Holy tofu and organic black beans, Batman – The Tomato Head is leaving Downtown Maryville!

 The announcement of The Tomato Head’s Maryville closure in favor of plans to build a West Knoxville location at the Gallery Shopping Center hit all-things-social last night, and, to say the least – the Maryville Tomato Head faithful are none-too-happy.  Some of the comments via FB and the News Sentinel website (apart from the “Yeah Baby!”s of our West Knoxville friends): 

• “Maryville has completely supported TH, and their presence has helped jumpstart revitalization in downtown Maryville. Notice they didn’t say they were losing money (the restaurant is always busy).  I will drive past the Gallery, and I will take out-of-town guests to Cafe 4 and Latitude 35 on Market Square.  The whole vibe of TH can now be transferred to a suburban sprawl location.  Maybe their ‘unattainable’ 3rd location could open at Turkey Creek? They can close the Market Square location when space becomes available in Farragut.”
• “Really disappointed in @thetomatohead decision. Quite illogical. I’ve eaten my last meal there.”
• “This is not right!! I cannot imagine that this location hasn’t been successful. . . .what a crock.  Seriously.”
• “Crazy.  I’ll not be back.”

And my personal favorite:

• “Booooooooooo!!!”

In this economy, The Tomato Head’s visionary founder, Mahasti Vafaie, and business partner Scott Partin have achieved a brand with legions of followers in both the Knoxville and Maryville downtowns.  Great atmosphere.  Great vibe.  And absolutely delightful food. 

On the one hand, it’s an enviable position for any brand to have such a fan base that an announcement like this one evokes such a strong reaction (West Knoxville: “Yayyyyyy!”; Blount County: “Doh!”). 

What’s unenviable: the backlash itself.  And for The Tomato Head, they’re about to get backlash-whiplash from Blount County in a big way, I fear.

As a business owner, I understand and fully respect that many valid factors can play into a company’s unpopular decisions, made for the greater long-term good of the business.

However, as I put on my public relations hat (and let’s face it, it’s always on), I have to question whether The Tomato Head’s handling of this announcement – and of course, the very decision itself – presents far more damage to the brand in a significant enough geographic area to nullify the gains of greener pastures elsewhere.

I have a lot of West Knoxville friends.  Love ‘em.  But as a Blount Countian, it’s more than a bit irksome watching some of them take that deeply inhaled drag from the stogie of geo-economic superiority here.  They’re sympathetically patting us Maryville folk on the back at our culinary loss, then two seconds later gently closing the door and breaking out into a full-on Church Lady Superior Dance (and I don’t mind aging myself with that comment; it’s gotta be said). 

A few tips for companies considering a controversial decision:

• Don’t take your fan base for granted when making decisions that are personal to those fans.  For The Tomato Head, it’s not just that they’re politely asking their Blount County diners simply to drive across the river to West or Downtown Knoxville instead.  The exodus feels far more personal than that.  And what’s more, in the initial news reports, The Tomato Head apparently isn’t politely asking their Blount patrons for anything.  They didn’t express anything to Maryville verbally – only through its actions of abruptly leaving.  (Note: a Facebook post by TH in recent hours explains the decision and shares stronger personal sentiments about the departure, but one wonders if it’s coming too late.) 
• If the tough decision must be made, put thought into how it’s announced by anticipating the feelings it will elicit and demonstrating some level of sensitivity toward those impacted.  It probably would have been far less damaging to The Tomato Head in Blount County if the Downtown Maryville closure had been announced prior to any mention being made of the West Knox plans.  Yes, there still would have been deep disappointment about the loss, but at least there wouldn’t have been the feelings of an overt snub factor involved.      

As for myself, I wish The Tomato Head well, and I’m going to miss their presence, their people, and most especially, their southwestern salad with organic blue corn chips and southwest vinaigrette.  I’m also going to miss what they brought to our Downtown and the way Maryville felt about the people in that nice yellow building on West Broadway.  

