Tough situation here.

The Guelph Storm are a junior hockey team based in the midwestern Ontario, Canada community of Guelph.  For those who are unfamiliar with the various levels of hockey, think of it as a double A baseball team.  They attract several thousand fans per game.

They are easily the most popular team in this city of 100,000 people.  As a result, their season-ticket’s list reads like the Who’s Who of the Guelph business community.

So I imagine some of those businessmen are going to be awfully upset when they find out that their email address is now public information to every fellow season-ticket holder.

The Storm were promoting a charitable luncheon, and did so via email.  Unfortunately, in a classic mistake that happens to the just about anyone (Hillary Clinton’s campaign made the same mistake), the Storm did the unthinkable and publicly listed everyone’s address in the “To” field.  As a result, anyone who received the email can easily see every address.

This is NOT a good way to endear yourself to your most important customers – season’s ticket holders.

So how should they fix it?  To send out another email will run the risk of flagging that very weakness to those who hadn’t noticed it the first time.  In effect, it’s like saying “I’m sorry I have this security flaw in my website.  Please don’t take advantage of it.”

I suspect it may be a moot point.  It’s only going to take one upset person to tip off the local newspaper before the Guelph Storm Management are going to be dealing with a very public black eye – in which case, nothing more than an abject apology is going to suffice.  In the meantime, it’s time to think preemptively.

Perhaps a snail mailed apology, along with a voucher to bring a guest to a future Storm game for free?  Or perhaps a coupon for something as simple as a free hot-dog or snack?  Anyone who hadn’t noticed the original mistake may be happy to receive a freebie, while those who are upset are somewhat mollified.

What do YOU think?

Non-surprising fact: Michael Bryant cares what people think about him.  (After all, until ten days ago he was still the odds-on favourite to be the next Ontario Liberal Party Leader.)

Non-surprising fact: He’s hired a PR firm to help him navigate through the mess that inevitably happens after he killed a cyclist on a Toronto street.

Surprising Fact: They’re doing a horrible job of it.

Look – I have no problem with his PR team.  They’re good people and they do fantastic work.  It’s disingenuous to slam the work of what would be a “rival” PR outfit, and I don’t want to do that, because I mean it – they really do good work.

Which is why what they’re doing here is just so… odd.  I don’t know – maybe Michael Bryant isn’t paying them a lot of money?  Are they being neutered by an overly cautious legal team?  I don’t know, and I welcome the opportunity to hear from them.  But let’s take a look at the Twitter account “Bryant Facts.”

The good:

• recognizing the role that social media has to play in staying out in front of a particular story
• making at least a token effort at counteracting some of the ‘lies and mis-perceptions’ that are out there.

The bad?  Just about everything else…. for example:

• No icon (classic Twitter newbie mistake.)
• Lack of updates (at the time I’m writing this, the Twitter account hasn’t been updated in over 33 hours.  That’s two or three lifetimes.)
• Not engaging the public or engaging in real conversation
• Lack of third party, verifiable information.  If the role of the account is to respond to misinformation, at least point them to the correct information.  Merely saying “Um, no, you’re wrong” isn’t going to cut it.

At the time I write this, Bryant’s blog is actually faring even worse – rather than four updates, it has only three.   And it leaves no opportunity to provide a comment.

What Bryant’s team has done is taken the social right out of social media.  That’s not harnessing the power of social media;  that’s outright neutering it.

Unbelievably, it even brings attention to negative allegations which may not have been noticed before.  For example, one blog post begins with the words “The “narration” in this YouTube clip is one-sided opinion and contains multiple inaccurate assertions.”  (Thanks for pointing out the video.  I hadn’t seen it before.)

What is their version of the truth?  We may never know.  The author doesn’t tell us what the truth is.  There is no verifiable information provided to an information-hungry, albeit skeptical public.

In this very high profile case, hiring ’spin doctors’ carries a risk in and of itself.  Which is why this is just so perplexing… This ’strategy’ leaves the reader with more questions than answers, and sadly, does so in a way that may make the problem even worse.

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(For those who are non-Canadian, or have been hiding under a rock, Michael Bryant is the former Liberal Attorney General and widely considered a rising star in Ontario Politics until he struck and killed a bicyclist in the city of Toronto, Canada last week.  He has been charged with criminal negligence causing death.)

For those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the past week (or aren’t from Ontario, Canada) former Liberal Attorney General Michael Bryant was involved in a fatal accident involving a cyclist in the City of Toronto this week.

Details aren’t crystal clear, but what appears to be clear is that a cyclist was hanging unto the driver’s side door of Bryant’s convertible, when Bryant wiped him off using a mailbox and a few street-signs.  The cyclist inevitably fell off, hit his head and died.

Bryant had a reputation as a ‘hothead’ prior to the incident, causing many people to instantly wonder if this tragedy was a result of a notorious temper.  In any event, the incident, while undeniably tragic for the cyclist, also appears to have done fatal damage to Bryant’s future political ambitions.

My friend, and crisis communications expert Jonathan Bernstein spoke to the Globe and Mail newspaper about reputation repair, and what steps Bryant needs to take in order to move forward from here.