"I'll write whatever you want, just pass the cookies!" True Tales from The Press Room!

During down time, while our employers are back at the ranch busily assembling any number of combustibles, we in the crisis communications firehouse are prone to swapping swashbuckling stories of derring-do in the midst of twelve-alarmers that reduce even corporate Gods to ash in seconds.

Recently, one of our fellows posed the following in between courses of various pizzas:

“Have you ever had a client dead set on making some bad moves or going in the wrong direction during a crisis, despite your warnings? What was your advice that eventually talked them off the ledge?”

For the most part responses ranged from the successful employment of reasoned logic (“I wouldn’t say that if I were you”) to the passionate (“that’s insane!!”). The general consensus was that sanity sometimes prevails but some clients just leap to their death certain that a few beatific supplications will make all this disappear before it hits the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

My contribution was a little off topic if only because firemen really prefer to fight fires than endure another afternoon of Judge Judy.

This wasn't exactly a crisis but it was a real screw-up by a CEO and I was nuked as a result.

A company I worked for held a major customer conference every year at which various industry luminaries spoke. I was head of communications at the time and of course we wanted to get visibility as we basked in the radiance of these tamales.

So naturally with everyone's blessing, I invited the trade press and set up a press room with internet access, some terminals, phones, press kits, refreshments, etc., and it was always buzzing. During the 3-day event, one of the reporters wrote a less-than-favorable story about one of the industry greats, hinting that this big shot was somehow influenced by us. The CEO was rather upset, hauled me aside, and told me that no member of the press could be allowed into the press room unless he or she wrote a favorable article. Words failed me, except I remember saying something (calmly) like: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. [thinking: I'm talking to a loony] You can't do that. They'll write what they want whether we have a press room or not. I doubt that they'll tell me what they are going to write because they are starving for free finger sandwiches and coffee. That's the nature of journalism. I just can't tell a journalist what to write. Even for attempting, it will make us look terrible." For my defense of our professional ethics and principled disagreement I was fired the next day.

I tell this story because all the signs of a company that's going to go South in the event of a crisis are probably there already. So caveat emptor everyone. And you may wish to take the prudent route (less taken) and quit while you're ahead, particularly if your company is in energy, transportation, or securities. Or just tough it out and wait the Big One to drop or for your CEO's inevitable and surely "premature" deposition (which will probably come sooner than later if the delusions persist).

Moral: an ounce of prevention sometimes makes no bloody difference at all.