Telling Your Story in Tough Times by Lou Hoffman

As Chicken Little so articulately put it, "the sky is falling." Everywhere you look, the digital revolution seems to have hit the skids. Tech companies are marching head-down to the financial confessional and begging forgiveness for missed earnings. New calculations from the market research firms show downward slopes on their beautiful multicolor charts.

Going public is no longer a God-given right for every startup fortified by VC funding. We've already begun to see the procession of tech companies announcing layoffs.

The last time we saw such a climate (from '89 to '91), most tech companies embraced the sophisticated strategy known as "hide-and-peek PR." Just as the name implies, companies adopted a bunker mentality to minimize communications with external audiences, periodically searching out that friendly reporter who wouldn't poke and probe.

If it all sounds a bit silly, you're right. I remember one CEO (who shall remain nameless) canceling a trip to COMDEX to avoid "the outside world." Now that makes a lot of sense. The company is in the dumpster, inventory languishes in warehouses, and he wants to barricade himself from talking to the very people who buy his product or observers of the industry who offer an outside perspective.

Contrary to traditional thinking, today's tough market conditions offer terrific opportunities for companies to strengthen relations with the media, tell their story and even bolster their reputations. It's all in how you capitalize on the situation.

For example, how the market perceives your CEO handling a tough situation goes a long way toward eroding or building your reputation. Needless to say, the image of the CEO cowering under a desk does not elicit market confidence. Consider the typical reaction to a report in the media that Amazon's Jeff Bezos dodged a CNBC interview after hearing a reporter from The Wall Street Journal was joining Mr. e-commerce on the set. Not good.

In contrast, few actions enhance a reputation faster than seeing the head honcho stride front and center, confidently acknowledge the challenge, take a few bullets for past problems--no whining or making excuses--and then move on to articulate a plan of action to put the company back on course.

While the media provides an obvious vehicle for the CEO to tell his or her story, it's not the only vehicle. With the rising prominence of corporate web sites, PR professionals now command an ideal medium for taking the message directly to the target audience. What's more, you don't have to be satisfied with the traditional CEO Q&A accompanied by a forced-smile head shot. Advances in video and broadband now mean you can produce TV-like interviews with your CEO easily accessed on your web site. The beauty of this approach is that outbound communication carries context (body language, voice intonation, etc.) as well as content.

Of course, before you can get to the point of publicly showing your CEO leading the charge, you need to gain senior management's buy-in that a PR strategy that leverages (as opposed to hides from) the current market conditions should be in place. An entire column could be written on how to support this argument, but at a high level we've had success explaining this strategy as a contrarian play. In other words, if everyone is zigging (i.e., keeping quiet), now's the time to zag. Put in practical terms, more effort in an area like media relations can produce greater ROI simply because of less competition.

Even under the best conditions, how often are we setting up meetings for a senior executive much less a CEO with key publications when the primary objective is to be an industry resource? No agenda. No news. Just be a resource. It doesn't happen enough.

Yet, today's rocky climate provides the perfect backdrop to demonstrate confidence by proactively securing and conducting background press meetings. Sure, the conversation will inevitably find its way to your company's pain; but again, the opportunity lies in being able to address the negatives head-on. By gaining the reporter's confidence with this tack, the executive is in the perfect position to pontificate on industry trends, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and projections. The more compelling the content, the more likely the reporter will view the executive as a source for commentary in future stories.

Stepping back for a moment, it's amazing how the market obsesses over the numbers during bad times. Hard data seems to dominate our lives enlightening us on areas ranging from the state of corporate capital investment to Internet penetration to Alan Greenspan's latest interest rate move. I appreciate that the numbers provide a barometer for how the digital economy and companies are doing.

But we can become so obsessed with the numbers that we forget what's ultimately important: the customer experience. If PR professionals can serve as the keepers of the "customer flame"--making sure the customer perspective is heard internally as well as raising the customer's voice externally--that by itself makes an incredible contribution to a company's or client's business objectives.

Lou Hoffman is president of The Hoffman Agency, an international tech and Internet PR firm with offices in the U.S., China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Japan and the U.K. Email him at lhoffman@hoffman.com.