Xenophon Strategies

Rule 2: It's Always Better to Engage (Or Why "No Comment" Makes Me Cringe)

Matt Meenan

Note: This is part three of an eight-part blog series on the “Rules of the Road” for good PR. Today’s lesson – “It’s Always Better to Engage.” To read previous blog posts, click here.

“No comment” is the public relations equivalent of pleading the Fifth. It conjures up images of suit-wearing men in Congressional hearings, exercising their right against self-incrimination. What the public hears when you say “no comment” is “I’m guilty.” Only slightly better is the other classic line of obfuscation, “repeated calls and emails requesting comment were not returned.” Translation: “I really don’t want to deal with this problem, so l turned off my Blackberry.”

What’s my point?

It’s pretty much always to your benefit to engage with media – especially when they want to discuss a difficult or sensitive issue. But, all too often, individuals or organizations instead choose to bury their head in the sand while in the proverbial media hot seat. Doing this is always a mistake and will likely make a bad situation that much worse. No less a media pro than Newt Gingrich recently learned the perils of a “no comment” response.  How’s his campaign doing?

The far smarter play in these admittedly challenging and uncomfortable situations is to take the opposite approach -- develop a response and share it with the public through all available channels. It gets your side of the story out, demonstrates transparency and positions you to fight back. The truth is, no matter what you might hope, the story will not simply “go away” if you ignore it. And, the story will almost always be better with your input rather than without it. While you may not be able to make a bad story good, you may be able to turn an “F” story into a “C.”

As crisis communications guru Eric Dezenhall puts it, “The goal is not to get people not to hate [you]. It’s to get people to hate [you] less.” Sounds harsh, but the underlying point is valid – you won’t solve everything by talking to a few reporters and giving them your soundbites, but, you at least have the opportunity to begin mitigating the damage – something the “ignore it and hope for the best” approach does not allow.

None of this is to say that you must capitulate or cede control to journalists when dealing with a media crisis. Far from it. You should always carefully plan any response, preferably with the help of a communications pro. Respond on your own terms and consider the full arsenal of techniques – from interviews to op-eds to Facebook posts or even advertising – to get your message out.

Just as long as that message isn’t “No comment.”

Tweet this link

« return to blog | Aug 3, 2011 | media relations | media training