Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

There are rules for how you manage your reputation in a crisis. Terence Fane-Saunders of Chelgate best sums up the most important: be the person telling your story. If you don't tell your story, someone else will.

Carnival, owner of the Costa Concordia, is still generating a great deal of negative coverage a year after the ship capsized. It is not easy to discern who is telling Carnival's story. But there is a story to tell. Unfortunately, Carnvial seems to have fallen out with some of those best able to tell it.

The precise circumstances which caused the accident and the deaths of 32 people are the subject of both civil and criminal trials. But the dominant story in the immediate aftermath of the shipwreck was of the recorded confrontation between the coastguard and the captain. The coastguard became something of a hero, with some Italians declaring he rescued the country's reputation. HIs instruction to the captain "vada a bordo, cazzo" – "get the fuck back on board" became a popular tee-shirt adornment. 

The captain was the most senior representative of the company on the spot, and, as a spokesperson for Carnival he seems tainted. But there were over 1,000 crew, and there are heroic tales to tell. There was another captain on board – the captain of another Carnival cruise liner, travelling as a passenger. Apparently he was involved in organising passengers for evacuation.

And then there is the dancer, Rose Metcalf. Most of the crew and staff were entertainers, with no particular expertise in ship's procedure. Rose found herself marshalling passengers, because no senior crew were available at her muster station. At one point, Rose posted a message to Facebook asking her friends to pray for her. She was one of the last crew to be rescued. She is now an advocate for ship safety. But she doesn't work for Carnival – she is engaged in a legal dispute with the company – she works for a law firm.

Could Carnival not see the potential value of using one its heroes as an advocate for ship safety? Could it not see the reputational damage of being caught up in a legal dispute with her. It does her no harm, of course, that she is photogenic, and a native English speaker. 

This blog must declare a tangential interest. Rose Metcalf was a student of the editor's wife, who teaches choreography and dance technique. But it seems obvious to this, only slightly biased, observer, that Carnival should be telling its story via the people who behaved well on the night the ship went down, not via those who behaved badly. 

There are principles of crisis management, Carnival: vada a bordo, cazzo.