What was your first job?  What did you learn from it?

Working in the shoe department of my hometown’s local department store. 

I learned that everyone should have some type of work experience early in their lives that is directly customer-facing.  It’s a big eye-opener to how people really tick, and it creates a level of appreciation for any person in a customer-service job. 

Did your collegiate life prepare you for your current job? 

Absolutely.  The University of Tennessee College of Communication & Information provided a terrific foundation.  It so happens that everyone in my company is a product of UT-Knoxville as well.  We’ve stayed very involved there.

Why did you choose public relations as your career?

I knew at age 16 or 17 that a career in communications was where I wanted to be, but I wasn’t sure of the exact path.  I later learned that among communications professions such as advertising, broadcasting, journalism, speech communications, etc., public relations appealed to me as holding the greatest game-changing potential in society . . . the idea of being able to apply communications in a direct way to help people, businesses and organizations achieve success.  That’s what PR is all about.

Who has had the greatest impact on your professional career?

My parents.  They made my college education possible, and they demonstrated by example the commitment of being a business owner.

If you weren’t in this field, what else could you see yourself doing?  

I would enjoy being a writer – maybe a political columnist.  Politically, I’m a weird bird, which makes for interesting writing as well as audience reactions. 

What is your favorite quote?

Margaret Thatcher:  “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

If you could have one superhero power, what would it be?

The ability to be in five places at once would come in handy.  As a rule, I would love for one of those places to be cuddled up with my kids reading stories and taking naps. 

What is your biggest pet peeve?

Poor editing, especially when I’m the one guilty of it.

What was the funniest thing you have ever experienced?

Back in college, I took a conference trip to New York with a bunch of my PRSSA friends, and we made the obligatory trek to the top of the Empire State Building.  In the gift shop, they had these foam Statue of Liberty crowns and silly sunglasses, which I stuck on my head and raised up my right hand stoically as if I were holding the torch – and we all got our picture together, just goofing off. 

Suddenly – out of nowhere – every tourist in the gift shop swarmed over to get their picture taken with me posing as the Statue of Liberty . . . most of them speaking foreign languages.  At least a dozen strangers had their picture taken with me, most of them insisting I hold my arm up like I was Lady Liberty bearing the torch. 

Twenty years later, across the globe, there are probably pictures of me in people’s scrapbooks with the caption (translated to English): “Visiting Empire State Bldg with weird American chick wearing WAY too much red.”  If smartphones had been around back then, I would have had my 15 minutes of fame in 1993.

Any embarrassing professional moments you’re willing to share?

Apart from the Statue of Liberty thing, no.

In my early career, I worked in corporate communications for a highly successful company that managed private-sector prisons, jails and detention facilities for local, state and federal government agencies across the U.S. – and even some facilities internationally.

The experience provided my first front-line experience with seeing just how complicated controversies and crises could be.  

I remember one occasion in Florida where the company was seeking to site a county jail facility in a fairly rural area.  The local Chamber of Commerce decided to host a community forum for the public to discuss the issue with elected officials. 

Off I was sent to Florida to help represent the company, where I fully expected to hear diverse points of view.  In my naiveté at the time, I had no idea the level of raw emotion I would see thrown in the company’s face – or mine – from picket signs and near-tearful opposition testimonies to venom-eyed stare-downs by people I’d never met before.   I left the event that night with local law enforcement escorting me to my car and my hoping that no one followed my co-workers and me back to our hotel.

That was in the mid- to late-1990s.  Our company didn’t even use external e-mail at the time.  To that point, I certainly didn’t know what I didn’t know back then . . . that in terms of complicated, I’d seen nothing yet. 

Interestingly, though, in the area of staging protests, many of the same tactics of yesteryear remain firmly entrenched in the toolbox of people who wish to organize around a common cause and state their case in as big a way as possible.

