Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Shaheen Samavati and Leigh Down, on how a better social media crisis communication strategy could have affected the Silicon Valley Bank collapse:

Shaheen Samavati 0:00
Hi, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I’m Shaheen Samavati, co host of the content mix podcast brought to you by multilingual content marketing agency bear content. Today’s episode focuses on some recent events, Silicon Valley Bank and infamously failed in March and what might have been the first ever social media fueled bank run. According to one theory, it can be traced back to an email newsletter and accompanying tweet and the Twitter reaction that followed the frenzy led investors and depositors to attempt to pull out a staggering $42 billion from the bank in a single day. Today, I’m joined by our special guests leadout, CEO of strategic marketing agency 48 West to talk about exactly what happened and how a social media focused crisis communication strategy might have helped prevent such an adverse outcome for the bank. Welcome to the show, Lee. Thank you. It’s

Unknown Speaker 0:46
a pleasure to be here. It’s great to have

Shaheen Samavati 0:48
you. Lee has extensive experience with strategic PR and marketing, having started her career in government communications, and then rose the ranks in Markham roles at Fortune 100 companies, including Intel and Honeywell, she founded Phoenix, Arizona based 48 West in 2011, where she took on several clients in the cybersecurity industry. She was recently honored at the 2023 cybersecurity Excellence Awards, receiving the marketer of the year and podcast of the Year awards as host of the humans in tech podcast. Lee is a change agent focus on what’s next, seeking out new ideas and leading efforts to accelerate growth, build new business and increase brand value. So I’m really interested to hear her perspective on the PR challenges currently facing the banking industry, as well as the changing world of crisis communications in general. So, again, welcome to the to the show. So let’s just get straight into it. Can you give us some background a bit on on the situation with Silicon Valley Bank? And what role social media played there? What led to this bank run?

Unknown Speaker 1:47
Definitely, well, you know, people in Silicon Valley in general, you know, have their mobile devices surgically implanted into their hands. And so it’s really interesting the way this all went down the bank, you know, some of the panic started with the newsletter, the diff, which is an email newsletter, so when they crunch those numbers on SVPs financial situation, and then put that out there, that’s one of the things that really, you know, started the frenzy. And you’re correct. It is been documented as the first social media bank.

Shaheen Samavati 2:24
to occur. Yeah. So it’s crazy that the velocity, the velocity, that everything happened, and like we said, the 42 billion being taken out of the attempted to be taken out of the bank in in a single day. I think it must be unprecedented. And, yeah, I mean, I wanted to, I mean, there’s so many questions, I guess, to ask you, but yeah, sorry, good.

Unknown Speaker 2:49
Well, ya know, so I was gonna say that, a couple a couple things that the bank did right away, that probably made sense to them. And it, I don’t think that they were necessarily not good steps to take, I just think the execution probably could have been better. So, you know, when you’re, when you have a crisis or brewing crisis, you know, you have options, right. And one of those options is just to address it head on, which is what I think they tried to do it first, maybe not on social media, but they, they had a press release, but their press release, I think it’s like a 465 word press release that did not want to mention why they were offering, you know, like a billion plus in common stock, or, you know, what it was trying to accomplish by selling 21 billion of securities at a loss. So if you’re an investor, right, you read that release, and it’s telling you what they’re doing, but it’s not really telling you why, right? So the first thing, if you’re, you know, if you’re concerned, the next thing that you would do is you would go look at their investor presentation, which they did have, but it’s, it’s like 30, something pages, it’s really densely packed, you have to dig through it to figure out the why, and the why is in that presentation, but you really had to go look for it. So while they were slow to react on social media to what was happening, they also didn’t make it easy to, you know, to understand what was happening through their other communications channels.

Shaheen Samavati 4:17
And I guess those communications that they did put out were really targeted at investors and in kind of, like, investor speak, it sounds

Unknown Speaker 4:25
like yes, definitely. Definitely. And that that kind of goes into, you know, some of the other things that like, you know, you really want to in a crisis, speak very clearly to your target audience and in terms and, and in ways that they can really, you know, not only consume but like really understand what’s going on and, and give them a sense of peace.

Shaheen Samavati 4:52
Yeah, I mean, probably even for investors, it would have made sense to like, simplify the message more. But then they probably it sounds like they didn’t take into account other stakeholders that were that needed to be communicated with? Because it was maybe not only what investors thought but that, but obviously depositors as well. Right. Which is a much broader group of people? Well, I mean, what do you think would have been the right way to go about things? Like what would have been the right way to communicate here?

