Leave it to the irrepressible Dan Barry of the New York Times to coin the best analogy for hurricane/storm/squall Irene:

Up to this point, most people had experienced Hurricane Irene only through the multicolored radar maps that appeared on television. Or maybe they had seen the breathtaking, even humbling, images arriving from some 200 miles up, via the International Space Station: the photographs taken by astronauts that showed what looked like a massive swirl of mashed potatoes straddling the edge of the green plate of the United States.

The image turned out to be even more prescient than Barry could have imagined when he wrote it on Friday, August 26; in the end, Irene acted like a gumsnapping diner waitress, dumping wet glop onto the east coast, but hardly throwing the major tantrum predicted by hyperventilating newscasters.

I can’t get Leonardo DiCaprio out of my mind.

Not because I’m such a big fan. But because I associate Leo with the movie “Titanic,” in which deck chairs became projectiles. This is precisely the image that the new CEO of Chicago Public Schools does not want taxpayers to have in mind about the reorganization underway at the chronically troubled system.  But his misfired messaging guarantees that half a million Chicago Tribune readers now associate his administration with the imminent disaster at sea and catastrophic loss of life.

Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah waits for several paragraphs to quote Brizard about plan to shuffle administrative staffers into different roles.  “This is not about shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic,” he said. “It really is a different look. You’re not going to see the level of independence in the area as you saw in the past. We’re going to create a level of coherence within those areas.”

As hackneyed as the metaphor is, it is what Tribune editors chose for the subhead on the story:

“CPS reorganization: Brizard to realign ‘mini-superintendents’
‘This is not about shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic,’ he says”

Many readers will only take away the one thing that Brizard says isn’t the case.  Now imagine how much power his message would have had if he had used a powerful, positive phrase that was so compelling that it was in the subhead. “Putting the right people in the right places to lead the right changes.” Isn’t that better?

The first rule of crisis communication: If you can avoid the crisis, do. Because if the self-inflicted communication crisis was completely avoidable, the fact that you didn’t avoid it becomes part of the story.

Confused?

So are potential investors in Groupon, the social media discounting juggernaut that is zooming towards  its IPO.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is notoriously strait-laced about what companies say when they are in the ‘quiet period’ before they go public. That’s why it’s called a ‘quiet period:’  founders and investors are supposed to shut up so that analysts and the investing public can have a hard look at the company’s fundamentals free from spin and hype. They’re not supposed to talk up the impending stock offer or talk it down, or respond with anything but plain facts to reporters’ inquiries. But when you’re drunk on profits, you might forget the basic courtesies – not to mention legalities – of the lockstep IPO process. Running off at the mouth during the quiet period is problematic for so many reasons, as Groupon executive chairman Eric Lefkofsky is now learning.

Lefkofsky turned a well-timed $546 investment into a $386 million pre-IPO conversion of Groupon stock to cash, according to the Wall St. Journal. So you could see why he thought that the normal rules didn’t apply to him. When critics examining Groupon’s financials mocked the company’s creative accounting and utter lack of profits, Lefkofsky couldn’t contain himself. Groupon “is going to be wildly profitable,” he said.

Bet he wishes he could take that back. Since then, Groupon has had to amend its IPO filings to neutralize Lefkofsky’s boast. And his misstep was so badly timed that it inspired others to take an even harder look at him, and they discovered a history of fact-free bragging.

Now Lefkofsky must endure an ongoing drizzle of skepticism about his prior businesses, his bad judgment,his sketchy character and his outrageous haul from Groupon. This time around, he’s keeping quiet.

Hiding is not a communication strategy.

Neither is crossing your fingers.

With all the attention being paid to the federal budget crisis, privileged classes of taxpayers, and the search for revenue, you’d think that anyone whose clients enjoy a tax break would be prepared  should a reporter call.

Being caught by surprise is never fun…especially when the fact that you were caught by surprise becomes part of your quote.

That’s what happened to Robert Green, described as a ‘tax specialist whose clients include traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the hub of commodities futures contracts.’  When called the other day by Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, who was working on a story about the sweet tax deal lavished on certain classes of commodities traders, Green ‘ seemed genuinely taken aback.

“I’ve been dreading getting a call like this,” he said, apparently worried that any publicity of the tax break could put pressure on lawmakers to revisit the rule. “No one has shot something across the bow.”

Green managed to recover sufficiently to get out a quotable statement. One can only imagine how long Sorkin had to wait for that to occur.  Lesson learned: if your industry, clients or topic of expertise is in the news, you may well get a call. Be prepared.

When a reporter calls, you need to know what to say.

The opportunity looms just as large as the microphone above. Larger than life.

Do you know what to do?

We do.