Taking the Flack for Helping Poor Zambo Kids

Taking the Flack for Muslim Kids

My friend Charlie Agatep – the recognized modern-day Dean of Public Relations – has gifted our A-Book-Saya Group (ASG) five used computers to be made available to poor Christian and Muslim kids in Zamboanga City.

For his generous gesture, the chair of the Euro RSCG and president of the Agatep Associates Inc. – the country’s premier advertising, marketing and PR firms – recently found himself under fire for from those who resented him using “Abu Sayyaf lair” to describe the areas where the computers and books will be brought to.

Unfortunately, it was I who made the caption in question and which appeared in the Manila Bulleting, Malaya, Business World, Business Mirror and the Manila Times.

And one of those who queried Charlie on the word was my kababayan David Santos. So here’s the email I sent to David to explain my choice of words. Do read on because it says much about what is happening in that troubled city of mine.


Hi David,

It’s an honor to be communicating with you because I only see you on television reporting out of my beloved hometown Zamboanga City.
As to your query relative to the phrase “Abu Sayyaf lair,” that came from me as CSR Guru Charlie Agatep correctly pointed out.

I know that such phrase will kick up storm in Zamboanga City as it desperately tries to project a veneer of peace and stability. But I am willing to risk condemnation if only to help my parent, brothers and sister and other relatives in Manicahan and Sacol Island sleep better at night.

You see as far back as I can remember, Sacol Island – which is about 10-minute boat ride away from Manicahan – has been considered as “MNLF country.” I should know because in my younger years at the Manicahan Elementary School, we would jump into fox holes under the house when we see the now vintage Tora-Tora planes circling over Sacol and dropping bombs.

As we grew up, we learned to adjust to the sight and sound of planes flying and bombs going off and the ground shaking that we actually cheered when that happens because that would mean the dismissal of classes.

Back then, there was relative peace in Manicahan with suspected MNLF families living in Manicahan Poblacion and Sacol Island respecting our peace. My late dad Armando Nunez Nocum – Manicahan’s longest serving barangay captain – earned the respect from Muslims both in Sacol and Poblacion. Although he and his CAFGUs sometimes have to exchange fires with truant MNLF rebels, they generally left us in peace.

Then the Abu Sayyaf came to town. Their rise brought fear into the hearts of everyone in Manicahan – both Christians and Muslims. Suddenly there was what we called “love letters’’ from suspected ASG commanders asking some of my relatives to pay up or face the prospect of kidnapping. Even retired teachers or affluent Muslims were not spared.

Suddenly there were numerous talks of kidnap victims being brought to Sacol Island. Terror hit home when one of my uncles – you may ask my cousin Councilor Elong Nativida for his name – was kidnapped and brought to Sacol Island.

Then a former principal from nearby Cabaluay was also kidnapped and she too was brought to Sacol where reports said she was raped night and day by teenage members of the Abu Sayyaf.

Teachers in Manicahan Poblacion, including my sister, were terrorized by children who were open about the fact that their fathers and relatives are ASG members. These children would threaten their teachers who are strict to them. Pretty soon, Christian students started leaving the Poblacion Elementary School which is now exclusively serving Muslim students.

Two years ago, talks were ripe about kidnap victims seeing the PLDT tower in Poblacion while in captivity. This meant that kidnappers have become so brazen that they no longer see the need to take the victims out to Sacol Island but were keeping them right in Manicahan.

My mother confirmed this because some of the suspected ASG members were her students. She lamented that many of them were smart. How depressing.

So, for years now, people in Manicahan have been living in constant fear. And if you have relatives having been kidnapped and living in fear, what would you do? Certainly you would throw verbal niceties out the window and call Sacol and Manicahan for what it really is – an Abu Sayyaf lair. The kidnapping of the three teachers only confirmed this.

But how many more will have to be kidnapped, raped and killed for us to finally face the reality that we have a serious peace and order problem in Zamboanga City’s East Coast? Should we start doing so only when members of the Lobregat, Santos, Fabian, Velasco, Enriquez or other prominent families get kidnapped in Manicahan, Sacol, Sangali, Bolong or Cabaluay?

