General Stanley McChrystal and his staff have succeeded in shaking up how the war in Afghanistan will be run.  It came, however, at the cost of their jobs.  Michael Hastings, a reporter from Rolling Stone Magazine got the opportunity of a lifetime when a volcano eruption grounded him in France with the general and his staff for an extended road trip to Berlin.  They granted him unprecedented access to the inner workings of the high command.  Ultimately, their sharp, uncensored rhetoric lost McChrystal his job.

The assignment, as executive editor Eric Bates laid it out, was a simple profile of the general.  Hastings goal was to give the audience a look at the strategy in Afghanistan through the eyes of its architect.  Hastings wrote that story, but for some reason, McChrystal and his staff in no way censored their average day-to-day banter when the reporter was around.  They made no stipulations as to which conversations could and could not be used in the article, and even seemed to direct their snide comments about officials towards Hastings that they may be included in the story.  What was the logic behind this?  Was there any?  Did anyone stop and say, “We could all get canned for this?”  The reporter found himself asking the very same questions.  In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Michael Hastings seemed to indicate that the general and his staff seemed to have some sort of agenda…that they wanted to shake things up a bit.

So from a PR standpoint, why and how did this happen?  Hastings posited that McChrystal’s press advisors might have accepted the request in order to expose the situation surrounding Afghanistan and the strategy therein to a new demographic.  This is a perfectly sound reasoning to have Rolling Stone come in and do a profile.  The blunder occurred in not monitoring or prepping General McChrystal on how to behave and what to say around the reporter.  One would think that a seasoned military man would know what is acceptable rhetoric and what crosses the line, but as Hastings pointed out in an interview, “When war becomes your life, it makes it difficult to create good policy.”  Perhaps it also prevents you from realizing when you are walking head first into a PR disaster and potentially the end of an otherwise illustrious career.

The city of Chester has a dual image – one touting the future, the other mired in its tumultuous present – and tensions between both sides are coming to a head this month.

On the one hand, the future: A brand-new soccer stadium, touted as the centerpiece for a $500 million riverfront revival. Feeding off of World Cup fervor, PPL Park – home to the Philadelphia Union MLS team – is slated for a sold-out inaugural home game on June 27. The energy and anticipation is palpable from the Sons of Ben, the Union’s fan club.

On the other hand, the current state of Chester: four homicides in eight days. A state of emergency issued, with beefed up police patrols and a 9pm curfew in high-crime areas. Chronic issues of crime, poverty, and unemployment. A population in steady decline, reduced to nearly ½ of its peak population in the 1950s.

Which image of Chester will prevail — will the energy and excitement building up along the waterfront spread beyond the river bank and into a city desperate for change? Or will the city’s woes creep towards the newly christened stadium and tarnish the hoped-for revival? To be sure, the underlying issues are far more complex than simply being a public relations problem, but the tone of the news coverage in the weeks and months ahead will play an important role in determining which image of Chester will prevail.

In a word, No.

Now that international buffoon Tony Hayward has his life back, I’m sure the company hopes it’ll start to turn around its dreadful public image.

But here’s reality – they won’t.

You can’t spin your way out of a disaster this big, especially not when you’ve created such a monumental level of distrust with the public by lying , obfuscating,  and yachting. Just because the quotes and soundbites will now be attributed to BP Managing Director Bob Dudley doesn’t mean the public is going to start believing what the company says.

The cardinal rules in any crisis communications scenario are 1) Validate Concern and 2) Show Action. This is easy to say and hard to do, especially for a corporation with business interests and legal concerns. Executives too often shrink from responsibility in times of crisis. Lawyers tell them not to say anything that could be used against them. So they never admit responsibility, which makes it rather difficult to validate concern.

Throw in the fact that BP’s efforts at action, while frantic, have been bumbling, and the company’s image is just about unrecoverable.

So, as hopeless as that seems, the company has to begin rebuilding the image. This will be an incredibly hard long slog – we’re talking a decade, if they survive. The company needs to double its efforts, and I mean that literally. They need to double the $20 Billion Disaster Fund President Obama demanded they establish. They need to double their efforts at transparency. And more than that, they need to double their efforts at decency – it’ll take several years of truth telling to begin to build back BP’s credibility.

