What Pee-wee Herman Can Teach You about Crisis Communications

 

Pee-wee Herman knows that saying nothing in the face of a crisis means giving up control of the story.

Pee-wee Herman is returning to the big time with his first movie in nearly three decades, “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” premiering on Netflix this week.

It’s not another case of Hollywood running out of ideas (see the Poltergeist, Police Academy and Vacation reboots for more on that), but rather the return of a character cut down in his prime.

Pee-wee began as a nightclub act in the late ’70s, and then somehow ended up as must-watch children’s programming in the span of little more than a decade. But Pee-wee’s invitation into America’s living rooms was promptly withdrawn when Paul Reubens, the man who created and embodies Pee-wee, was arrested in Sarasota in 1991 on charges of indecent exposure.

The gap between the subversive yet kid-friendly antics of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” and the seedy appearance of Reubens’ all-too-public mugshot set off a media firestorm—and marked the beginning of a 20+-year hiatus in Pee-wee’s television and movie career.

Talking to The New York Times Magazine in February, Reubens said of the arrest and subsequent fall out, “…it was stupid not to do anything. I never spoke out. I just went and hid, and in hindsight—I mean, that was my true response, but I don’t think it was smart—if I had to do it over again, I would figure out a way to get out there, talk about it, take control of it.”

Allow me to channel my inner ’80s child for a moment and say: Duh!

In fairness to Reubens, and anyone who has had to face a communications crisis, the obvious response is not so apparent when you’re the one in the media spotlight.

So what do you do when your reputation is on the line or public opinion is not in your favor? Read on.

Beyond Preparation

The first thing any crisis specialist will tell you is to think through potential scenarios, assemble a team and develop responses that can be used if and when a crisis presents itself—and do it immediately, before a crisis is even on your radar.

While this is sound advice, it doesn’t help when you’re in the thick of it.

The most important steps for a company to take in a crisis are to:

1. Communicate quickly.
2. Understand all the facts.
3. Think long term.

Be Quick

Failing to respond immediately to a crisis—which in today’s world means well within an hour of news breaking—makes companies and individuals appear out of touch at best, and careless or uninterested at worse.

But a quick response doesn’t necessarily have to be thorough. It’s highly unlikely that any company will have all the facts at their disposal in such a short amount of time.

Instead, the purpose of a first communication in the wake of a crisis is to reassure all concerned parties that you’re aware of the news and trying to determine how you got to now so you can fix the issue.

Don’t assume, like Chipotle did in the early days of the E. Coli outbreak, that a crisis incident is isolated or not a big deal. Talk to your publics in a way that shows you take the crisis seriously and help reassure them that you’re on top of it.

Be Thorough and Accurate

A quick response gives companies some time to get their facts together. The goal is to understand the whole picture and start thinking about how it could impact the business and all its stakeholders in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

Minutiae matters and from a pure-optics perspective, the dripping out of details only ensures that your crisis remains front-page news. For your stakeholders, every new piece of information that leaks out can chip away at your brand reputation and credibility.

Just fixing the problem isn’t enough. Companies that can tell the whole story, and build their communications to make new information part of a larger whole, are much better positioned to survive and thrive in the wake of a crisis.

Think Beyond Tomorrow

Any company or celebrity that wants to be around 10 years from now needs to plan their communications to that time frame.

Yes, it can be painful to recall a product or admit a mistake. And those decisions aren’t made easily. But the alternative is doing nothing, which only ensures that the crisis will roll on.

There’s a reason crisis experts still point to Tylenol as the gold standard of how to manage a crisis situation. The company made the hard choice of pulling all of its products from store shelves rather than risk one more person dying or falling ill from product tampering.

The decision must have seemed devastating in the moment, but ensured that the Tylenol brand would be around 30 years later.

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