Kanye West: Empathy or Empty Apology?

Every year on Thanksgiving Day, millions of viewers tune into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with thousands of performing entertainers to celebrate the festivities. This year, Kanye West made an appearance on the Big Apple float with an unhappy audience booing and chanting “Taylor” as West passed the crowd. Although the MTV Video Music Awards incident occurred more than a year ago, people haven’t forgotten West’s interruption during Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech, voicing his opinion that Beyoncé had the best video of the year. In fact, people haven’t forgotten a lot of things West did in the past, and his reputation continues to suffer.

West has made many PR mistakes over the years. Besides his rash actions during the MTV Video Music Awards, one of his more unpopular public incidents was calling President George Bush a racist not too long after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Not only was it brash and uncalled for, but also it took him five years to make an apology on The Today Show with Matt Lauer.

West was invited on The Today Show to redeem himself and publicly apologize for his accusations against Bush. This “redemption” interview with Lauer, however, didn’t improve his reputation. West was rude and seemed aggravated with the way the interview was set up.

According to The New York Times, West went on a Twitter rant geared directly toward Lauer and The Today Show. West complained the video clips aired during the interview were a disruption and claimed they manipulated his responses. West later stated on Twitter that he would not be returning to The Today Show.

“I’m not performing on The Today Show for obvious reasons,” West tweeted on Nov. 12. “I’m so happy the world got to see just a small piece of ‘the set up.’”

It’s unclear what “the set up” really was, but to West, The Today Show was out to get him. Where is his PR representative? Do they not care or can they simply not control his actions? Does West even care that the majority of the public disagrees with his actions? Likely not. His career hasn’t suffered; he continues to produce award-winning music with plenty of loyal followers. Why change anything? Most celebrities fight hard to uphold their reputations, especially after they have made poor decisions upsetting the public. West sees himself differently, however.

“I am a creative person . . .,” West tweeted on Nov. 9. “I’m not a good celebrity but I’m a great artist . . . I’m tired of using my celebrity to sell my art.”

Some celebrities want to bounce back from their mistakes to make amends with the public. Michael Vick served his time and openly participated in an interview on “60 Minutes” answering any and all questions that were asked about his dog fighting past. After spending time in jail for drug-related charges, Robert Downey Jr. restored his career and became clean after checking himself into a rehabilitation center. Bill Clinton publicly admitted to, and apologized for, committing adultery while in presidential office.

Everybody has an opinion and everybody makes mistakes, but being a celebrity comes with strings attached. Sometimes that includes stepping up to the plate, accepting full responsibility, answering the pressing questions and meaning every word of it. If the public doesn’t seem satisfied, try again. West may never give in to this norm of responsibility until he sees a career shift. Until then, people will continue to disapprove of him.

By Hillary Stroud

Disaster.com – How the Internet Can Help You in a Crisis

This post is related to the Platform article “Crisis Communication 101 — Basic Rules of Managing a Crisis” by Philip Turkowitsch.

Communication tools on the World Wide Web allow us to distribute messages to millions of recipients simultaneously. The advantages over traditional media are diverse; especially for small businesses that cannot rely on a traditional media platform. There are a number of new media tools that you could make good use of during a crisis.

Dark Site:

A dark site is a pre-designed web page that is unavailable to the public until activated in a crisis. Once activated, it replaces the regular company web site for a certain period of time. A dark site usually provides confirmed and verified information on the crisis as soon as it becomes available. If activated after a disaster, dark sites should be plain and respectful towards the victims. No logos, advertisements, or ambience pictures should be visible. The dark site should provide visitors with a link to the regular company website; you do want to keep your business running after all.

On July 15th, 2009, Caspian Airlines had an accident on a flight from Tehran, Iran to Yerevan, Armenia. 15 minutes after takeoff the airplane crashed into a field in Northern Iran, killing all 168 people on board. Caspian did not provide any accident information on their webpage (www.caspian.aero) for the first 24 hours after the crash. Even worse: they kept their company’s slogan on centre page. ‘Caspian – your first RELIABLE choice’. That is adding insult to the injury for all of the passengers’ family members.