Unknown Speaker 5:23
Well, one of the things that they could have done that wasn’t included in the press release or in the investor presentation, but could have easily been shared and social media and other outlets is have a really solid set of FAQs. They did a corresponding zoom call, that also didn’t go very well. And that Zoom call had no question and answer period, nor were there any FAQs published afterwards. So FAQs should always be included in crisis communications, whether they’re just for internal use, to, you know, anticipate questions that you will get, and have leaders have the right talk points around answering them, or FAQs for your audience that you know, are going to address, you know, the things that they’re concerned about.

Shaheen Samavati 6:13
And so this zoom call was for investors.

Unknown Speaker 6:17
Yeah, and so they, their their CEO, had a zoom call. And, you know, it, it just it wasn’t as dialed in, as it probably should have been, the talk points weren’t as clear as they probably should have been more they weren’t followed, right, you never know. And, in any of those instances, whether it’s, you know, the press released a presentation, a, you know, a video presentation, you know, being interviewed by someone, you really want that person to have a sense of a commanding presence, and, and to really impart on the audience that they, you know, have a command of the situation. And so in that Zoom call, I know, it sounds like the majority of the people who participate in that Zoom call, we’re not left with a sense that, you know, the CEO had a command of the situation.

Shaheen Samavati 7:11
I see. And then when it comes to like, social community social media communication. I actually, I was like, trying to find, like, their account and what they said, but I think it might have been taken down or at least temporarily when I was searching, because I could only find an SV be SBB Twitter account for the UK? Which had? Yeah, so So I don’t know, if you saw anything that they posted on Twitter at the time, like what their response was? Because obviously, a lot was being said on Twitter, were they participating in the conversation at all? And should they have?

Unknown Speaker 7:49
My understanding is that they were very quiet on social media and, and not participating in the conversation. And that that’s a challenge, right? You have Twitter especially is very prone to rumors and things like that, you know, they could have reached out to Twitter and, you know, asked for some kind of support in, you know, curbing rumors, you know, fact, you know, not necessarily fact checking, but at least putting a notification on posts to encourage people to check their own, you know, fax, and I don’t think I don’t think that was done. So they were very quiet. And I guess I’m not surprised that it would be taken down since they’ve been taken over by the FDIC. Perhaps that was the transition part of that transition. But it’s, it’s, I’m sure they had to within monitoring social media for what was being said, but it’s not obvious on externally what they did with that information.

Shaheen Samavati 8:52
And, well, like financial institutions, typically are quite tight lipped on social platforms. And I think that, that used to be considered a best practice it maybe it’s not anymore, can you? Can you tell us why that was? And like, did it ever work to just be quiet on social media?

Unknown Speaker 9:10
Yeah, I mean, it’s a good practice for any company that is, you know, has such a high fiduciary responsibility, right? It’s, it’s a good practice. You know, social media feeds in that case should be used for more promotional type of activity rather than business conversation. And, you know, speaking more to the consumer of bank products, as opposed to, you know, talking about the inner workings and operability of a financial institution would always be best practice but in in a crisis, you know, social media can be your best friend or your worst enemy, right? It’s, it’s a it’s an easy it’s an easy and fast way to get facts out the door. But It’s, it’s also a place where, you know, people can take things and distort them and, and, you know, put them into sort of that disinformation category very quickly as well. And so once you step it, one of the reasons why institutions like this don’t spend a lot of time and effort on that or choose to stay very quiet is because they know that things that things like this can be twisted and distorted when they even when they do, you know, their best effort to get the facts out the door. But I do think in this case, you know, they had a public press release, they had a public presentation, they had a zoom call, these are assets that they had, that they could have probably shared through their social media platforms as well.

Shaheen Samavati 10:48
Yeah, I mean, my understanding was that they made some, like, very, like, made a couple of statements on social media, but, um, but didn’t do much to like engage with users. I guess that is, that is a fine line to follow, like in terms of, can I mean, when you are dealing with such sensitive information, and it does need to go through the proper regulatory channels? Like, how can you also, like, make sure that you’re, that you seem transparent? And are like, is there an appropriate way to interact with with people on on these platforms? Or is that a matter of just using it as a way to, to put out a statement, which is what I’ve typically seen from institutions?

