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When disaster strikes, tell your story

June 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

fire extinguisherPsychologists say talking through your feelings is a good way to recover emotionally following a disaster — and maybe economically too, as it turns out.

In case you missed it, Bruce Buschel has a heart-rending account of the Memorial Weekend fire that shut down his new restaurant, Southfork Kitchen, just when things were starting to look good for the summer season. Buschel is careful to count his blessings — no injuries, quick firefighters, good insurance and the like — but his pain is apparent in every sentence. Take these, for instance:

Behind the stainless steel wall, in the cavity behind the ovens, inside the fire-rated dry wall, spreading to the two-by-six wooden studs, something was smoldering. Behind the steely façade, in the fatalistic part of the psyche, somewhere between my heart and my wallet, something was smoldering all right.

For any small-business owner who’s endured a tornado, flood, fire or some other disaster, that smoldering anguish is something you can surely attest to. But the shock of recognition isn’t limited just to entrepreneurs. In the days after Buschel’s blog post, dozens and dozens of ordinary readers reached out with condolences, advice and support. When Southfork reopens — and we can only hope that day will come soon — the restaurant will no doubt enjoy new reservoirs of goodwill.

The irony is that Buschel may have squandered some goodwill earlier this year with a series of earlier posts that seemed to attack the PR industry. I noted at the time that he had lost control of his narrative, veering into an ugly and very public shouting match that did nothing to advance his business.

Through it all, Buschel kept blogging, got back to his original narrative and rebuilt his brand. Now that he’s opened a vein and shared the pain of his restaurant fire, only the most jaded cynic would continue to bear him any ill will over the earlier dust-up.

Thanks to his candor, transparency and eloquence, Buschel has more than regained the love he might have lost earlier — proof that good storytelling is not only therapeutic, but also redemptive.

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Whose story is it, anyway?

March 4, 2011 By 1 Comment
Don't let critics drive you off-course

Don't let critics drive you off-course

A wealthy seaside resort town. A prominent local businessman. A mysterious stranger. Drama, intrigue, and murder.

Sounds like a Hollywood script, doesn’t it? Well, there’s no murder involved — thank goodness — but all the other ingredients are part of a potboiler going on over at nytimes.com.

Last week I wrote about Bruce Buschel, a first-time restaurateur in the Hamptons who got zero media placements out of his $4,500-a-month PR firm. When Buschel blogged about his frustrations, his post generated nearly 80 responses — many of them angry missives from PR practitioners who accused him of being an ignorant, impossible client.

Buschel ended his original post hinting that his next entry would explain how Twitter turned around his PR woes. Well, he posted again yesterday, but it wasn’t the Twitter story his followers were looking forward to. Instead, Buschel reprinted an entire comment from a single, unknown critic, then proceeded to pick it apart line by line, justifying his own role in the PR fiasco and damning the industry that had let him down.

It was such a rambling, angry, self-destructive rant that I half expected him to mention his “tiger blood” or “Adonis DNA.”

I’ve been a longtime fan of Buschel and his blog, but this particular post could go down as a textbook case of the dangers of  social media. If you’re an entrepreneur active with blogging, Twitter or Facebook, there are several important lessons here:

  1. Stay in control of your story. Buschel is a great blogger because his story is an adventure, a quest, an autobiography of a man taking a leap into the unknown. As readers, we can’t help hoping that he will overcome the odds and write a happy ending for his entrepreneurial story. But when he veers off-course for an ongoing debate with the PR industry, that storyline gets lost in all the back-and-forth sniping.
  2. Ignore the critics. When you open yourself up to comments, inevitably there will be some people who take pot-shots at you. Ignore them. They don’t matter. Your audience is emotionally invested in you, so they are predisposed to take your side. Their sympathy can even work in your favor, as long as you avoid getting down in the mud. Remember: The only critics that matter are your customers (and even then, a debate is almost always counter-productive).
  3. Proving a point doesn’t improve your business. Buschel just might be right in this debate, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. The state of the PR profession has absolutely nothing to do with the bottom line at Southfork Kitchen, and alienation is a high price to pay for vindication.

This whole saga proves again that the potential of social media is matched only by its pitfalls. As Uncle Ben told Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Use the power of social media wisely … or risk getting caught in a web of your own making.

Filed Under: Communications, Social media Tagged With: , , ,

When everyone’s a storyteller, who needs PR?

February 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you have a great story and you still can’t get any good PR … maybe you need to reconsider your definition of PR. No PR gatekeepers

That’s my takeaway from this week’s New York Times blog post by Bruce Buschel, who hired a $4,500-a-month PR firm to publicize the opening of his new seafood restaurant in the Hamptons. Buschel had no lack of good stories to tell:

  • He was pioneering sustainable seafood in the Hamptons
  • He was sourcing wine and produce locally
  • He had snagged a chef with a Michelin star

As if that weren’t enough, Buschel himself is a great story, with a background in filmmaking and Off Broadway musicals.

So many stories, so little time. And yet, according to Buschel, with just a few weeks left before opening day, his high-priced PR firm had failed to line up a single article about Southfork Kitchen. Needless to say, there was finger-pointing, soul-searching, and eventually a parting of the ways. Here’s what Buschel learned from the experience:

What I have finally come to understand is that P.R. people are paid to twist reality into pretzels and convince you that they are fine croissants. At some point, they actually believe their own concoctions.

Harsh? You bet. But Buschel is hardly the first entrepreneur to feel betrayed by a PR campaign gone awry, and he certainly won’t be the last. In fact, disappointment with professional PR will probably only grow, and the reason is simple:

As gates disappear, gatekeepers are increasingly irrelevant

Think about it: Traditional media outlets used to serve as gatekeepers to the public consciousness, and PR professionals used to serve as gatekeepers to reporters and editors. You had to pay one gatekeeper to put you in touch with another gatekeeper who listened to your story and decided if it was worthy of a public telling.

But media doesn’t work that way anymore. The Internet is like one big bonfire where the whole world gathers to be informed and entertained. If you have an interesting story that you tell consistently and well, the Web grants you unfiltered access to a whole world of listeners.

Buschel thought he needed a paid PR campaign to create buzz for his restaurant, but with a blog and a Facebook page and other social media channels, Southfork Kitchen was already as buzzy as a soccer stadium full of vuvuzelas. Why pay $4,500 to add a kazoo?

Filed Under: Communications, Marketing Tagged With: , , ,