Well, good morning, Brian. Morning, John. How are you? I am, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and I am happy. I like to hear that. I like to hear that. It's beautiful out. Yes. The weather is beautiful. And, I think it sets the stage nicely for talking about, things going wrong and crisis. Oh gosh. The theme of today's episode. Yikes. How's that for a kickoff? Yeah. Let's get into it. Let's do it. All right. I don't think there's a bigger corporate crisis we could talk about right now, more than Boeing. Correct.. Yeah. So obviously no stranger to, um, crisis the last couple of years. It really came to a head in January. When one of their planes with Alaska airlines, a Boeing max nine was forced to make an emergency landing after a door plug fell off a few minutes after takeoff. And the images of that were just shocking. Shocking. And everywhere. Yeah, that's the thing with video is that, uh, you know, if that didn't have the accompanying video, uh, it wouldn't probably be anywhere near as much noise as it is. So that incident, sent shockwaves to millions of travelers. sent off a ton of red flags with regulators and, and their partners. And,, Boeing's trust has probably never been lower than it is right now with the public. Like I mentioned this is far from the first issue with a Boeing max plane in the last few years, in 2018 and 2019 in two separate incidents, uh, 346 people died in plane crashes. So there's been a lot of, attention on Boeing, to fix a lot of issues with their planes and this latest incident in January, is not making this go away for them After their, planes were grounded by the FAA. they found the door plug was missing four bolts that fell off and a number of other planes, were showing that bolts were loosened and, not tightened. And, so they've been going through an auditing and inspection process with all their planes. And then, you know, more recently in March, there's been some significant executive changes there as well. One of the things that they've been trying to do is present a series of steps to provide transparency and, and, and show that they're taking some accountability as a company. Mm-Hmm. on their website specifically, you know, they're pushing people to a, a microsite section that, Has all the information on the incident. There's a four minute video of their ceo addressing employees at a team town hall about the importance of safety, importance of getting this moment, right? And how they'll handle it as a company. and they also have a detailed timeline of statements and media clips responding to reports, action plans and other relevant news surrounding this crisis. So they're trying to, to get out there and take accountability for the situation. and not shy away from the public. But, as we all know, it's, an extremely long road for a company like that, if they can ever gain back trust, especially in a situation where people's lives are at stake and, people have died as a result of their actions and, there's been a lot of safety concerns the last few years in general, and this certainly doesn't help that. So John, my question and snap decision for you, or, you know, what are your thoughts on how Boeing has handled this situation? And what is the mindset that needs to be instilled in communication teams and marketers in situations like these? If you're working for that company and you're a marketer or a communications person, when is the, the, when's the timing right to get back to promoting your company? Well, that last part's tricky. The first part about how Boeing handled it, I think they've done some things really well. Yeah, I think it was great. Like you mentioned that they released an internal video, you know, things the CEO is saying to the employee base right after the accident. I think that's, that's great. kind of shows a little bit of transparency. Yes, they took some accountability. I don't feel like they announced a whole lot of concrete steps, like things that they're going to do. And they talked about, you know, how safety needs to become a greater priority, but I don't think they really outlined an action plan quickly. good that the CEO, has stepped down, That's, I think an important step to indicate that you're going to change the culture of the company, because frankly, in the wake of this most recent thing, there's been an increasing, bit of, volume around the idea that perhaps Boeing has sacrificed safety over share price for a bunch of years now. Ironic, because the share price for the past five years has declined. Not done particularly well, so it hasn't worked, but, you know, the CEO and the CEO before him, I believe focused on cost cutting hasn't really led to, great stock results. And at the same time, it seems like safety's taken a big hit. So, yeah, they had to make that big change in terms of when it's good to get back. Look, the trust is huge and it's hard to measure that. I know there are. Trust indices out there. I think there are a few things that have to happen. One, you need to have some very clear,, steps that you've communicated. I think you need to start to see those steps be. Reflected back to you where other people are repeating the steps that you're taking to fix things. so obviously there's, you know, the standard social media monitoring. You do the PR monitoring. 