Tom Mueller: 0:07

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis podcast. On this podcast, we talk all things crisis management and we like to share stories and lessons learned brought to us by experienced crisis leaders. I'm Tom Mueller. Our guest today is Janie Jordan. Our guest today is Janie Jordan. Janie's joining us from the Sydney area of Australia and Janie is a published author, lecturer and a high-stakes communications coach. She's been doing communications and media relations work for a very long time and has a lot of interesting stories to share, as we're going to find out. Janie, welcome to the program.

Janie Jordan: 0:50

Thanks. Thank you, virg, for that lovely introduction. I've been around the sun too many times, been in a few war rooms Like you. We've seen a lot. In this crazy crisis space we choose to practice in Dom.

Tom Mueller: 1:08

It is indeed, and on the podcast today we're going to dive into a particularly challenging and evolving area of communications and that's the new media and social media, particularly in things we're seeing lately in political campaigns, but then also how it's relevant for crisis communications and monitoring. So there's so much happening in this space. Now, Janie, I wanted to start with just sort of the big news we've seen out of America lately, which is the White House press briefing room and how the Trump administration has sort of upset the apple card a bit of who they're allowing into the briefing room and the addition of new and alternative media influencers into that space. What's your take on what's happening there, Janie? What's?

Janie Jordan: 2:02

happening there. Janie, this is absolutely fascinating and not probably surprising move from the Trump administration. I think it's a game changer at many different levels and I think it's actually contemporary and modern. I think the impact will be felt in many different ways. I think it's just as interesting. We've got social media influencers and bloggers over it.

Janie Jordan: 2:33

It seems to me we're at a dangerous interesting time, tom, with what's going on in the White House, because Huffington Post, which has been around I mean the alternative new media we have to remind ourselves that it's been around a very long time. But what is really interesting is the rise and the rise and the rise of the influencers, and in my case I know one that's having a big influence in our election upcoming election here has gone from reality TV into a leading podcaster, and that's without any journalistic training. So you know there's two sides to the coin here. I think it's great that we are spreading the word. I think the chaos and the potential danger comes from misinformation and only isolating it to the media you want in the room, which is more a dictator like way of looking at the world rather than a democratic way of looking at the world.

Tom Mueller: 3:36

There are so many facets to this. You know, the trust in traditional legacy media has been steadily dropping now. In traditional legacy media has been steadily dropping now and, you know, in the recent in the American election that brought Donald Trump back into office. You know, we saw a huge influence of influencers such as Joe Rogan, who had Trump on you know, for a three hour interview on his show which, last I looked, had garnered something like 60 million views between YouTube and X. Clearly, in what we're seeing today is politicians taking it straight to the audiences and bypassing traditional media filters in order to get their message across and, to you know, appear more authentic in their communications.

Janie Jordan: 4:32

I think, yes, you know, there's been some analysis done and you'll probably be across this too, tom of what would have been perceived as we would less than polished, even, dare I say, unsophisticated, even rambling, interview that went with Trump. But when you talk about trust, the analysis that I've been hearing from colleagues here is that that actually led to trust because he came across as being a human being, not a polished soundbite spokesperson in this case, you know, president, wanting to get re-elected as a president again and that led well. He's just a human being like us, you know, we don't always, you know, have the right soundbite or our conversation don't always flow properly. So that sort of two to three hour rambling is we might have termed it actually has, from an analysis perspective here, led to trust. So those filters you're talking about and we know, in traditional media reporting I certainly started my working life it was, you know, all about getting in the right quote, you know, and writing a story to a quote or getting the right sound bite and then cutting and editing, you know, the footage for tv that way.

Janie Jordan: 6:07

So I think the rise and the rise of the influencers and the podcasters isn't a surprise. When we go well, we can't trust the media because they always take people out of context, they misquote us. You know one client. Well, a would-be spokesperson said to me oh well, you're just in the gutter, you just deserve to be in the gutter. And it was like, wow, that's a full-on. You know, when I was helping to train and coach you in the ways of the media, I would have thought you might want to appreciate learning about the gutter. So you know, that's an extreme example, but my point is I think there's no surprise that we want to hear authenticity.

Tom Mueller: 6:56

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. You know, and I'm fascinated by the story you recounted of the social media influencer there in Australia now, and the leading candidates for office are taking time to go and be on that show, which of course shows the rise in power of those types of programs, but also the, you know, the desire to bypass social media filters. The other thing I think is interesting is it's much more difficult to hide yourself in these long form interviews, and so that piece to me is, you know, a new and interesting piece. The other bit is that audiences out there are willing to sit and listen to three hours of this. Right, it wasn't that long ago. We would have never thought that an attention span you know people's attention span would hold for that, and yet we're seeing it, you know, in those 60 million views for the Joe Rogan podcast with Trump and others. So it feels like it's something that's going to be with us for a while and the politicians are going to have to embrace it, right.

Janie Jordan: 8:11

Absolutely we're. You know we. Of course politics is very much on mine because of what's going on in the White House. We've got elections here. I think what's really fascinating to me, tom, is the lack of that in the corporate world.