When a company or organization is confronted with a protest movement of any sort, there are several rules of thumb:

• Take it seriously, even if it’s small or seemingly disorganized.  Controversies can morph into crises quickly, and you never know how it might evolve and gain steam quickly. 
• Get at the heart of the matter.  Establish a point of contact within the group’s leadership.  What is the protest about, and does it have legitimacy?  Identify all of the protestor messages that involve your organization, its performance, its policies, etc. . . . whatever the situation involves. 
• Engage legal counsel.  While PR and legal experts sometimes disagree about certain aspects of responding to protest movements – particularly how communications should be handled to avoid liability issues – it’s still important to have all voices at the table for the full management team to make informed decisions. 
• Determine if there are indeed issues that need to be addressed publicly.  If the protest organization is small, contained and/or seems to be operating with a logical mindset (which sometimes isn’t the case), it could be prudent to work with the group on a one-to-one basis to address their issues, which in rare instances can nip the whole issue in the bud without a public spectacle.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, however, “fringe” groups can pose risks completely apart from the apparent issue at hand.  Be aware if security or law enforcement needs to be contacted.
• If the protest movement has little to no legitimacy with regard to the validity of its claims or otherwise includes protestors who behave unreasonably or erratically, be careful about interactions or communications that inadvertently lend credence to the protestors where none is deserved.
• At the same time, maintain a consistent undertone of respect, restraint and control – particularly with media communications. 
• Keep your message simple, direct and above all, honest.
• Avoid public “forums” for discussing the issues at hand – harkening back to my Florida experience.  Generally, the only winners of those things are the protestors.  In areas of government, it’s often difficult or impossible to avoid these situations resulting from sunshine laws and governance requirements – in which case, the critical factors are detailed preparation, clear messaging and as much control over the venue as possible.

Above all – you need to remain proactive enough that you’re staying in control of your own organization’s actions and communications and not being manipulated by others.  By being responsive from the onset, these issues potentially can be contained and, hopefully, successfully concluded.

Ever work for a company that went into the whole Chicken Little routine whenever a minor incident or perceived criticism occurred?

At the opposite end of the spectrum, most public relations professionals’ worst nightmare is a real-deal crisis unfolding (or on the cusp of unfolding) and the decision-makers go into deer-in-the-headlights mode or “paralysis by analysis.” 

It served me well to learn early in my career the differences between a matter that was just an annoyance (a customer with unrealistic expectations complaining about my client’s company) and one that rose to the level of a true crisis (that same customer with a four-minute audio tape of the company’s call center rep lashing out with expletives over the phone in frustration). 

However, the realities of today often cancel out the crisis-assessment criteria of a decade ago.  Social media has magnified the panic that can unfold when something bad happens, largely because control over communications can become a wild card in a matter of seconds. 

How managers evaluate a situation and its impact – and then react accordingly – says a great deal about a company’s ability either to stay focused through the day-to-day or, to the latter point, survive a potentially chaotic and damaging scenario. 

Some quick tips:

• Think through a Top 10 list of things that have happened or could happen to your company, along with their likelihood of happening in the future.  Don’t forget to look at competitors’ past crisis situations and resulting media coverage as well.
• Evaluate each scenario by the laws of cause-and-effect.  If X happens, then who is impacted?  What are the stakeholder numbers, and how large are their spheres of influence? 
• Which scenarios have the greatest possibility to damage reputation and brand – not just operations and infrastructure?  Good insurance can cover a factory fire in a matter of months; brand damage can last decades.

And most of all – if your company operates within any public realm that avails it to high crisis potential, consider engaging a qualified public relations expert to help your whole team undertake a meaningful planning process . . . one that remains “live” and visible within the company 365 days a year, so that when it’s most needed, it can be put into quick action.

Not every negative thing that happens is a true crisis.  In the event you’re hit with one, though, it’s critical to be prepared.

A favorite saying in the South famously goes, “Get out of the kitchen if you can’t take the heat.” 

