How is Sony handling Playstation PR crisis?
How is Sony handling Playstation PR crisis?Crisis PR man Jonathan Hemus tells us how Sony is handling the news that millions of its Playstation customers could be at risk from hackers.
With technology at the heart of our lives these days, Sony will not be the last business to be targeted by hackers nor will it be the last to lose customers’ email addresses, or even credit card details.
But it’s not really the security lapse that threatens Sony’s reputation: it’s the company’s crisis communication response that poses a bigger risk.
Customers quoted in the media and online are talking about a lack of trust in Sony, not so much because of the hacking itself, but because of the six days of near silence that followed. This is a lesson for all organisations handling a crisis: it’s not the crisis itself that damages your reputation, it’s the way that you are seen to be addressing it.
An apparent lack of communication can create the impression of a business in disarray, lacking compassion or being economical with the truth. All of these perceptions pose real risks to a company’s long term reputation and customer confidence.
To avoid this, it’s important to have plans and processes in place that allow for swift communication in the event of an incident – even before the full facts are known. In March, Play.com showed how it should be done when it communicated about a security lapse within 24 hours of its occurrence and then followed up with a second email to customers a day later. Filling the communication vacuum is essential if businesses want to drive the media agenda and retain the trust of customers and other stakeholders.
Content is important too and Sony’s statement features many of the right messages:an apology; details of the action being taken to address the problem; empathy for the impact on customers; and the involvement of independent experts to help address the problem. So in this case, the crisis communication challenges are not really about the content of Sony’s statement, but its timing.
The real key to being prepared for a crisis is cultural: businesses need to be prepared to recognize and respond to a problem at the speed of light. That means communicating before you know all the answers, and before the problem is fixed. It can be uncomfortable, but it’s often the only way of protecting reputation. The alternative is to keep your head down: Sony’s current predicament shows that this can sometimes make a difficult situation even worse.
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Comments
PS: I am, of course aware that the actions of the hackers were illegal, not undertaken by Sony and I am blaming the victim.
But: Sony really were asking for it in their actions over OtherOS, a story many in the digital world have been following with ever-rising eyebrows for the last year. In the digital world, this has been a big evolving story.
I couldn't believe just how insensitive and clod-footed they were being towards their own fans. It can't be a coincidence that this happens within 2 weeks of the end of the case against Geohot, the hacker who originally published the workaround to get OtherOS working again after Sony disabled it.
And tweeting your own root security key just made Sony look risible. It's like tweeting your own credit card number x1000.
An interesting analysis that entirely misses the point. It's Sony's actions over the last year that have got them into this mess. Words like 'stable door' and 'horse bolted' leap to mind
1. remove functionality ('other OS') from playstation 3 that is beloved of ultra-geeks who bought their console for this reason. Do this without warning or apology. Sony makes 'OtherOS' fans choose between PS3 network membership and running the OtherOS feature it was sold with.
2. When a geek far smarter than your marketing and PR dept. publishes a way to restore OtherOS functionality, sue him.
3. This prompts the geek community to set about *really* cracking the platform wide open.
4. Sony tries to sue the chaps who released the how-to for how to crack your ps3's, but settles out of court because one of their own directors publicly tweets the encryption key crucial to cracking their security.
5. A large number of very smart geeks now hold you in contempt and the core security of your console has been irreparably compromised. Sony cannot now properly secure the console again without disabling ALL games discs created up to this point. It's like an open invite to hackers. This was never going to end well.
Before the otherOS debacle, playstation 3 was the least hacked machine around. Now, its security has been irreparably compromised and all because Sony was insensitive towards a small, but powerful group of its customers.
Rule 1: never bully a geek.
I do feel sorry for their customers though: it's rubbish for them that they are made to suffer because Sony couldn't sensibly resolve a technical issue affecting its console without bullying, threatening and alienating its biggest fans.
Fire prevention is a whole lot cheaper and smarter than firefighting.
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