Tom Mueller: 8:29

Mm-hmm, tell me.

Janie Jordan: 8:31

Podcasts are very, very popular here in Australia and I hear more and more that I listen to this podcast. I get my information from this podcast, I trust this podcast, and some of them are trained journalists and do know their way how to navigate through an interview, know how to bring out the characteristics and sort of disclose the personality of their know of the interviewee, as it were. You know it's a real skill to interview and know how to ask the right questions. It is an absolute skill. So I find it fascinating that a lot of the corporates here in Australia, the big corporations, aren't taking as much advantage to be authentic, you know, get to their community through the long form, the trend that we're seeing. I think they all go. People are too busy. It's a fascinating development, isn't it?

Tom Mueller: 9:41

It is.

Janie Jordan: 9:42

We've had the new media around for a long time now, but I think what we're seeing is this it's like there's a two-speed highway happening here. You know, One is full of the chase in the sense of it's speed, speed, speed. You know, we want six seconds, that's all. And then on the other, you've got maybe a more, well, less. You're taking a bit of a, you know, a detour off in the highway and you're meandering around and you're going to stop and perhaps look at the bubbling brook or visit Yosemite. You know, for a while, Boy.

Tom Mueller: 10:20

In terms of risk, janie, which do you think brings the higher risk today? Is it the long form or is it, you know, the short form?

Janie Jordan: 10:29

well, both, both come with risk. You know, whenever we're exposing ourselves into the public arena, you know to the public we are exposing ourselves. So there's risk. There's risk everywhere. And it goes to one of my big pieces of advice to anybody who's putting together a crisis communication plan, a crisis management plan, is look at your culture. How has your culture lived out? Because that is what is on display in a crisis. And if you are, in a modern sense, not going crisis is scary because there's a crisis every day. We have polycrisis, multiple things happening at once. So that's the world we're living in. It's crisis ridden, that's a fact. It's speed, speed, speed. I think you look at a contemporary practice of crisis ready culture. At that initial breaking stage, anybody can declare a crisis rather than wait. I think the point here, tom, is if you wait, you're screwed.

Tom Mueller: 11:38

Well, with the speed of social media today, you know your monitoring needs to be spot on and ready. I've just, in preparation for this podcast, I queried a couple of large clients about their monitoring processes and you know how much are you monitoring TikTok versus. You know the Instagram and X portions and I got real mixed comments back on that that some are really not paying attention to the TikTok video piece of this. Others are. But you know I just find from traditional sort of PR and communications, traditional sort of PR and communications, finding the right tools to be able to monitor that, or just, you know, getting your management engaged in thinking news is going to break there or we have some potential risk out on TikTok of all places.

Tom Mueller: 12:35

But to me it's always been an early warning system that if you're monitoring carefully then you can get you know an early warning. There's an issue bubbling up and it gives you a little more time to deal with it. But you know, when it comes to the TikTok videos of the world, I think the jury's still out.

Janie Jordan: 12:55

Yes, it's fascinating and it is for all the people listening to us today. Early warning systems are critical. You know how are you managing your issue. You know what does your issues management process look like, because let's remember, tom, that 75% give or take the year you're looking at statistics of crises, or 75% can be avoided, you know, and it's very costly, I mean, you know, very, very, very costly. So the modern world is TikTok. Tiktok is ticking, tocking on everything, be it books, be it train strikes, be it recipes. It's where the people are. If you've got a C2C business, b2c business, even B2B business, you know.

Janie Jordan: 13:56

I did look at TikTok quite closely in preparation for this and the range of people commenting, posting on TikTok is across the board. You don't see a lot of people in suits per se, maybe not the lawyers, maybe not the accountants, the professionals necessarily. But there is a very wide cross-section and legacy media in Australia have accounts there, like the Sydney Morning Herald, for example, the Daily Telegraph here. The Sydney Morning Herald would be a bit like the New York Times, just for an example. The Telegraph is more tabloid, new York Post-ish, that's more the Daily Mail here. Really it's like the New York Post, but just you know they're the significant old legacy print media here. They have a presence on TikTok yeah.

Tom Mueller: 14:54

Are you seeing, you know, routine content generated by those legacy media on the TikTok platform?

Janie Jordan: 15:01

Well, it's interesting. It's a mix, you know. It's like I'm going underground to look at how the new Sydney Metro Tunnel's being built. I'm doing that on TikTok. I'm Channel 9 News. I haven't got my big camera crew with me, it's just me. I'm Channel 9 News. I haven't got my big camera crew with me, it's just me. So if a trained television journalist is doing that, why isn't someone in a communication team doing that, for example? Because I think there's still so much conservatism, so much fear around the media. It's like, my goodness, something might happen. We might have a word up there that's wrong. Well, so what? It's so fast corrected. It flies past in a second, as we know, to get a message through and cut through. Tom, you've got to it's. Repetition, repetition, repetition, you know. And we're lucky if anything sticks, unless it's a blaring metaphor and it's dramatic. It goes fast, right? So I think the point I'm making here and we're really tapping into is the corporations and businesses of this world are missing key channels of influence to get to where the people are.