For my great-grandmother, who for decades prepared from scratch three hulking meals daily for about a dozen farmhands with all the modern conveniences a 1930s/40s kitchen would allow, it indeed got hot from the relentless burn of a wood-fired stove.  Way hot.  Especially in the Middle Tennessee August growing season with no AC or ceiling fans. 

Whoever wanted to bend my Grandmother Butler’s ear with a complaint, a request or any other idle chit-chat that could waste her valuable time generally had to venture to the kitchen to do it, and hence her love of that old expression.

Fast-forward six or seven decades: the kitchens of the modern world are much cooler and calmer places these days, but the heat still burns in a more figurative application of the phrase, in the forum of public dialogue. 

The kitchen (of sorts) is still there: our interconnectedness through media of vastly diversifying forms provides a place where all kinds of news-reporting and idea-sharing are cooked up – though some not even half-baked, I might add –and served to a global population. 

Thermal heat has been replaced with the heat of emotionally charged opinion, often hitting fever-pitches that stoke feelings of anger and hate between entire populations of people.   

The lines between genuine fact-focused news reporting and unapologetically opinionated editorial are blurred beyond much hope of their sponsoring media organizations ever getting a grip on reality.

The heat is on alright, and often times – I must admit – I can’t take it.  The thumb hits the “off” button, and I’m back to calmer places, back to sanity.  

It’s a real downer.  This isn’t the way it has to be.  With all the potential that media offer today to educate, enlighten and inspire, what most consistently rises to the top are the most shrill, most  misguided and most purposefully destructive voices, viewpoints and personalities. 

A retired Knoxville, Tennessee educator, Sandra D. Cannon, wrote an insightful op-ed piece in The Knoxville News Sentinel this past weekend, describing in an exceptionally well-balanced way her disappointment in how public debate has evolved, from the formats of traditional media to the likes of Limbaugh and Maher.  Read it.  

As a substitute teacher now, Ms. Cannon sees the vitriol in today’s classrooms daily, not only in students arguing among one another but also in arguing with her. 

The outcomes can be seen every day.  Neither many students nor the grown-ups who should know better seem to care about learning or embracing the tools of a thoughtful, productive and well-measured point/counterpoint exchange – one that doesn’t quickly decline into mudslinging of the worst Jerry-Springer kind.   

Amid the muck, the public relations profession represents two faces: first, as part of the machine that’s positioning and protecting the voices that are most contributing to the madness; but then secondly, as a professional discipline that offers an abundance of methodologies, creativity and know-how to make education, enlightenment and inspiration surrounding critical issues a reality.

Toward that second point, the power of organizations like the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and its tens of thousands of individual members offer a great deal of talent and expertise.  While a wholesale shift in the status quo probably can’t happen, many folks would agree: the quality of debate in this country has fewer places to go but up. 

They say that a kitchen make-over always contributes back the most value to a home. 

Across the spectrum of public discourse, the public relations profession should turn up a different kind of heat in the kitchen – one generated by a full-on makeover that helps brings out better communication for better outcomes – and in the process, increases the value of the media home we all inhabit.

While the phrase “getting it right” has become a cliché, its core still rings true.

Mary Beth West and I recently spent an afternoon with a prospective client speaking about branding and the importance of differentiating their message from that of the competition.

We stressed the importance of a competitive analysis as well as qualitative and quantitative research to find the true points of parity and difference within their organization and brand.

The economy and other circumstances are forcing this entity to consider a “marketing” campaign. They exist in a crowded category dominated by a couple of big players.

To “get it right,” we encouraged them to look at their customers – present and potential. Understand their needs and wants. Investigate the competition. Understand what they are saying to the same prospects. Sift through the data and marry that information with their market knowledge and judgment.

We discussed how other brands have gotten it right and ensured them somewhere there is a special message unique to their brand and offering. There is a process to help them “get it right.”

