What do you do when a client has angered a large segment of your “customers?” How do you defuse their hostility and get them on your side?

That was the situation a friend of mine encountered many years ago. His client? The President of the United States. The “customers?” The voters, especially college students.

In March 1975, President Ford headed to the University of Notre Dame to deliver a speech on world hunger. A likeable guy, his credibility had been severely hurt when he pardoned former president Richard Nixon, who had resigned as a result of the Watergate scandal. College students were particularly vocal in their opposition to the pardon, and aides were concerned students might demonstrate or otherwise disrupt his speech.

To defuse any potential hostility, Special Assistant to the President Bob Orben (an experienced Hollywood comedy writer) set out to find some Notre Dame insider joke he could use to let the students see Ford as a down-to-earth guy, someone who could understand and connect to the students.

To succeed Orben knew he needed to find out what was on the students’ minds. He began his research by talking with the deans and other faculty. What were the students talking about? What were they laughing about? What were they proud of?

The deans were not much help. Then Orben began calling dormitory hall phones. (Yes, Virginia, there was a time before cell phones, even before phones in each dorm room, when the only dorm phones were pay phones at the end of each hall.) He would talk with whoever answered, asking the same questions he asked the deans.

After several unproductive calls, one student said, “Well, we have the quickie,” and laughed. Later other students mentioned the quickie, and if they didn’t, Orben would mention it to them and they would laugh.

Orben knew he had found what he needed.

The quickie, Orben learned, was a bus some students had procured and used to take groups across the state line where the legal drinking age was lower and booze was cheaper.

Here is how Orben used “the quickie” in Ford’s text. After the standard acknowledgements, thank yous, comments about university president Father Hesburgh, and St. Patrick’s Day (he was speaking on March 17th), Ford says:

As your next-door neighbor from Michigan, I have always been impressed by the outstanding record of the students of the University of Notre Dame. You have always been leaders in academic achievement, in social concerns, in sports prowess, and now once again, you are blazing new paths in the developments of new concepts in mass transportation. Some communities have the monorail; some have the subway; Notre Dame has the quickie.

In print that doesn’t seem particularly funny. But with the Notre Dame audience, it was a blockbuster.It goes from light laughter to hearty laughter, to stomping on the bleachers, to applause and cheering. It lasts for almost 30 seconds! Instantly, Ford was one of them; the students were on his side.

Bob told me the most fun for him during the speech came just as Ford delivered the punch line. Bob looked up where the deans were sitting and saw one dean turn to another and say, “What’s the quickie?”

There are two lessons here for public relations professionals when dealing with a potentially hostile public.

First, get inside the heads of those who are angry. Find out what they are connecting to in a positive way, and then see if there is a legitimate way to connect your client to the same thing.

Second, if you can make the connection with humor, so much the better. As Orben has said, “If you can get someone to laugh with you, they will be more willing to identify with you, listen to you. It parts the waters.”

And to keep up to date with tools and strategies to protect reputation and other high-stake communication situations, I invite you to visit http://www.speaktolead.com

From – Lou Hampton, The QuoteAbility Coach and Reputation Czar

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