Sounds like a conservative rationalization - "Komen should have stuck to its guns."

Their contributions were drying up with such a foolish public position and an idiot like Karen Handel driving her anti-abortion lunacy behind the scenes.

Komen's reputation has suffered a setback that will take years to recover and it's not certain it ever will recover.

The charity spends way to much on administration anyway - a $300,000 a year salary at a CHARITY? - so people truly interested in funding help and research for breast cancer will find the numerous other worthy alternatives.

Susan, you couldn't be more right on several levels. I, too, have been doing crisis work for quite a while. So like you, I've seen what consistency and continuity can do in situations like this. In fact, as you point out, "wishy-washy" only makes things worse. Witness the fact that had they stuck with their decision to remove themselves from PP, they would have at the very least gained the loyalty of the Pro Life crowd and those who have a certain degree of apathy towards PP, which is quite a lot of people. Instead, they alienated the PP crowd and the Pro Lifers, and the ones in the middle had to have come away with the perception this is a very confused, misguided organization.

This reminds me of a time when a well-known retail brand was facing a union organizing campaign among its employees. The company had branded itself to a progressive consumer base and had a corporate culture consistent with that. I met with the CEO and told him what needed to be done to preserve their distinct culture independent of union interference. He said, "Don't get me wrong, we like unions and support them. We just don't want one in our company." Given the contradiction in their thinking, I had to walk away from that one, knowing it was going to be lose-lose.

I've been thinking of that through this whole Komen thing because that wishy-washy tone will kill any crisis response and it usually is there from the start, dooming any real chance of crisis management success.

As for your point about crisis communicators as a group being on the same side on this issue, that too, amazed me. Times like this I am very discouraged with the monolithic group-think that pervades our business these days. Constructive dialogue can only happen within the progressive side. Any views reflecting more traditional or conservative perspectives tend to be openly, aggressively and broadly attacked as "foolish" acts of "idiots" as the poster next to me so aptly demonstrates. There's no room for diversity of opinion in a crowd that has branded itself as the champions of diversity and liberal thinking.

I read these articles most days and am always struck by how commenters seem to clearly demonstrate their years of experience or lack of it. This is one of those examples. The author of the article and Crisis PR Pro, whether you agree with them or not, clearly are speaking from experience and they not only know what they're talking about in their own views, but more importantly, they only stick to what they know.

Anonymous 3:53 a.m., however, is a different story. His/her attention span did not allow the poster to stay on topic beyond the first sentence, and even at that was just a jab, not a thoughtful comment. The reason I sense a lack of experience or understanding is the confusion over a $300K salary for a leadership job at Komen. If this individual saw the books at Planned Parenthood (another nonprofit) not to mention a slew of others, the poster might be surpised to see that $300K is on the low end for that level in that tier of nonprofits.

Too many young people in our business are blinded by their inexperience and lack of understanding, but that's not new. We all were at one time. What's different now is that "progressives" are building their popularity on promises of utopia and anything less is "foolish" as the Anonymous 3:53 would say. This belief that utopia is achievable on the backs of 51% of taxpayers is more a reflection of youth, inexperience, and if it lasts beyond the age of 30, I'm afraid, stupidity.

In my previous post I said, "51% of taxpayers," I should have said 51% who pay taxes. 49% of Americans do not pay taxes and live of the hard work of those in the 51%. And they tend to be the most vocal on the lack of government entitlements. That applies here, because PP, unlike Komen, is one of those organizations that receives huge sums of taxpayer dollars in addition to the money it extorted from Komen.

After more than 25 years of helping in crises, I think the problem here is deeper than just changing their decision or sticking to their guns. It goes to how the decision was communicated. When the whole Planned Parenthood dispute surfaced, the reasoning appeared to change. Was it organizations under investigations who would get their funds pulled? Was it organizations failing to provide "direct" services to be pulled? Was it political (CEO Nancy Brinker said it was not but remarks by Karen Handel after she resigned would indicate otherwise)? When initially questioned, Brinker failed to sound as if she was directly addressing the questions. In other words, it was about trust. And now many people no longer "trust" the organization. And the controversy has led to revelations about salaries, alleged first class travel, high administration costs, what a college group of researchers called an "appallingly low level" of funds going to research, etc.
The key is to come up with a clear, concise and easy to understand message, or "home base," that can be used constantly and makes sense to the audience at large.
In addition, we "old-timers" need to adapt to the fact social media can make a difference. Look at the success of organizations like Greenpeace going up against Nestle using social media which got the company to change its sourcing of palm oil (to help orangoutangs in Indonesia), the United (Airlines) Hates Guitars online campaign or the Dominoes crisis when a video was posted showing a worker picking his nose and putting it on a sandwich. It is dangerous in 2012 to ignore this new wave of communication. There will be many events in the future that five years ago would barely noticed but today, can "go viral" and cause big problems. The world of communication is changing and we have to change with it.