Tom Mueller: 16:25

It is fascinating. You feel like there's a bit of a marathon effect happening here now, with corporations standing back and watching and seeing. You know you and I have talked about in the past of you know turning loose your social media team and letting them run, and I think the thought of that just terrifies a lot of executives, right.

Janie Jordan: 16:54

Absolutely terrifies them, terrifies them. That's when the command and control comes in, and it's like control, control, control, which goes back to the culture of your organisation, doesn't it? You build your plans, you do your training, and if you've got that right and your values actually are real and you've trained and empowered and educated your front line, then why wouldn't you let them run loose? You know, let's talk about football analogy for a moment. Right, you know there's rules of the game and if you foul, then there's consequences, right, but the team on the field has a coach and they are trained.

Janie Jordan: 17:41

And you know various sports have different cultures and different variation in what's allowed to happen on the field. You know when the whistle is blown or the red card is given out or you're taken off the pitch. It's like that for me. In corporations, you know to have a crisis-ready culture. Speed is everything. The principles remain the same Take responsibility, act fast. And there's no, I think no excuse for not empowering and educating your front line and letting them lose if they know the rules of the game and they know where the goalposts are.

Tom Mueller: 18:20

Fair enough and that's been an evolving opportunity for corporations, you know, over the last 10 years or 15 years now, as we've seen social media sort of grow. But you know, I'll take you back the other direction and give you a quick anecdote of an incident that happened a few years ago. That is reason enough for executives to hold back. And that's just the issue with pop star Iggy Azalea, who some years ago Iggy was nominated for a Grammy Award and she traveled to Los Angeles for the event and the ceremonies. And in her hotel before the show she ordered pizza from Papa John's Pizza and the delivery man brought the pizza to her and the young man who delivered that pizza recognized Iggy Azalea and, even more importantly, he realized he had her mobile phone number and shortly thereafter he started texting Iggy Azalea and I think he even handed her number to one of his mates, who also started chatting with her. And of course she was outraged that her personal information had been compromised in this way and she reached out to Papa John's Pizza on Twitter to get some clarification, some rectification of the situation. And whoever was on the social media account that day responded back to her tweet in a very flippant and offhanded way quoting one of her song lyrics, like something like just hey, just let it bounce, it'll be fine. And, of course, if you're somebody who's concerned about your mobile phone being compromised, what about your credit card information that you have on file with them? And so, in this situation, you know, iggy Azalea became a spokesperson for all of those customers who are now concerned about the security of their data.

Tom Mueller: 20:28

But it all came back to who's on the social media desk when that tweet comes in and how prepared are they? Right, of course, typically going to be a 20 something person. Who's who's on that desk, who's very familiar with social media but may not have the experience yet to see a potential crisis developing. That, I think, is what scares executives off and trying to get over that hump.

Janie Jordan: 20:50

Yes, that's a very powerful story and those get highlighted, of course, because you've got a celebrity involved here. We have a popular pizza brand involved here and it's everybody's nightmare that my bank account details are going to be leaked and I'm going to get scammed or I'm going to get my account fleeced of thousands of dollars. So that's a really good example of the risks involved in social media. I think it also goes back to my culture will eat strategy for breakfast. And so you look at the culture. You have the pop culture and Iggy was perhaps naive in giving out her phone number as opposed to having a minder do it for her. So that's probably the root cause right there. And then you have probably insufficiently trained in crisis management and response and in the culture of the organisation.

Janie Jordan: 21:54

You know it was a bit loose. Potentially I don't know the values that are written on the website, but you know the values are there on display the values of that young man who quoted back cheekily and you could have done. You know, like Red Cross. You know, with the beer incident on a Friday night, you know they took control of that very quickly and did it beautifully and it went away in, you know, less than 12 hours. It shows you also, tom, what a crisis is In real time. There's the opportunity and the danger. You know the good old classic Chinese symbol we talk about. You know one part of the symbol for crisis, the meaning of crisis in Chinese language one side is opportunity and one side is danger. Well, the opportunity, in loose terms, there is that it brought and, as you said, by default Iggy became the spokesperson for the use of privacy and the use of data, and how that can get out of hand very quickly. So that's a really good example to look at and think out from very, very many different angles.

Tom Mueller: 23:13

And, to be fair, that several years in the past when that happened. It's still a great story to share, but I think most corporations have moved on from that right. The level of sophistication within the corporate social media teams is quite significant today.

Janie Jordan: 23:34

One would hope so. One would expect that to be the case. Really, you know, sophistication at all levels.

Tom Mueller: 23:45

And that's going to do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis podcast. On our next episode, we'll continue our conversation with Janie Jordan and we'll talk about the risks and opportunities of doing these long-form interviews like podcasts, and why it may not be the right venue for every senior executive. We'll also talk about the role of the CEO in a crisis, with a focus on some recent airline incidents and how the CEOs were involved early on in those. So please join us for that next episode and thank you again for joining us for the Leading in a Crisis podcast. We'll see you next time.