In the face of this harsh reality in my barangay, I did not cry wolf and condemned the kids of the ASG. In my view, they are as much victims as we are of government neglect and indifference. Please bring your television crew to the Manicahan-Poblacion Elementary School for you to see how the neglected school serves as a breeding grown of disgruntled future terrorists.

Instead of acting as an alarmist, I worked hard to bring books and other stuff to both Christian and Muslim children in Manicahan and Sacol Island. I have been doing this for about seven years now without fanfare and without announcing my deed to the local media, many of whom are my friends. After all, I am just an ordinary Chavacano who happens to be married to a Muslim.

However, my low-key effort to build the first Kristiyano-Islam (Kris) Peace Library finally got attention this time because my friend and generous benefactor Mr. Agatep came into the picture. However, I don’t mind the criticism heaped upon me and Mr. Agatep as long as the on-line discussions serve to bring attention to the peace problem in the East Coast.

I hope our compoblanos will turn criticism to actual support for my dream to show ASG kids that there is a better way out of poverty than the barrel of a gun. What we do now may not have an immediate effect, but at least we are doing something to intervene and change the young minds of our poor Muslim and Christian’s children into seeing education as the most effective way out of poverty.

In doing so, we are also showing them that they are still part of the Philippine Republic and there are Christians and Muslims in Manila and the city proper of Zamboanga who still care for them.

I hope I could count on your help. I also appreciate you not exposing this letter or my relatives in the local press so as not to further endanger them. I feel my kindness towards Muslims in Manicahan and Sacol Island and the fact that I’m married to a Tausug are among the reasons why they have not yet kidnap any member of my immediate family.

Gracias mi amigo David.

Armand Dean Natividad Nocum
President and CEO
Dean & Kings Legal Public Relations Firm

PUBLIC RELATIONS IN TIME OF PR DISASTERS
By Armand Dean Nocum
Dean & Kings PR & Marketing Strategists
President and CEO
Destructive Technology

My Rotarian friends, the world has evolved so much that we are finally living in a world which communication guru Marshall McLuhan called a ``global village.’’

Technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Whether we like it or not, the world has shrunk into our television sets, computers, PDA’s and cellular phones. Although these immediate and real-time connections have brought us closer, it also pushed privacy as we know it to near extinction.

Gone are the days when individuals, government officials and private corporations can work alone in peace and not have their lives exposed in the 6 o’clock news, the tabloids, the attack-dog columnists; the You Tube and ever-increasing blogs. But among all these anti-privacy busters – the most common and damaging of all is the text messaging system.

Texting has not only brought down one President, it may also bring down another one. Texting is truly the equalizer, these days, no matter how high or mighty you are, you are just a text away from infamy and doom.

These days, with media becoming all powerful and with technology connecting us all globally, our reputations, accomplishments, positions, possessions, human relations and businesses are just a computer click away from destruction.

What used to take armies to bring down now only takes a computer mouse or a cheap mobile phone to accomplish.

Indeed, this is the age of communication and media crisis! The age of Public Relations Disasters!

More than ever, private and public personalities, public and private companies; and all entities that are not living isolated in Neanderthal or Jurassic age caves are seeing the need to hire public relations or crisis communications to protect their reputation.

These days, one needs to hire PR experts as one hires lawyers, accountants or guards to keep one’s safety and company stable and in good shape.

PR, which is defined as ``the management of reputation,’’ has been around for years now with American President Harry S. Truman once saying: ``All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.’’

In no time is the PR’s relevance more appreciated than now.

What is Crisis Communication?

So, just what is communications crisis?

Media crisis is when you have a sexy Khorina Sanchez virtually waking you up with a call to comment about a scandal affecting you or your company. It is having Arnold Clavio knocking at your company door or seeing your name trashed in Mon Tulfo or Vic Agustin’s column. It is going home and finding your family crying over embarrassing news about you which they first saw on television.

In short, it is staring at a situation that could affect the name you build for years, the company you started from scratch and losing it all to an adverse or negative media projection. Worse, you find yourself clueless and immobilized in the face of such life-changing crisis.

Causes

Crisis may come as result of an act of God, business operations; corporate moves; legalities; rumors; staff; and scandals.

But here in country, there are far serious forces at work and they include corrupt senators and congressmen who use congressional in investigations to raise campaign funds; unscrupulous BIR, BI and BOC officials; corrupt policemen and barangay officials; and extortionists in media or pseudo-media.

