Just a couple of hours ago, the giant Ever Given container ship was freed from its ‘stuck’ position in the Suez canal. As ever, there are comms lessons aplenty here…
by Katrina Marshall
In a 150 year old water way in Egypt, there is a rather large vessel stuck in a rather narrow canal.
At the time of writing, the story of the container vessel the Ever Given getting stuck diagonally in the Suez Canal has crept like a fungus from bottom to the top of the news cycle.
Perhaps more telling is that by now the efforts to free the mammoth grounded vessel has made its way to the world of viral memes. That’s when you know you’re relevant honey *snaps fingers*
And while they may be good for a giggle, this maritime equivalent of a car broken down at a tricky intersection has flung global trade into unthinkable chaos.
Small error in a major pipeline with huge implications that no one considered before? Sounds like some aspects of comms to me!
Let’s break it down.
Positioning
The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. On average over $9 billion worth of goods pass through that waterway every day. At the moment, that’s not happening. Stuck either side of the bottleneck are 300 cargo ships and numerous tug boats desperately trying to shift the impacted sand from around the wedged ship to set it afloat again. The impact of this halt in movement through the narrowest part of the Suez Canal has untold implications for international trade, the price of oil and no doubt international diplomacy.
Without the touch of the dramatic, comms is a little like that. It is at once the vessel through which messages are traded and measured and at the same time, the connective tissue between client & agency or management and employees. Yet, much like this obscure but important story, we don’t think of the ubiquitous nature of comms until we are in a crisis. When the communications function of an organization breaks down or has a point of congestion, the effects and its implications spread further and more quickly than one would think. No crisis has elevated the importance of the communications function than the one we are still living through: the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Not So) Obvious questions
Like you, I scrolled right past this story at first because, ignorant about such logistics, I simply assumed it would blow over. I mean, the Suez Canal has ferried oil and gas shipments to Europe and the Middle East for over 150 years. The Ever Given ran aground due to high winds and a sandstorm. Surely not the first time this type of weather has hit the Canal in all that time?
So what do you mean they don’t have a solution for this? *sucks teeth in Bajan*
But again, as comms professionals we’ve seen major damage done to an organization’s operations, service delivery pipelines and reputations because someone somewhere didn’t do something seemingly small and obvious. Or, because something had never happened before, no thought had been put into planning for it in case it did. Case in point, large companies who announce major staff changes and the employees are the last to know. Or planning Christmas messaging and activities for staff and no one thinks to ask the atheists, Muslims or Chinese people on staff. Those who do not observe the holidays or whose holidays do not align with the Gregorian Calendar. We can all remember narrowly avoiding spitting a mouth full of cereal onto our phone while we scroll through the article over breakfast and splurt: ‘what were they thinking?’ Worse yet, comms is then dragged in to be the reputational clean-up crew as the crisis is as yet unfolding. Meanwhile following the anatomy of a crisis, divergent bits of information are leaking out like water from a colander and each hole is impossible to plug.
Too many cooks? Or is it many hands make light work?
As the weekend progressed companies from all over the world worked feverishly to reroute incoming vessels; experts have speculated on the various methods to move the vessel and still other experts have suggested what the real time cost of this break in the shipping process will be. Tug boats have managed to nudge the super vessel while other bits of machinery are attempting to shift the sand around her hull so she can float to freedom again. More logistical issues arise with the Ever Given because even if removing some of the containers were to be employed, it would be a delicate calculation of which ones to move and how so that it doesn’t crack under its own weight.
Much like comms, when there is a crisis, suddenly everyone and their dog has an opinion on how we can “do some comms” around it and magically it will smooth over the public discussion around the topic. It is further presumed that the comms itself will solve the root problem. If you’ve spent longer than a tea break in any major news room or comms team you’ll know it is far more complicated than that.
It is a question of deploying the right tools, activating the right personnel and knowing who to say what to and how. All the while commentary around how each “cell” works and is interconnected must be carefully managed where some information is withheld and some widely shared. No situation demonstrated that precarious game of informational chess more than the time I spent on various cells managing the fallout of COVID-19 outbreaks in care homes in the West Midlands.
So on one hand yes, collaboration is key and, if handled well can indeed make light work of the situation. On the other, too many conflicting or extraneous contributions (especially those advancing their own private agendas) can make already choppy waters even murkier.
So what now
For now, speculation continues as to whether the removal effort will be over in days or weeks. Conservative estimates suggest the latter. What is clear however is that there will be a lot of learning from this situation and not just logistically. It is an opportunity for experts to review the capabilities of the tugs and other rescue craft; the possibility of another sandstorm of that magnitude and where collaboration worked and where it was a hindrance.
Similarly, there will be reams of reports on COVID-19 for years to come on how the perception of the utility of entire communications industry pivoted to being at the top tier of strategic management functions. From managing public confidence, addressing nuanced concerns of conflicting interest groups, to reading the public sentiment and adapting to suit. But the opportunity for lessons learned goes far further. Much like the pandemic, the situation with the Ever Given presents an opportunity to reimagine the way we think about communicating in a crisis altogether.
Rebecca Zeitlin is the head of communications and external affairs at Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd has constructed a most elegant consideration which, with her permission, I have included here:
“It's been a long time since I've seen such a perfect example of how sensitive the system is. Most of us buy our cars and our sneakers and our TVs and never think of the weeks of complexity that came before that moment. But when it goes wrong, we feel it.
Whatever the future logistics ecosystem looks like, things have to change to decarbonise how we move stuff around the globe. So why shouldn't we consider new technologies that aren't just evolutions of what we have now? Easy answer: we should.”
Rebecca is in what must be a delicious position of working with a cutting edge company, creating a ground (air?) breaking vessel that, in theory, is pitch perfect for addressing the Suez Canal crisis. What is more however, is that her comments can mirror a similar shift in focus about how we perceive communications overall. How many of us are driven by that which we can measure? On the face of it that is the only way we can prove that what we do makes any difference. But how many of us are now tipping over into being too data driven and losing the humanity of the work we do? How many of us have (pre-covid) retraced our steps to the very source of our campaigns or public outreach messaging to look for areas of innovation? I’m not suggesting for a moment that we don’t all put in some extremely hard graft for often very little thanks.
But, from management to execution to our relationship with processes vs. results; this is a golden opportunity to capitalize on how much the country has realized the value of strategic communications. And how we can tweak certain steps of our pipeline to innovate rather than replicate.
Katrina Marshall is a communications specialist, storyteller and writer. She is currently open to work. Say hello on Twitter at @Kat_Isha
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