Crisis, Meet Social Media

Flack Seeds - An essential source of public relations ideas and trends

Sunday, January 17

The aftermath of Lane Kiffin's departure from the University of Tennessee has many lessons for future coaches and business people alike.

We'll address Kiffin's decision in a future post.

More interesting right now is the press conference where Kiffin announced his departure and what it illustrates about the future of media relations. Here is the raw footage of the negotiations between university PR representatives and the local media.

1. Raw footage like this will become the norm in the future.

This video appears to be from one of the media reps in the press conference as opposed to someone recording it with a cell phone camera. Some media outlets may see this as a way to differentiate themselves from others. The head of PR for UT Athletics used to work in our firm. She told us there have been other occasions where the local newspaper has sent a video crew to interviews and posted raw footage of the entire interview.

2. The greatest impact of social media is reach.

The video had 302 views on Friday afternoon when we first watched it. As of Sunday morning, more than 130,000 people had viewed it. Kiffin's sudden departure -- and the behavior of coaches in general -- is a hot topic these days. If your company's reputational risks are national hot topics, your company's crisis communication plan needs to include how you are going to react quickly to wildfires like this one.

What's the lesson? It's not to avoid the media. The lesson is to assume any camera (or microphone) you can see is recording what you are saying and that it will be on YouTube.