Once the crisis has erupted, then any or all of these crisis factors are likely to surface to join the feeding frenzy. For example, a news report on your company’s labor problems could get unscrupulous media men blackmailing you; then you’ll have unscrupulous labor, revenue and customs officials looking at your books; and much later you found yourself being sued not only for labor violations, but smuggling and tax evasion as well.

Worse, enterprising lawmakers may initiate congressional hearings on your company. From experience, I can tell you this is pure hell because unlike the courts, basic parliamentary rules, procedures or decorum are rarely observed as solons scramble over each other to throw the most offensive and personal question so their faces will land in the TV Patrol or 24 Oras. As for the others, they will grill you so hard for you to remember their names when you decide to pay yourself out of the crisis.

What to do?

So what do you do the when crisis hits you?

The best way to fight PR crisis is to be prepared. You must have a crisis manager to consult. He must have anticipated the entire crisis that could hit you or your company; and as well as set up a detailed crisis strategy plan. Under this plan, a communication team is formed to contact executives, legal and audit officials anytime of the day.

This team will immediate appraise the crisis and issue press statements both to stakeholders and the media. The first 10 hours of the crisis is crucial. It is very important that the news – even a bad one – should come from you; otherwise, the media and those victimized by the crisis will fill in their own lopsided and negative information, thus fueling the crisis even more.

In cases like these, it is best to tell the truth, provided the lawyers are consulted before this is done. But then, don’t make the lawyer your spokesperson because in their desire to be legalistic, they may make you or the company appear guilty or to be hiding something. The best spokesperson is a family member of the owner and one who can show and display compassion.

In this case, showing is better than doing. Be with the victims right after the tragedy. Show compassion and you will see your company getting stronger and better right after the crisis.

After the Cebu Pacific plane crashed in 1998, their PR consultant lose no time in advising them to set up a place where relatives of the victims could go and the place had snacks, coffee and trauma counselors. The company also flew the relatives of the victims to the crash site in Misamis Oriental.

After the crisis, Cebu Pacific went on to beat PAL in the domestic market.

Per advice of his PR, Fernando Zobel did not just provide the victims of the 2007 Glorieta blast money over and above what the insurance firms provided for, but Fernando Zobel also visited relatives in the hospitals. On top of that, he gave them a million and residential houses.

Most of the time, it’s not the money or service you give but the act of giving it that counts. Of course, you do this with media knowing about it.
What not to do

After the do’s, now we go to the don’ts of crisis management.

The best way to illustrate the don’ts is to show you the PR disaster called the Sulficio Lines. This company did not only lose a ship, it lost all credibility and connection with its customers.

This include hiring lawyers first (no offense to lawyers) more than crisis managers to respond to the crisis. Where the PR could have advised them to immediately go out to face the media and the victims, the lawyers advised them to hide and make no comment to escape liability.

As a result, they blew away any credibility and public sympathy by showing – through their lawyers – that they only cared about their legal survival and have little regard for the victims.

Added to this, they also appointed a lawyer-spokesperson who showed no emotions. Thus, the offer of money from the poker-faced lawyer only earned them more criticisms.

And rather than tell the truth, their lawyers went on into a legal offensive blaming the weather, Pagasa, coast guard and everybody else, except themselves. The owners were also advised to hide the fact that the ship was carrying toxic endosulfan.

When they finally got the sense of getting a PR, this PR erroneously advised them to drumbeat their ``social responsibility,’’ but their failure to immediately respond to the PR crisis made this claim sound hallow, so they only got more beatings from congressmen who accused them of telling them lies during a congressional hearing.

CSR

Thus, as I end my talk with the advice that doing good is the best defense against a PR crisis or disaster. Acts of goodness or philanthropy on our part; or corporate social responsibility on the part of our companies would serve to earn for us a ``reservoir of goodwill.’’ This ``social credits’’ will come in handy in times of crisis because we can always claim that the tragedy is out of character with our companies’ consistent desire to do well and serve well.
If everything fails, follow the advice of book author and US Congress librarian Daniel J. Boorstin who said:
``Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.’’


This was the speech I delivered at the Rotary Club Grace Park last August 13. I hope you find this information usefull given this crazy times of communication revolution.