Unknown Speaker 11:36
Yeah, again, I think that it’s totally appropriate to engage in interact with customers of the bank, when you’re talking about, hey, we have this and maybe new loan program, or, you know, we support small businesses. You know, we we want to I mean, they’re a really interesting bank, right? They’ve always been known for being very important to the entrepreneurial community, and supporting startups and organizations and phases that maybe other banks would not. And so, you know, they, they’re, they’re kind of one was the people bank in the first place. And so I think that part of their brand, is why one of the reasons why people were so surprised that, you know, that they, they weren’t very communicative. Whereas, like, if you told me like, Wells Fargo or Bank of America was silent on these things. I’d be like, Yeah, that sounds right. You know, just because their brand is not to be out there evangelizing, you know, themselves. Whereas Silicon Valley Bank sort of has a very different brand than other banks.

Shaheen Samavati 12:43
Yeah. But it’s kind of like a catch 22. Because it’s like, in order to not say the wrong thing. There’s so many, like levels of approval that need to happen for these for to be able to comment on the financial situation of the bank. Right. But then, on the other hand, that slows things down. And just the the lack of speed itself, has the impact on the perception and can actually like, yeah, have the adverse effect, like the opposite effect of what it’s supposed to, if that makes sense.

Unknown Speaker 13:16
And they didn’t do we I looked it up. They they did delete their Twitter page, it was SVB, underscore financial, and the account no longer exists.

Shaheen Samavati 13:25
I couldn’t find it.

Unknown Speaker 13:30
Yeah, I don’t know the reasons behind that. It could just like I said, it could be that, you know, it doesn’t really exist anymore. Now that it’s taken over by the FDIC, so why have it in first place? That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if it were me, I, you know, working with them, I would, you know, encourage, I would have probably encouraged them, like I said, to, to use the very vetted assets that they had, that they were comfortable with communicating to the investor community, and then take those maybe change the language a little bit, so not and make it easier to get the information that you’d be looking for as a customer of the bank, or maybe offer through social media. Here’s how you can ask your questions like go here, fill this out, call this, you know, call your uncle, whoever. But given given consumers instructions, to keep them from panicking, like that, again, give you the sense that there’s a command of the situation. And we’re going to guide you through what’s going on and and you know, be responsible to you the consumer. So that’s a great way to use your social media, to guide people, people towards what the solution is or what the resolution is,

Shaheen Samavati 14:47
or how to get one. Yeah, that’s a great point. I know like it. These all sound like excellent, like it’s excellent advice, but how do you do it fast enough that That’s my big question, because in the case of SVP, all this stuff happened in the course of a day. So how, what kind of team do you need to have in place? What kind of processes do you need to, like, be ready for this when something like this happens? Well,

Unknown Speaker 15:14
a couple of things. One, you absolutely have to know that you have a plan for all of this before anything ever happens. You must have a crisis communications plan very similar to you. Companies have disaster and recovery plans, you know, they they spent a lot of most companies spend a lot of time on on disaster and recovery plans, and maybe not as much time on a communications crisis, but at the speed of social media. You know, that’s, that’s really a very risky move. And in order to have a plan like that, you need to have a really quality, trusted counsel that has a seat at the table. from a communication standpoint, you know, somebody who is not afraid to ask tough questions, or give unpopular pushback or play devil’s advocate, you know, really debate with you through the scenarios that could possibly happen. So that you have a really well well vetted plan. And the person also needs to be able to that trusted advisor also needs to be able to translate into very plain language, you know, what, what you’re saying, the kinds of teams that that you really need to have, you must have teams that understand your audience. In Silicon Valley Banks case, one of the things that I find very interesting is the way that they chose to communicate, they seem to believe because they, because they are that kind of bank, and they do have a different brand. And they’ve tried to create this sense of community amongst, you know, entrepreneurs and VCs, etc. They seem to believe that people should be loyal to the bank, like a lot of the language, if you go back and look at a lot of their language, they it was almost like they were in employing, you know, their customers, well, aren’t you loyal to us. And I think that was a big misstep. I don’t think that, that they really understood their audience that they believed that their audience would be that loyal to them when it comes to their money. I also think that you need a team that really understands all tech executives, like I said, especially in the Silicon Valley area, I mean, you’ve got your mobile phone surgically implanted into your hand. And so you know, you have to be able to monitor social media, you have to be able to really pay attention to the alerts that are coming in. And you already have to have a plan in place on what to do about it. And, and, you know, it’s the speed of mobile, right? It’s not even people sitting at their desktop, and it’s majority of the stuff gets spread by people on their phone. And so really having teams that understand the speed of mobile, understand how to have a solid plan and put it in place in the beginning, you know, before anything happens, and then people who really understand your audience. And so that’s why it’s not enough to earlier, when you and I were talking, I had mentioned to you that you rarely are going to call a crisis communications company, ask while you’re in the crisis. And that’s because like, if somebody were to call me that’s not somebody that I currently work with, during a crisis, when it’s happening. It would have to be, I would have to understand their business, and their audience and their customers, right to do a really exceptional job for them. So when you’re looking for the kind of people, they don’t necessarily have to be on your staff. But they do need to be a relationship that you’ve cultivated, so that when the time does come to activate, you know, they’re ready, and they know what they need to do. Yeah.