Being a conservative or a liberal should never influence how crisis management strategy is developed with a client. I agree that "group think" has been an unfortunate development in PR in recent years.

I have handled major crises on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes, they are as guilty as hell...like a hospital involved in Medicare fraud or a food company serving up E. Coli. But just like an attorney, I provide every client with my best defense and leave my politics out of it.

"We made the decision to implement stronger performance criteria for our grantees to minimize duplication and free up dollars."

Do you know how many of the organizations receiving Komen grants fell under this revised policy? One: Planned Parenthood, and the "investigation" was launched by an extreme-right legislator. It was Karen Handel, with her pre-existing anti PP bias, who introduced the change that affected only one organization.

So when you say, "Nothing wrong with that," that's true only if you don't give it a second look.

The networked community would have been all over that in a New York minute. Sorry, I don't think it would have been an effective strategy at all, but rather just a sign that Komen was disingenuous in its adherence to a policy implemented with no thought given to a communication strategy.

If the scenario presented by Susan were in fact accurate, based on what has now been revealed in follow up stories, I'd be more inclined to support her conclusions.

But what was uncovered during and after the immediate crisis, was that the new PA VP at Komen had made it clear her agenda was to sever ties with PP, that the "under investigation" criteria was created AFTER a Congressman launched a witch hunt, meaningless "inquiry" into PP and the Komen VP was quoted as saying, in essence, good, now this gives us a reason to dump PP.

And it was obvious that the Board knew it would be a controversial decision --one of the Komen Board members was quoted in the NY Times as saying we didn't want anyone to know, we thought if we didn't put out a press release and just did it, no one would find out.

Komen had every right to make its decision, but their rationale (which, by the way, changed three times in three days as they scrambled for cover) was not sufficient for many of their supporters to accept, and those supporters also had every right to do what they did -- protest and end their support.

It seems what Komen wanted was to take their action, and have no repercussions. That was a naive and silly goal.

Of MOST interest to me, and it was buried in a lot of the coverage, is that at the time, Komen had no senior PR person on board. They were, in fact, in the middle of a search for a senior PR VP, with Ari Fleischer helping with the search.

SO there they were, with this highly volatile decision in front of them, and their counsel was from an admittedly strongly biased political operative-turned-PA-VP who said her goal was to dump PP -- and no senior PR person at the table to say let's think this through, what are the ramifications, how many of our activist supporters are also likely to be PP supporters, how will people react, etc.

I would like to think that had their been a senior, experienced, unbiased PR pro in these discussions, there might have been a different outcome. At the VERY least, even a PR novice would have advised their board that they could not hide, and that even if they didn't issue a press release, the decision would become public.

Frankly, they might as well have stuck to their guns and at least made the anti-abortion lobby happy. I know literally dozens of women who have walked, run, raced and worked for the pink ribbon cause, who now have simply said "no more." Changing their decision has not changed the minds of dedicated women who believed and now find their beliefs tarnished. I don't think they'll be back -- and it's mostly because of the way Komen handled the situation -- backpedaling, changing their rationale, denying what was later proved to be true, etc.

And of course all of the media attention also led to questions about how much of the money raised is spent on exec salaries vs. research, etc. -- questions I am sure they wish had not come up but once the rock is lifted, in today's media environment, anything is fair game. This will affect their sponsor relationships in some way . . . . and perhaps as a sentinel, last week I saw a young woman wearing a T-shirt with the pink ribbon on it, and she'd taken a black magic marker and drawn an X through it. That is brand damage.

Hopefully the lesson for all of us is -- if you're going to consider making a major decision based on a political point of view, when you're a grassroots-dependent organization, you need to carefully consider both the politics AND the PR impact.

One humongous flaw in your argument, Ms. Tellem: the notion that Komen's "official" statement re reason for defunding PP was the truth. When you look at all the orgs that also were under Fed investigation (and for far more substantive, non-politicized reasons) yet weren't defunded by Komen; all the orgs from which they receive funds that also are under investigation, yet Komen keeps doing business w/them; and the clearly anti-choice, pro-GOP position of the Komen exec who guided the decision to defund PP -- it's clear to any objective analyst that this decision was political, not principled. Komen deserved all the criticism it received -- and then some. Shame on you for serving as their apologist.

Susan, surely you jest! Your position on this is not defensible. The only way Komen could be in worse shape than they are now would be with you in charge of PR and crisis-mismanagement!