There have been so many baffling, befuddling, bewildering blunders in the comms world over the past few weeks that picking just one to write about was a bit like asking Elon Musk to tone down his “hardcoreness”: It’s impossible. So, in the interest of timeliness, I decided to tackle all of them.
Join me on this helter-skelter ride visiting the world’s biggest sports tournament, the country’s worst-run NFL franchise and the worst week Twitter has ever seen.
The World Cup: The beautiful game in a petrostate plutocracy
The World Cup is supposed to be the pinnacle of global sporting events, a month-long tournament that celebrates the beautiful game and drives literally billions of people into a frenzy as their national teams chase immortal glory.
The stories are there to make Americans fall in love with the World Cup again—buoyed by an incredibly young and talented crop of players making their names in the best leagues across Europe, not to mention it will be the U.S.’s first appearance in eight years after failing to qualify in 2018.
The World Cup is supposed to be FUN. Instead, there’s a cloud hanging over it as black as diesel fuel.
That’s because Qatar’s 12-year journey to hosting the first World Cup in the Middle East has been…the absolute worst.
You can pick your reason why. There are plenty of them.
There are the accusations of corruption and backroom geopolitical deals between Qatar, FIFA officials and world leaders that led to its selection as host country (and triggered a DOJ investigation and subsequent indictment of more than a dozen FIFA officials in 2015).
There are the thousands of migrant workers who died building the stadiums and infrastructure in the Persian Gulf peninsula—along with a number of other human rights abuses that FIFA has conveniently overlooked for more than a decade.
There are its laws against homosexuality, which include punishments like torture and conversation therapy, that have deterred thousands of LGBTQ+ fans from attending.
There was Qatar’s ambiguous promise to make the World Cup carbon-neutral, the irony of which should be lost on no one given how it paid for more than $200 billion worth of new infrastructure with a weekly tab of about $500 million.
There are its strict laws against alcohol consumption that, as recently as two days before the first World Cup game, saw Budweiser, the King of Beers, get booted out of its own $75 million castle and into a back alley in Doha in the interest of “discretion” (a move that will likely cost FIFA tens of millions of dollars for breach of contract).
Qatar’s culture is fundamentally different—and vastly more conservative—than just about every other World Cup location in decades. That could’ve been fine, at least in theory. Global sporting events are meant to showcase the cultures of their host nations. It’s also true that players and fans from participating countries have traditionally been given the freedom to express their own culture as long as they’re respectful of local customs. It’s a rarity that these two ideas are as mutually exclusive as they appear to be in Qatar.
The bottom line is that there are simply too many discriminative laws—and too many people who have died to make this event happen (for the record, too many is any number greater than zero)—for me to get on board.
This is, of course, not the first time a country has bribed FIFA to host a World Cup in the interest of furthering its own image. Argentina hosted in 1978 to distract from fascist dictator Jorge Rafael Videla’s bloody junta. South Africa allegedly bribed officials to host in 2010, not even two decades removed from apartheid. Russia did it in 2018 amidst the country’s human rights abuses in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, illegal annexation of Crimea, the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, a series of state-run doping scandals and numerous other offenses that should have disqualified it from hosting a grade-school football tournament, let alone the World Cup.
Sportswashing is an exercise in reputation management, which means that perception—and convincing people to ignore glaring problems in favor of watching their heroes kick balls into goals—is everything. It’s deception, plain and simple. But it’s hard to deceive people whose eyes are wide open.
This is why, in Qatar’s case, I think spending more than $200 billion to change people’s perception wasn’t nearly enough budget. Because—as we’ve seen—no amount of money can change laws that people don’t want changed, and it certainly can’t resurrect the thousands of workers who had their visas stripped from them when they entered the country, and who later died in the name of a corrupt country hosting a corrupt event run by the most corrupt governing body in sports.
I hope, for their sake, that this World Cup is a commercial and reputational failure. It already has been for FIFA. Qatar—which became the first host country in the history of the World Cup to lose its opening game (and which saw thousands of fans leaving the stadium early in droves)—deserves a similar fate.
The Washington Commanders: From worse to worst
As a general rule, it’s a bad sign when a brand is forced to make a statement that comments on a statement it literally just made.
But “bad” has become synonymous with the Washington Commanders in more ways than one. Their abysmal on-field performance of 67-94-1 over the last decade, and the team’s 17-year playoff win drought, have made Washington a bit of a running joke among NFL fans. There are other bad football teams in the world—but none as poorly run from top to bottom as the Commanders.
