The Circle of CEOs

I know we had it just recently and we all heard Elon Musk ‘stepped back from responsibilities’, just after he breached the bro level. I’ll miss you deeply, bro. One love, and such.

But CEO communication is here to stay (Conte, Siano & Vollero, 2017), so better be ready to make some amicable friends in the future. And I might got one for you right here. Because, luckily, not all CEOs are crisis communication landmines waiting to test their company’s third world level CSR-strategy's response time. Yet, other employees might be just as explosive.

Taking on from my colleague Tyler Pilgrim’s blog about the successful management of crisis communication in the case of the Roseanne controversy, in this post I want to shed more light on this case from a CEO communication angle.

Hold my beer… while I Tweet..???

To make it short, old lady slurred some majorly racist and conspirational bullshit, and later claimed to be high on sleeping pills and booze. While you’d expect racism and Clinton conspiracies from your average edgy 4Chan user suffering from a flaming tinfoil hat, these comments by Roseanne’s lead actor herself erupted in an acute crisis for the TV channel ABC. However, within hours the organisation reacted and announced the majorly successful show will be immediately cancelled, due to the tweets violating the values, ethics & morals the organisation strives to represent.

The Chosen One

While it remained a side note in Tyler’s blog, for my CEO-Communication-infested mind it became clear that ABC Entertainment’s CEO Channing Dungey is the chosen one. She is the true bro, or better the ‘amicable friend’ (Men & Tsai, 2016) social CEOs strive to be. She was the one taking a strong stance on the issue, tweeting the cancellation of the show due to racism. Dungey, being black, was authentic addressing racism in the United States - thus truly humanizing and personalizing (Tsai & Men, 2017) the crisis, embodying the message of the organisation’s ethics valued higher than revenue.

The results were clear, while many fans were sad about old lady, the support the organisation received much applaud for their stance.

If this decision remains an economic one, is going to be hard to answer. In fact, just as I’m formatting this post, I see numerous articles (e.g. Breitbart, and other rather conservative outlets) popping up referring to an anonymous ABC executive questioning the organisation’s decision. However, the sheer fact that this executive prefers to remain anonymous shows the power of the organisation’s stance on this issue, and him being able to comprehend that he is subordinate to this positioning.

For now, this closes the circle of CEO communication for me. After breaching the bro level with Elon, I’ve found a true amicable friend in Dungey. And I hope, I could show how essential I believe CEO communication to be, and inspire you to have an eye out whenever CEOs jump into the spotlight. And that, in the end, you should extend that communicationplan.xls, it’s worth it, and you'll love it.

PS: Thanks @ Tyler for the inspiration.

References:

Conte, F., Siano, A., & Vollero, A. (2017). CEO communication: engagement, longevity and founder centrality: an exploratory study in Italy. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 22(3), 273-291.

Men, & Tsai. (2016). Public engagement with CEOs on social media: Motivations and relational outcomes. Public Relations Review, 42(5), 932-942.

Tsai, W. H. S., & Men, L. R. (2017). Social CEOs: The effects of CEOs’ communication

styles and parasocial interaction on social networking sites. New media & society , 19 (11),

1848-1867.