The Gillard/Rudd leadership debacle has gone into overdrive since the emergence of KRudd’s temper tantrum hit the headlines this weekend. For me Gillard is looking more serene and in control by the day, and although its hotted up leadership speculation, it really doesn’t position KRudd well as a leader who can remain calm in the face of inevitably chaotic world events.
Once again it got me thinking about how social media is both an opportunity and risk for communications today, and how important it is to plan for such an incident on behalf of our clients. As Glen Frost of The PR Report noted in the recent edition of ‘Top 20 Trends for PR Practioners in 2012’ data security is a reputational risk for PR practitioners, and a risk Text 100 client M86 Security has been highlighting to organisations for many, many years. As both Frost and M86 argue, the weakest link is often internal, and it only takes one person with an axe to grind to ‘leak’ potentially catastrophic information to the media, or as in the case of KRudd, edit together a few out-takes and throw it up on YouTube – easy and no fingerprints attached!
The learning is organisations need to workshop worst case scenarios both traditional and digital and understand how to respond well before the story breaks. So, do you know what you’ll do when one of your executives shows up on YouTube ranting about the latest poor sales figures?