Many organizations skip the above “getting it right” steps, because of the costs and the time involved to execute the various analyses. When completed correctly, the rewards can be enormous to the brand and the business.

It just makes sense to “get it right.”

As a profession, public relations has historically beaten out most others in living up to the old saying, “the cobbler has no shoes.”

So goes the reality that the profession has struggled for decades with achieving accurate perceptions of what public relations is and what we in the profession actually do for a living.

The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) took on the challenge anew with an effort formally entitled “Public Relations Defined” to create a universal definition of public relations. 

PRSA National Chair / CEO Gerard Corbett, APR, Fellow PRSA, did a terrific job framing the need for this effort in his kick-off to the initiative earlier this year.

PRSA’s members worldwide were invited to submit their ideas and recommendations for the best-crafted definition and to vote on a final draft.

The chosen winner:

“Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.”

While I like this definition especially for its simplicity, I would like it even more if within the definition it answered the question, “To what end?”

If PRSA could tack on a simple phrase at the conclusion, “to achieve business objectives,” it would strike more solid resonance with CEOs and other leaders / management functions that public relations’ value is all about making the entities we serve holistically successful.

Apart from this criticism – which I only intend in a constructive way – I have to hand it to them:  Hats off to PRSA and the many leaders involved in this effort for taking on this project.  The time had certainly come to revise PRSA’s previously adopted definition from 1982:

“Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.”

If that phrase didn’t automatically trigger a bout of narcolepsy for you, I will hasten to point out that it’s great in 2012 to operate in a profession that self-describes itself as more than just a helper, and more so, that we’re not entrenched in some curious sociological exercise of “adapt(ing) mutually,” a concept which one would more likely read about in National Geographic than Harvard Business Review.  Who on earth would pay a decent monthly retainer for that little deliverable? 

Final thought: as someone who has been involved in the past in PRSA’s national advocacy efforts for the profession, it’s my hope that all of PRSA’s members will do their own part to represent and to communicate to others what we do – in all its expansive diversity of scope and impact – in a way that is worthy of the strongest ideals. 

It’s not PRSA’s job alone.  It should play a role in the life’s work of each of us.

On some issues of heavy consequence in the public relations profession, it sometimes helps to take a step back and watch the dialogue unfold before formulating an opinion.  I had been doing just that on the Susan G. Komen / Planned Parenthood controversy – until today.  Now, it all seems crystal-clear.

Like everyone else, I saw the maelstrom unfold last week throughout the media.  The manner in which the story broke and how the Komen organization reacted with a policy about-face – followed by tough criticism (“they caved!”) – provides a public relations case study that will live in textbooks throughout the next decade. 

An interesting part about it to me, though, is that different public relations professionals are drawing diverse conclusions about who’s right, who’s wrong, and what the real lessons are relative to brand, reputation and effective organizational decision-making. 

One of my PRSA colleagues, Michael Cherenson, APR, Fellow PRSA, posted an entry on the Public Relations Society of America‘s national blog, “Who Really Owns the Komen Brand?”  In it, Mike makes some spot-on observations about the nature of brand advocacy.  He also poses a critical question in his title.  

I disagree, however, with the direction of his conclusion, in which he seems to indicate that Komen simply made a bad decision to no longer support Planned Parenthood, leaving a majority of former Komen supporters feeling betrayed and turning on the brand.  

To me, the answer of who owns the Komen brand – or at least who seized ownership of it last week – is quite simple:  Planned Parenthood.  

It’s Planned Parenthood’s own brand advocates, in my view, who mounted nothing short of a hostile takeover of the Komen brand in order to railroad their message – and their way – with absolute political genius . . . the notion of tying the breast cancer prevention issue intrinsically with women’s reproductive rights vis-à-vis Komen’s prior financial support of Planned Parenthood, with a deep inference that the two cannot be separated.  