Twitter:

With 55 Million monthly visits, Twitter is the fastest growing social network in 2009. Twitter allows you to answer the question ‘What are you doing right now?’ and share your answer with your friends. Twitter also allows companies to respond to corporate crisis situations within minutes, all you need is a cell phone or a laptop with internet connection. Although Twitter only allows you to post messages of 160 characters or less, it is still a good way of sending out an initial ‘holding statement’ (e.g. ‘We regret to confirm an incident involving one of our products. We will update at http://www.yourcompany.com’)

In August 2009, Microsoft was accused of running a racist advertisement campaign in Poland. Microsoft replaced the head of an African-American man with a white man’s head on a poster to better target the European audience. Although this was clearly a case of target group advertising rather than a racially motivated move, Microsoft instantly apologized to their stakeholders through Twitter. Their message read: “Marketing site photo mistake – sincere apologies – we are in the process of taking down the image.”

Weblogs:

Many companies and celebrities maintain a blog to keep in contact with their customers/fans and some of them actually make good use of the technology when confronted with a crisis.

Country-Pop singer Taylor Swift won her first big award at the MTV Video Awards in 2009. While giving an emotional acceptance speech she was interrupted by Hip Hop artist Kanye West. West appeared on stage, took the microphone out of Swift’s hand and declared that the award should have gone to Beyoncé instead. When he left the stage (and a crying Swift behind) loud boos from the crowd followed him into the dressing rooms.

Kanye found himself in a publicity crisis that night and he decided to apologize to Taylor Swift through his blog. Although he lost a lot of respect from many people as a result of his actions, Kanye did a good job sending out an initial crisis response message addressing almost all of his crisis stakeholders. In his blog entry he acknowledged his mistake and apologized to Taylor (victim), Taylor’s mom (victim’s family), her fans (victim’s friends), his fans (customers), and MTV (host & investor).

Beyoncé, who unwillingly got involved in the entire situation, won an award later that night. She gracefully stated that she had had her share of moments in the spotlight, and invited Taylor Swift back on stage to eventually give her acceptance speech. And that is how pure class can get you out of a crisis.

by Philip Turkowitsch

Save the Drama for Your Mama.

We all love hearing about the crazy drama going on in Hollywood every day, which is obviously why we call it “entertainment.” Drama in the entertainment industry is nothing new; it has been going on since the beginning of mass communication.

We will never forget the infamous Jon & Kate Plus 8 affairs, Britney Spears and her driving baby, the Michael Jackson allegations, and even more recently the Kanye West interruption. Media does its best job to ensure that everyone knows everything “bad” going on in Hollywood at all times.

However, does the public tend to overlook such transgressions just because these people are our entertainment? Do we consider Jon and Kate’s children being forced in the public eye during their parents’ divorce anything to worry about? Most mothers don’t let their babies drive till they reach 16, but Sean Preston and Jayden James get to travel with Britney on her new concert tour. An estimated 31.1 million U.S. residents watched the funeral of an alleged molester who sold more than 100 million albums. Can we even still remember how Kanye completely humiliated a three-time, multi-platinum album teenager?

Despite opinion of the latter situations, there is one public disturbance that is still under my “umbrella”: Chris Brown and Rihanna. This once-cute couple has tarnished their careers forever; or have they?

Since we all know their situation, I’ll skip to the part that really upsets me. Robyn Fenty, or Rihanna, decided not to press any charges against Chris. With millions of young female fans, this is bad PR in the making. She may lose millions of fans, or worse, contribute to all the excuses made by young battered females about deciding to stay with their so-called significant other.

After being released from a Wrigley’s contract, losing a beautiful and talented girlfriend, and being sentenced to five years of probation and six months of community labor, Chris Brown tweeted Monday, October 5, that he’s about to launch a promo tour of 15 to 20 dates.

Is Chris Brown’s tweet just one way to deal with “negative press”? Or are we just an over-forgiving public? How long will it take before Rihanna recovers from this “disturbia”? As long as the public is being entertained, it will overlook its entertainers’ errors.

by Niki Gautier