Here’s my attempt at a quick summary of what makes this franchise one of the worst in American sports (and to be clear again, it has everything to do with owner Dan Snyder and nothing at all to do with the team or its fans):
Resisted a mascot/name change for years despite pretty much everyone recognizing how offensive its previous name was to Native Americans.
Accused by more than 40 employees of fostering a culture of sexual harassment, with Dan Snyder being individually named in a sexual assault claim that dates back to 2009.
Accused of withholding season ticket holders’ security deposits to boost its own coffers.
Multiple sewage leaks at its stadium covering fans in feces.
And, most recently, an ad hominem attack against D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine that used a shooting victim (Commanders running back Brian Robinson) to justify frustrations with ongoing investigations into Snyder being the absolute worst.
I’m betting that, as you read that last bullet, you performed a brief self-sanity check to make sure you read it right.
Well, I’m here to say you did read it right, and you’re not the one who’s losing a few marbles.
It’s a statement that has to be seen to be believed. Here it is in all its stupidity—and keep in mind that this statement was issued in response to a completely unrelated announcement Racine had scheduled to update the media on the status of his investigations into the Commanders’ workplace and financial practices:
“Less than three months ago, a 23-year-old player on our team was shot multiple times, in broad daylight. Despite the out-of-control violent crime in DC, today the Washington Commanders learned for the first time on Twitter that the D.C. Attorney General will be holding a news conference to ‘make a major announcement’ related to the organization tomorrow.
It is unfortunate that, in his final days in office, Mr. Racine appears more interested in making splashy headlines, based on offbeat legal theories, rather than doing the hard work of making the streets safe for our citizens, including bringing to justice the people who shot one of our players.”
Media and fan backlash was so intense that, within hours, Washington released a second statement blaming its own lawyers for issuing the first statement. That one reads, in part:
“The lawyers’ legitimate frustrations with the AG should have been separate and apart from referencing the terrible crime that affected our player.”
I would say “No s***,” but clearly that isn’t true either.
It doesn’t take a genius or a communications expert to see the problem here, though it’s clear to me now that Snyder has neither a genius nor a communications expert on staff to tell him just how stupid this statement was.
It’s also clear that he doesn’t want any help in repairing his team’s brand, and instead may actively be looking for people to help destroy it even faster. Though I keep thinking to myself that it can’t get any worse, there is clearly still plenty of opportunity for Washington to make its own bed in the sewer, which coincidentally and all too conveniently may also be its own stadium.
How Elon Musk killed Twitter in less than a week
At this point, I’m legitimately wondering if Elon woke up a couple of weeks ago and wondered to himself, “How fast can I waste $44 billion?”
Even if he didn’t, we’re discovering the answer to that question in real time.
The controversies gripping the now-private social media platform have run rampant these past couple of weeks, headlined until recently by the verified blue check fiasco.
Well, ole Elon has truly outdone himself, even by his lofty standards.
He started with laying off about half of Twitter’s nearly 8,000 staff. Layoffs following an acquisition are neither new nor surprising, but what followed makes Twitter’s potential downfall even more remarkable.
Last week, Musk issued an internal memo to the remainder of Twitter’s staff, offering a few non-negotiable ultimatums:
- Get on board with “an extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0 or get out.
- Staying with the company means you agree to “long hours at high intensity.” Only “exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
- Remote work does not exist at the new hardcore Twitter. Remote work is for softies.
Anyone who accepted these conditions unconditionally was to click a link in the email by the following day or leave with three months’ severance pay.
Well, it turns out that Twitter was indeed full of “softies” who didn’t like receiving ultimatums from their new boss. According to some reports, hundreds (if not thousands) of Twitter employees have been more than happy to take the severance pay and ensure the door doesn’t hit their “soft” behinds on the way out the door.
Hours ahead of the self-imposed deadline, however, Musk and his crack team of non-communicators (I don’t say that sarcastically, either, the entire communications staff is no longer at the company due to resignations or layoffs) grew concerned at the stark lack of people willing to accept his hardcore demands. So it turns out that at least one of his conditions was indeed negotiable, as he issued a second memo saying that, actually, employees could work remotely, but that their managers would be fired if remote employees didn’t meet performance expectations. He also has begun making the rounds among remaining staff to convince people to stay, pitching many key employees on his vision for the platform.
There are plenty of fairly self-evident internal communications lessons here for everyone, but I think it’s worth listing them:
Employee ultimatums are categorically a very bad idea.
Taking a confrontational tone with employees practically ensures confrontation.
If you’re taking a new leadership role, communicate your vision before you begin issuing expectations, not after.
Don’t use words like “hardcore” in any comms, ever.
