TruthyPR

Congress finds a third option in the tanker battle

For the duration of the battle over the Air Force's replacement of their aging refueling tanker fleet between Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS, Congress has had two options:

1. Let the process run its course while complaining or complimenting loudly about the outcome; or
2. Intervene in the process to alter the outcome and risk the label of meddling.

An accusation of meddling is a serious one.  Though Congress routinely earmarks unnecessary military equipment, it's usually "small" procurements.

Given the size of the tanker contract, and the precedent it would set, Congress would open itself up to a great deal of criticism if procurement decisions this large were blatantly done this politically. The potential of this has created one of the best soundbites of the conflict so far, with Northrop Grumman calling Congressional action to give the contract to Boeing "a $35 billion earmark".

Northrop Grumman has been able to keep Congress in check with this messaging.  However the newly released GAO report cites enough errors with the procurement process that Congress now has a third option: they can demand a rebid without strings.  Legislation introduced in Congress has demanded a tanker rebid with a series of constraints on the selection process that would all but give the contract to Boeing.

This is over-reaching on the part of Congress, and subject to the earmark accusation.  Now that the GAO has done the hard work of finding fault with the Air Force, all Congress really has to do is simply demand a "do over", with no strings attached, and Boeing is in a better position to win.  A "rebid" even by the same process will give Boeing the second shot they so desperately want, without Congress having to sully itself with the machinations of politically tinkering with the actual procurement process criteria.

Since the Air Force can't or won't just give the contract to Boeing, and they can't seem to proceed politically with the contract as it stands, a rebid with the recommendations of the GAO in mind is the most likely outcome. Congress may push it along with a threat of the "Tanker Recompete Act", but simply the threat of such legislation and the appearance of unfairness should be sufficient to force a rebid.

As I mentioned last week, a rebid seems a very likely next step for Northrop Grumman/EADS to prepare for, and they should have been preparing messaging for that for the last few weeks showing that the outcome to be the same result. They have been saying for months now that the Air Force needs these planes immediately, but that messaging hasn't seem to get much traction. 

With Congress distracted by the holiday and the November elections, not much will happen in the next few weeks, but this is the kind of issue that you can see someone wanting to bring to a higher profile because protectionist rhetoric looks good during an election. 

Competing strategy videos from the Obama and McCain campaigns

If I can highlight just one thing that happened last week in the use of the Internet for influence that you should pay attention to, it would be the strategy videos that the Obama and McCain campaigns released recently.  Take a few minutes and check them both out.

The Obama video went through quite a bit of esoteric polling information, and then laid out the campaign's strategy and the new states they hope to challenge McCain in.  I found this interesting because you usually don't see campaigns talking to their supporters in this way.  It's usually the kind of detail delved into by the chattering class (pundits) and used to fill the endless hours of black screen on talk television.

The McCain actually did this as well, and a few weeks ago released their own video on YouTube.  I actually like the video from McCain's campaign better, in that it takes a surprisingly honest approach to the challenges the campaign has in overtaking Obama's lead and countering the negative factors facing Republicans this cycle.

Having the campaigns be this upfront with their strategy shows a new level of trust and openness that we haven't seen before.  It makes a lot of sense, given that they are asking their million plus volunteers and donors to help them accomplish something monumental.

The interesting question to ponder is this: if your organization is working towards a clearly defined goal with a strategy and an army of supporters, what's to stop you from sharing the detail of it with your supporters online?  I don't mean in a 70 page "strategy plan", but a few paragraphs of easy to understand text or a 2-3 minute video?  Fear of being criticized?

The payback in loyalty and in having your entire supporter base understand your strategy and your goals should be immense if you can manage this hurdle.

Disclosure: My firm, Virilion, is not engaged by any candidate in the election.

GAO releases tanker ruling; Northrop Grumman sticks head in the sand.

On Wednesday June 18th the General Accounting Office (GAO) ruled on Boeing's protest regarding the Air Force refueling tanker contract.  They recommended that the Air Force "obtain revised proposals, re-evaluate the revised proposals, and make a new source selection decision".  To most of the news media covering this, this sounded like a call for a re-bid, and they wrote that story.  Online conversations around the term "rebid" spiked as well.  It's clear what the blogosphere thinks is happening in this graph below.

At the same time discussions of the rebid spiked, so did the use of the term "fair" in relation to the process.  One presumes this was because most commentors found the process not fair.  The AP story cited the rebid, as did Reuters.  If you were a Boeing communications person on this day, your job was to appear not to gloat, and they did it. The blogs and the press were saying all the right things, so there was no reason to wade into it.

However if you were EADS or Northrop Grumman, you had a lot of work to do.  You needed to spin the GAO report and explain to the market why your tanker was the best value even with a modified Air Force procurement process.

Let's Not Make That Mistake Again
As I watched this play out, I was reminded of the last time EADS/Northrop Grumman had an opportunity to react, right after they won the bid and Boeing filed their protest. 

During that critical period they were quiet while their opponents rallied the media and the Congress into a fervent anti-outsourcing mob, while Northrop Grumman and EADS were ineffectively quiet.  The sight of Lou Dobbs ranting about outsourcing our military with barely a response from Northrop/EADS is seared in my mind as a teachable moment for communications professionals. 

I looked forward to an aggressive defense, as the GAO decision was a long time coming and they had plenty of time to prepare.

Would they comment on their local Mobile Alabama blog, the site of the new facility?  Would they use their special tanker blog to argue the merits of the plane and the boom?  Perhaps even their own website?