More than all this, BP obviously needs to plug the leak and not worry about the PR – they need to prove their competence and – even though that will likely be a heroic effort – not expect to be treated like heroes.

Without some level of competence, there’s only so much public relations folks can do when the company keeps compounding the crisis, and not even the highest paid consultants can’t polish this turd.

Who’s right, Betty White or the newest AARP Social Media Survey for the baby boomer crowd?  On her recent SNL appearance, White satirically exclaimed that social media tools, like Facebook (the site that helped put her on SNL) are a “huge waste of time.”  But, according to a recent AARP study, one in four Americans 50 years and older stay connected using social media sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  Additionally, nearly half of older adults, aged 50 to 64, say they are ”Internet savvy.” In fact, AARP’s study prompted the organization to redesign its own website to increase its focus on social networking and refine its look and feel.  

These findings supersede notions that the baby boomers lack the adeptness and know-how to navigate the social media environment. Looks like it’s not just for kids anymore.

While the boomers are increasingly embracing these technologies in their personal lives, the trend hasn’t been as quick to catch on in the workplace.  Many companies are still reluctant—sometimes completely opposed—to using social media, because of misconceptions that these tools waste employee time, can cause brand damage and a loss of brand control and greaten the risk of lawsuits or disclosure of “corporate secrets.” 

While the social media pool is complex, it is clearly here to stay and continues to generate momentum across generations.  These websites and tools are fruitful opportunities for organizations to consume, create, share and influence information on their own terms.  And you don’t have to be a cannonball to make waves—instead, consider baby steps:

Begin by listening at a safe distance, find your audience, develop a clear strategy and then establish your social media footprint. Done right, organizations can deeply influence effective team building, communication and collaboration.

As the prevalence of social media continues to rise, organizations of all types and sizes are recognizing the ways in which social media can help them better understand, respond to and attract the attention of their target audience. So while Ms. White might call on her Ouija board to make connections, the rest of us should consider ways to start or ramp up our own campaigns and leverage the power of social media.

We’ve all seen it before: that tweet your favorite celebrity sends out over Twitter, that status update your former childhood friend announces on Facebook, or that blog post about the latest political scandal made on the Huffington Post. Social media continues to advance in the technological world and has become rooted in many aspects of our everyday lives. Who could have predicted that social media would become such a powerful tool for the business industry?

Social media has now integrated with the business industry and is currently on the rise for its popularity among a wide variety of users. Marketers use it to generate quality leads and ensure future sales and profits for companies. Business-to-business companies, also known as B2B’s, use social media to get ahead in their industry and become leaders within their own realm of the business world. Even human resource employees use it for purposes of social networking to create more job opportunities. Business men and women have finally come to realize that social media has become one of the leading tools in creating a successful public relations campaign with the most wide-ranging audience.

Ford has recently used social media as the driving force for their “Ford Fiesta” campaign, where they gave 100 individuals their newest car model, the Fiesta, encouraging them to blog, tweet, flickr, Youtube about their experiences and travels for six months. Ford has strategically decided to market the Fiesta entirely through social media, something unprecedented in the car industry but one that they executed with much success. They far-exceeded everyone’s expectations when they reached a high of 50,000 potential customers, 97% of which were never Ford car owners.

Due to the increasingly dynamic needs and concerns of businesses, many predict that 2010 will become the year where social media really takes off and becomes a mainstream device for business purposes. Marketers have learned that social media offers a more efficient way for profiling specific information that consumers actually seek. It is also helping marketers maintain and develop potential leads that consumers are interested but not yet prepared to purchase goods and services. Even the current participants of the entering workforce have taken hold of social media as a means for marketing themselves and attaining business connections. Social media has become a mechanism through which employees can easily encounter more resources of better quality and can improve their ability to share knowledge and information between users.

All in all, the theme here seems to be clear- social media has attained great recognition as a fundamental business device within our society and its influence continues to grow and advance. It is estimated that by 2014 all B2B firms will spend $54 million alone for social media efforts, a whopping $43 million dollar increase since 2009. It appears that as more and more people come to realize the true capabilities of social media and how they or their firm can benefit from these capabilities to become leaders within their an industry, its progression will only continue forward. So tweet away my friends… go ahead post a blog, because social media might just be the key to a prosperous future for our businesses of today.