In the face of Komen rescinding its funding, Planned Parenthood made an exceptionally swift, underlying case that Komen was turning its back on women.   And the media ate it up with a spoon, as Planned Parenthood well-knew they would.  The Komen folks didn’t know what hit them, with almost total deer-in-the-headlights confusion as to the messaging subterfuge overtaking their reputation. 

I have to ask the question, was it really Komen donors who were posting all those “Never will I give again!” messages on Facebook, or was it the Planned Parenthood Army?  We’ll see what the coming days of analysis into the Internet record bears out. 

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial late last night that gives a far better reality-based assessment of Komen’s rationale for its original decision:

“Planned Parenthood has been and is under congressional and criminal investigation (by attorneys general, local prosecutors and various regulatory agencies in Arizona, Indiana, Alabama, Kansas and Texas) for allegations including failure to report criminal child sex abuse, misuse of health-care and family-planning funds, and failure to comply with parental-involvement laws regarding abortions. . . . It is easy to see why Komen might not wish to be associated with Planned Parenthood. Fighting breast cancer is something all Americans can and do agree on; promoting and performing abortions is something that divides us bitterly.” 

In short, there are two sides to this issue, and Komen’s side got completely hijacked. 

Another colleague of mine posted an essay yesterday that, to me, spoke with a great deal of clarity about the real issue at hand for Komen: lack of conviction. 

With characteristic aplomb, Susan Hart, APR, wrote, “Last week’s nightmare of ‘they fund us, they fund us not’ isn’t about funding at all. It’s about who the Susan G. Komen Foundation is. It’s about the organization’s values, priorities and purpose. It’s the up close and personal part of branding that decidedly determines who you are and what you stand for regardless of public sentiment.  And therein lies the multi-level problem for this pink-until-you-puke group.”

Love it. 

And she’s absolutely right. 

It’s not without a bit of odd coincidence that our company’s scheduled blog posts for the month of February are set to take on the theme “Demonstrating Value: Transparency and Accountability in Client Services”. . . when one of the biggest executive compensation flaps in recent Knoxville history is unfolding right now. 

At almost this very time two years ago (January 2010), I wrote a blog post, “The Reputational Fallout of Compensation Run Amok,” prompted at the time by a Barron’s article on the topic of out-of-control executive compensation on Wall Street and Washington’s reaction to it.

Whether an organization is public or private-sector, for-profit or non-profit, executive compensation disclosures can take a real toll on relationships with stakeholders, if compensation levels as well as policies aren’t within some reasonable range of public expectations, particularly given the scale of the organization and the context of its work performance.

Of course, you can’t please everyone on this topic.  Some folks misguidedly think anyone working in the non-profit sector shouldn’t make more than $50K a year.  Non-profits that seek to operate with the performance-driven approach of highly competitive companies generally have to pay quite well to attract commensurate talent in keeping with expectations.

As with practically everything else that can impact public attitudes and opinions, balance is the name of the game. 

Board decisions should be made with an underlying expectation that all information is subject to public disclosure and scrutiny and should let that knowledge serve as some form of guidance on executive compensation parameters.

With great delight this past New Year’s weekend, I opened my Wall Street Journal (yes, the one made of actual paper) to find Scott Adams’ essay, “A Year Without Fear.” 

First of all, I marvel at anyone who not only can draw (Dilbert) but also can write.  My husband’s cousin, cartoonist Marshall Ramsey, is another rare example; but I digress.

Adams describes in hilarious detail his efforts to overcome a natural penchant for taking the safe route, spurred in early life by an encounter on his bike with a woodchuck (you just gotta read it).      

What I loved about this piece, apart from the fits of laughter it prompted, was its metaphor for what I strongly believe life is largely about: consciously rejecting the easy route when it means achieving a life lived. 

We continue to face times of great uncertainty, change and instability.  In the thick of it, it’s so important to chart your own course, even when – and perhaps particularly when – doing so means facing down some pretty big fears. 

So here’s a virtual toast to 2012 and to you . . . make this year count.