Shaheen Samavati 18:53
Yeah, it sounds like, if you’re just thinking about who’s going to handle your crisis communications after the crisis is happening, it’s a bit too late.

Unknown Speaker 19:01
Well, I’ll give you another example of, you know, it’s not a banking example. But do you remember over the Christmas holidays, do you remember Southwest Airlines and all the trouble that they were having? Okay, well, shortly after, like it, it wasn’t even. It wasn’t in response to this. It was just unfortunate circumstances. They had a bit of a meltdown, right? With scheduling of their aircraft, they had a lot of canceled flights, people stuck, you know, places for days and days. And just as part of the normal HR routine, they’ve posted a job that was already in the queue to be posted for like a PR crisis communications manager. And they posted on social media and it blew up, you know, all these people commenting on you know, oh, now you’re gonna try to hire like a crisis communications person to you know, get out there and solve these things. And that wasn’t the case. That’s not what happened but But, but that’s the appearance it gave, right? So it sort of like reignited the whole conversation again, instead of like it was starting to, like not be talked about. And then they posted that job and it just blew up all over again. So I mean, there’s a lot of God’s using social media, right. And so the other thing on teams that you absolutely have to have, and I think people don’t give social media managers enough credit. You have to be a critical thinker, you have to be able to see around corners. You know, if I post this, what’s the good and bad directions it could go in. And also have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the world. There are things that you could share that are completely innocuous, but then something’s going on somewhere else in the world that it seems insensitive, or it seems like you’re capitalizing on someone else’s misfortune. You have to be able to see around corners and also understand what’s going on, you know, the pulse of things, whether it’s pop culture, the news cycle, or whatever. And I don’t think people give social media managers enough credit for having those skills just to do their job every day. Now, when you’re talking about a crisis? Well, then, you know, I don’t believe that social media managers should be crisis managers, but but they definitely are a good resource for you to avoid a social media crisis.

Shaheen Samavati 21:29
Yeah, this actually gets to another question I wanted to ask you. Because like, when I started my career, corporate communications, or PR was totally separate from marketing. And now I think those things are melding together. And now this role of social media manager, it used to be something that was an afterthought, and you you got an entry level person to do it. And now, it’s a super strategic role in the company. And so so my question is, which area should be responsible for? For social media? Or what do you think is like the optimal structure in a corporation in terms of like, yeah, who handles Social Media Communications?

Unknown Speaker 22:05
Well, when it comes to the crisis, part of it, I don’t think that a social department should be responsible for the crisis. I think that investor relations and crisis communications are their own professions and disciplines. Where execution is mission critical. However, social, like I said, social media managers are the people who best understand who your social audiences, they probably can consult with those people on understanding, like I said, how things get sometimes twisted on social media, and how to avoid that. And so they should definitely have a voice in the process of how the information gets disseminated, as opposed to putting the strategy together.

Shaheen Samavati 22:54
And they also might have a role in terms of noticing when something starts to trend on social media, right, or the monitoring of social media.

Unknown Speaker 23:01
I mean, they’re definitely your first line of defense on that, right. They’re the ones who are going to see the trends and the triggers and things like that. And there should be something in place that they that is part of that communications plan, that says, hey, you know, if you say something like this, and we need to, you know, rally the troops and think about what we’re gonna do about.