Northrop Grumman's Response
Believe it or not, no.  Northrop Grumman published what looked like a "thank you and goodbye" letter on their local Alabama site with the improbable title, "Outlook Remains Optimistic".  Please, saying it doesn't make it true folks.  The main tanker blog they operate doesn't even acknowledge and spin the GAO decision on the homepage.  The tiny bright spot of hope is a short press release on the NG website which responds to the GAO decision.  No proactive response to the rebid appears in any of the news stories.  The EADS chief executive is quoted as saying, "We are still under contract".

This is weak, very weak.

What Could Northrop Grumman Have Done Differently?
The 50,000 foot view says that if the blogosphere and the media are all talking about something, you need to talk about it, and your message points should be designed reshape the debate.  Saying everything is ok "Outlook Remains Optimistic!" is honestly just a credibility killer. So is not saying anything at all.

Northrop Grumman should have spent the last several weeks preparing materials for the release of this outcome.  They should have prepared an entire set of materials showing that if the Air Force re-evaluated the tankers with consideration given to the likely objections to the process, the Northrop Grumman plane is still the better purchase for America.

Then they should have followed it up with a response that they welcomed a rebid, but since it would result in the same outcome, and because the tankers are desperately needed by our men and women in harm's way, there's no reason to delay.

The goal is to promulgate the message that a new process is going to generate the same outcome.  And if you don't start saying it, nobody else will believe it.

If you work for the Northrop Grumman or EADS communications teams and you're readying a strategy of Chuck Norris awesomeness quality, I'd love to hear about it.  Heck, so would the media.  Or Congress.  Or the Air Force.

Disclosure: My firm, Virilion, is not engaged by any relevant party in the tanker bid conflict.

I am deeply indebted to my colleague Jason Alcorn for collaborating on this article.

We use a combination of Radian6 and human intelligence to monitor online conversations and generate graphs like the one included in this article.

How Will A Successful Obama Campaign Change the Way Washington Operates in 2009?

[This originally appeared at PRNewsOnline.com on June 19, 2008]

By Jeff Connaughton & Shabbir Imber Safdar

If Barack Obama and his grassroots army win the White House in November, he has promised to change the way business is done in Washington.  Some of the implications such as earmark reform, more transparency in contracting and lobbying, and campaign finance changes, are stated plainly on his “Ethics Issues” page.

Yet, in a larger sense, legions of advocates will be trying to make sense of what it means to influence policy-making in Washington when the person just elected to the highest office in the land won with an army of small donors and volunteers and without contributions from lobbyists.  Indeed, while castigating the outsized influence of lobbyists in the process.

Will the Obama administration return K Street’s calls?  Perhaps not as quickly or with as much interest as previously has been the case.  Instead, companies need to reorient their thinking to fit the new paradigm.

The most obvious implication will be changes in the way the White House governs.    With promises of more open White House communication, and an army of supporters still connected by e-mail, an Obama administration may rely far less on the mainstream press to get their message out or to set the context of a story.  As in the handling the Rev. Wright episode, candidate Obama has shown that he can make one public speech, post it online, and fundamentally change the dynamic of the news cycle by the effect of bloggers and thousands of commentaries online.

Working inside this dynamic will be difficult without matching the same tactics.  While it’s unlikely any industry or interest will be able to raise a similar army of supporters, the same level of openness and commitment to monitoring and participating in online discussions will be critical.  Issue groups must be developed by providing supportive evidence for one’s case directly to the public through online communications channels.

While still valuable, spinning the evening news anchor or the major print story will become marginally less effective.  Earlier this year, a survey from iFOCOS found that half of all Americans are getting their news from the Internet.  While the sources they may find online are the Web portals of traditional media outlets, pundits and bloggers usually outnumber traditional media outlets online and can promote or bury a story within hours.

Our specific recommendations for operating in this environment in 2009 include:

1. Begin a program to monitor online conversations about your issues in the same way that you currently monitor press clips.  When you need to enter the debate, you’ll understand the “map of influence” around your issues online.
2. Prepare your government affairs and communications teams to take their case directly to the public online.  Experiment now so that you’re not confronting the logistical issues of speaking online while you’re simultaneously dealing with a policy or public relations problem.
3. Force yourself to act daily to grow the “issue community” you’ve developed online and offline, identify and targeting additional interested persons and allies so that you can mobilize them as effectively as possible when needed.

What's the lasting story about the Internet and the 2008 Democratic Primary?

As you might expect, many people who make their living practicing persuasion are trying to define the Internet's role in the Democratic primary.  I have been at this since 1992 and I'm always hearing people talk about waiting for the Internet's Kennedy-Nixon moment.  Nixon's inability to understand the impact of television, and Kennedy's ability to play to it, is considered a pivotal moment in that election and in the history of politics.  There are many pundits talking about how video helped sink Senator Clinton's nomination.

Much like Kennedy, Obama is a reformer running in an age when he appears to be exactly the right candidate for the outcry of the electorate, and the newest medium at hand has allowed that advantage to reach much farther than it otherwise would have.  But it didn't cost Senator Clinton the nomination, her campaign did that themselves.

Internet video has played a very important role in both this election and in the last one.  (Remember the macaca video?)  And what it has been is a tool.  But the Internet didn't unseat Sen. George Allen, he beat himself.  The Internet just publicized these mistakes far and wide and allowed his opponent to reach more people who became disaffected the more they heard.

Consider the potential that such an enormous audience for online video has for your cause or issue.  Clearly you can take advantage of it like the Obama campaign has.  But if you fail to use it, perhaps because organizationally you can't get support for it, or because you don't think it's really that important, you may still find yourself affected negatively by it, much as the Clinton and Allen campaign teams discovered.

Recommended Reading:
How New Media Affected Clinton Campaign by Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle.

These two photos come from the PBS website and the SFGATE website.