a truly diabolical marketing strategy to drive up sales with socially conservative customers while risking a smaller customer universe of liberals and gays or b.) somebody should be fired, maybe even shot at dawn.  I think all of that is doubtful (although some poor Chick-fil-A flack will inevitably take the fall and is probably already being fitted for a cow costume).

Which leaves us with the possibility that Cathy was practicing PR without a license – that somehow both Biblical Reporter and then radio host Ken Coleman’s bookers got access to Cathy without going through the media relations staff, and that he took both interviews without running it by his media relations staff.  I can see that happening once – a friendly, Christian publication somehow connects with Cathy outside the normal Chick-fil-A bureaucracy and gets him to do what should be an easy and innocent interview.  But twice?  Something broke down somewhere.

Of course, the very nature of Chick-fil-A makes managing this kind of situation difficult.  It’s still a privately-held company headed by the founding Cathy family, and I know it’s not easy to tell the founder’s son that he just stepped in a giant pile of either chicken or cow poo, and please, please, please don’t do it again. 

Undoubtedly, the first management option that came to mind inside the PR shop was to gag Cathy, tie him to his chair, disconnect his phone line, and lock him in his office.  Most likely, however, that hasn’t happened.  Whatever new protocol they put in place, we’ll know it’s working if and only if Cathy disappears for a  time and doesn’t do a third interview with, say the Mike Huckabee show or the 700 Club.

If that third interview does happen, well, then it’s time to bring in Bill Engvall and have him start handing out signs.  And they won’t say “EAT MOR CHIKIN.” 

I speak @ IWIRC

Director of Client Services Michelle Fry will be discussing the effectiveness of the re-branding of the International Women's Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) leadership conference next week @ McKenna Long & Aldridge. (Long name for an association for women in bankruptcy related professions!) We helped plan their re-branding in 2010...check out their website to get a hint of it @ www.iwirc.com.

Piedmont Healthcare begins Community Health Needs Assessment, Hayslett Group assess population health

Piedmont Healthcare, one of Georgia’s premiere health care systems, has retained Hayslett Group LLC to assist the system in the development of Community Health Needs Assessments required under the federal government’s Affordable Care Act (ACA).  Hayslett Group is responsible for researching and compiling detailed reports on the health status and related factors for the populations in key counties served by Piedmont Healthcare’s five hospitals. 

For more information on Piedmont Healthcare, please visit www.piedmont.org.