Shaheen Samavati 23:25
But, well, in my, in my agency, we, we do content marketing, and social media marketing, so but on the on more of the marketing side of things, so like what you were talking about, in the beginning, like the things that are kind of safe to talk about in social media? And is the tip the type of content that we generally deal with, but I think, but since we are the ones managing the channels, when there is something more sensitive, it’s something that we have to like, collaborate with their management team or with their communications departments to, to, to navigate how to how to respond and manage those conversations. But yeah, it’s interesting, though, how, how that’s kind of evolved and how marketers now are involved also in in the communication, the strategic communication, because so much of it is mixed up.

Unknown Speaker 24:13
Brass? Yeah. Well, you just want the consistency, right. It’s all about brand consistency. And if you’re not, you know, you have multiple communicators throughout organizations, right. And if they’re not all on the same page, especially in a crisis, right, that’s why I said FAQs and talk points are really important part of your crisis plan. And, and making sure that your social media team, your marketing team, your executives, anybody who communicates externally understands those FAQs and the talk points.

Shaheen Samavati 24:46
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, obviously, the big changes like the internet and the fact that companies are creating so much of their own content now rather than relying on media outlets, so it’s not just about PR and like dealing with those media outlets. It’s about Yeah, about putting out the right message on your own platforms. And that’s something that’s cross functional now between comms and marketing. But anyway, so I guess kind of to wrap up the conversation, I mean, what do you think are the lessons that marketers and communication leaders can learn from, from this whole situation with Silicon Valley Bank? Well, we’re sure

Unknown Speaker 25:27
know who is talking about you, the Deaf email newsletter, they should have really been dialed into that, if they weren’t. So definitely know who’s talking about you monitoring for that. And when it’s trending. The second thing I would say is to be very clear, and concise and easy to understand when you are, you know, communicating the crisis, and give that sense of you have command of the situation. And then three, I would say just, you know, be human and include things like the FAQs and you know, have have a strong spokesperson who does give that command, you know, presents and helps calm the situation and explain it in a rational and easy to understand way. So you can is a communicator, you can write all the right words, but if the vessel, right, that delivers those words, whether it’s a press release a presentation, you know, an executive, any of those things, if it’s not delivered the right way. That’s a big piece of it, too.

Shaheen Samavati 26:34
Hmm. Absolutely. And yeah, it’s yet to be seen, I guess, what’s next in terms of the situation with with other banks? I mean, we already saw Credit Suisse also failed. After right after Silicon Valley Bank. So it’s communications, I guess, can only go so far.

Unknown Speaker 26:57
Yeah, I was watching Squawk Box before I got on with you. And they now have a leaderboard of banks, and which ones are, you know, still questionable, and which ones are getting, you know, doing better. And I was like, that’s got to be really frightening for anyone in the banking industry, especially banks that are smaller, more regional size banks and those sorts of things. You know, just we’ve gone from, you know, one bank, you know, having this this catastrophe, if you will, and then it you know, how it impacts other banks. And in in a week, now, we’ve got a banking leaderboard of which banks, you know, the media thinks will fail or not fail. Yeah. And,

Shaheen Samavati 27:42
I mean, it’s kind of it’s, it’s one thing to like, control the perception towards your company, but when it’s done, it’s actually now the entire market. Right. So yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Unknown Speaker 27:58
So it’s a lot harder now to navigate through, and it’s a lot harder to, you know, control the narrative.

Shaheen Samavati 28:05
Exactly. Yeah. So be interesting to see how it plays out. Well, thank you so much leap for sharing your insights with us today. It was a super interesting conversation. And I learned a lot I know our audience. Sure. I learned a lot as well.

Unknown Speaker 28:18
Oh, thank you. I, you know, usually I’m on the other side of the mic. I’m the one answering asking the question. So this was fun for me.

Shaheen Samavati 28:26
Yeah, you have a podcast as well. And for those who would like to learn more about Lee in 48, West, you can check out her website, it’s 48, West agency.com. You can follow her on Twitter. It’s at li Tao and on LinkedIn, Li Marshall Tao. And like we said, you have a podcast called humans in tech. So definitely check that out. And yeah, that’s all for today. Thanks to everyone for listening in. For more perspectives on global content marketing, be sure to check out Bera content.com/mcs And if you’d like to get in touch with us, or if you have any interesting topic for an upcoming episode, feel free to reach out at MCs at Bayer content.com And keep tuning in to the podcast for more perspectives on topics related to global content marketing. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai