Kamasutra - The Art of Getting Global Media Attention

Who knew?
What started out as a silly complaint by an overactive helicopter parent, turned into a global news story overnight. Without even trying, my client was in the news in every country you can name - and some that you can't even pronounce - all for doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing - teaching an approved advanced placement class. There are many different ways I could go with this story - all of which would leave you shaking your head in disbelief, but I'm going to try to remain focused on the moral of the story - which is assess the damage and act accordingly. The second moral, keep your boss or client calm and ride the storm out. Here's the story.

One of my clients is a charter school company that manages schools throughout the state of Florida. Part of the curriculum in the high schools offer advanced placement classes - which are college level classes. These classes are accredited nationally, so the books that are used are used throughout the country in one form or the other in every high school. All of the content is similar. The book in question in this instance contains the offending word - Kamasutra.

Imagine my surprise when I received a call from a news reporter who was contacted by a parent and told that the high school was teaching Kamasutra in class.

Really?!

Man, I wish I had that class!

Guess, what class it is? World History. Oh. Well, let me take that back. I was hoping for health class, but I digress.

I would think that Kamasutra in a class like World History would be referring to the literary work from India written in the 4th century. I was right. One sentence in the entire book states that the Kamasutra was a literary work written in the 4th century that discusses relationships between males and females. That's it. Finito. End of sentence. End of story, right?

Well not according to the above referenced helicopter parents. They contend that having a word like that in the text is wrong because it's teaching the art of sex to 15 year old children. (Won't even blab on about how all 15 year olds know about the art of sex anyway!)

Hmmm. I had a hard time making that connection and here is where I could rail on the ridiculousness of these parents, but I'm not going to do that. I'll stick with the facts - which is something I wish the news reporter would have done, but she chose not to. Another area into which I could delve at great lengths, but I won't.

In a nutshell, even though other media called to check out the story and dismissed it for the nonsense that it was, one television station decided to run with it. They wanted me to get the principal to go on camera and I refused. I told them that the story didn't derserve to get any more credibility and we would simply issue a statement.

The story aired. It led with the complaint of the parents, incorrectly stated that a handful of parents were complaining instead of just the mother and stepfather of one boy, finished with half of the client's prepared statement, showed video of the wrong school and that was it. Right? No - that would be boring.

Two days later, after I had already forgotten the nonsense, I started getting news alerts in my email that Pakistan Times and Uzbekistan News and about 20 other countries that I've come to know as the "stans" all picked up part of the story. Every stan in the world, plus Beijing, Amsterdam, Phillipines and many many other countries, some of which I truly cannot pronounce led with a headline that said, "Kamasutra just a "word" at Florida school."

As I watched the news reports filing into my inbox, I was shocked. The lead sentence was "India's love tome, Kamasutra has caused a huge stir in Florida where one school has chosen to teach it as a vocabulary word."

Um, no it didn't. This was the complaint of one parent - no huge stir. The book - or a similar book with the same word - is used in all high schools that teach advanced placement classes. I was beginning to think that this was going to cause an international incident. What if the Kamasutra is as important to the Hindus as the Bible is to Christians. How would people react to what sounded like a major diss to an important literary work. OH BOY.

Well - had to kick into crisis mode, but took a step back and analyzed the situation. First, the name of the school is rather generic and therefore unrecognizable outside of the immediate geographic area. The article that was picked up on the newswire did not include the name of the management company. No other local news stations reported on the situation. So what does that leave us with?

1. No one knows who the school is outside of the local area, so in reality, it's not important that the name is out there.
2. The global news story will not be seen by local people near the school, so enrollment will not be affected.
3. The corporate identity was safe.
4. The story ended up sounding like the school did what it was supposed to do and the parents were a little wacko.

The net result - this wasn't really going to affect the school or its management company at all. Now I just had to convince the president of the company that it really wasn't a big deal. I gave him my synopsis and my recommendation that we do nothing - just let it pass. After I explained my thought process, he agreed. But then, I started to second-guess myself. As more "stans" came in and I heard that CNN and FoxNews picked it up, I wondered if I should do something more proactive.

Utilizing facebook, I contacted several PR pros who I admire greatly, laid out the situation and received feedback in a really cool forum. I was able to gather some of the best minds in the business in a single place where everyone could see each other's comments (It was in the private inbox - not on the wall) and respond with their opinions. Here's the net result of the plan:

1. Prepare a crisis communication plan to include designated spokesperson and key messages in the event that CNN or Tjekbaianstan News showed up at the school.
2. Contact the news director and explain the situation - requesting that the story be removed from the Website since there were inaccuracies in the story and misleading content.
3. Sit back and wait for the storm to pass, continually monitoring to make sure no collateral damage would occur.

Although that sounds like shutting the barn door after the horse has escaped, I realized quickly that there was no way to get in front of the tidal wave of news. I could only pick up the pieces of what was left behind. I wanted to make sure that anyone who goes to the news site in the future doesn't stumble across the story or be able to search it.

I have to say that it is both thrilling and scary to see how quickly news gets disseminated these days. I also learned an important lesson. No matter how minor an error is in a news report - tell the news director or editor. Make sure it is a true error - not just an annoying spin. I never complained to the news director that the fact that the parents said sex was being taught in the classrooms was untrue. It was true that the parents said that. Sex wasn't being taught in World History, but it was true that the parents said that. What I called to task was the incorrect comment about a handful of parents and the wrong video. Those were true errors. The one word that helped this go global - other than Kamasutra - was handful. Imagine how ridiculous the story would have sounded if it was accurate. "One student's parents are outraged that a word in a nationally accredited book that is used in hundreds of thousands of books across the United States is offensive to them personally."

Looking back, I wish I would have contacted the news director sooner and had the error fixed then. I never in a million years would have imagined that the news would go global. I figured that I would just let it go and choose another more significant battle. We live, we learn.

One more tip for all of you PR pros out there - if you want to get the media to cover your groundbreaking ceremonies in the future, offer a complimentary copy of the World History Advanced Placement Book as a prize for the first to arrive. I figure that if this book causes this much of a stir, it must be a pretty darn good book!