1 thing that struck me was, have you seen the kayak? The travel site and app they had previously had. filter where you could look at your flights and you could filter out types of aircraft. Like if you don't want to fly a, uh, an Airbus or a, a 737 Max, you could, you could select those out. They've moved that up. Since they moved that up higher in the navigation. So have you seen that tool? No, I have not. It's pretty wild. So that will be an indicator to me, like over time, if fewer people are opting out of flying your plane that had an incident, maybe that shows that people have either kind of, you know, regained some trust or forgotten. Frankly, that happens all the time, right? People forget stuff. Yeah. So I think that's, those are the kinds of things they've got to pay attention to. They've got to see that the public is starting to show indicators of buying into whatever the very specific and transparent plan they've put out there is. Yeah. It's a, it's going to be a long road. I did see in the news, recently that, their defense system that they were partnering with Israel on, uh, helped defend against the attack from Iran, which, it doesn't support the commercial airline business, but it does, put some good news in Boeing's hands for the land itself,. So, that is probably something that would make sense to promote, but not, not be a direct hit on the commercial airline business, which would You know, clearly they're nowhere near ready to, you know, be talking about good things that they're doing. I was looking at a bunch of corporate crises, you know, PR issues, over the past 20 years or so. and it is interesting how quickly I've forgotten some of them. Yeah. Uh, I have a, I have a, uh, snap decision lightning round for you. All right. All right. So the question to you, Brian, is which of these two PR crises. Would you have preferred to handle? They're all PR nightmares. Okay. I'm gonna start with a couple that kind of unfolded on YouTube. One, the Comcast technician who fell asleep on a customer's couch while waiting on hold for his own company to answer his phone call. Or the Domino's pizza scandal in 2009 when two employees uploaded a very disturbing video of them tampering with a customer's food. So which of those, which of those would have been a bigger nightmare to handle? I think I'm going with the Comcast on the couch guy. Yeah. I don't want to be thinking about what happened with the pizza dough while I'm eating the product. So wait, you'd rather handle the Comcast ignition guy? Yeah. Okay. You'd rather handle that one. Okay. Yeah. Which one would you rather handle between these two? The BP oil spill in 2010, following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, uh, explosion. Yeah. or the Volkswagen diesel gate emissions scandal in 2015, where VW admitted to, having cheat software in its, in its cars, that led to a really big recall and 4 billion in penalties eventually. Which would you have rather handled? I think I'd rather handle the VW one. the oil one. Yeah. I mean, that was just, you remember like the oil wouldn't stop for like. I didn't fully remember. I knew it was a while, but it poured in for three months to your point. I mean, there was just like, there was no stopping it. And the amount of damage that did to the planet is probably so significant. We can't even think about it, but I would not want to be in or near that one. Yeah, and 11 people died, which I didn't remember that. Oh, I didn't remember that. Yeah, 11 people died. and yeah, the, the, just the images coming out of that just didn't stop for a while. So yeah, I, I'm with you on that one. all right. Would you have rather handled the Samsung Galaxy Note seven battery issues in 2016 where phones just kept catching fire or when United Airlines overbooked a flight and called her in a security guard to drag an elderly doctor off the plane? Ooh. I would probably choose the, the airlines scandal because. It's mostly a singular incident, whereas the phone's blowing up could affect more people. I mean, there's no, there's no Yeah, okay. pick the less, more terrible one. Exactly. Alright, well, speaking of that, all of them, in my mind, pale to a PR crisis that faced, the guest we're going to turn to now. Oh, can't wait.

Alright, so Brian, I am really happy to introduce an old friend, a guy I met when we were serving on a nonprofit board together,

Gordon Ho. Today, he is CEO of a strategy consulting firm, Expertainment, and he also serves as an adjunct professor at both Georgetown and USC, where he teaches marketing, crisis strategy, and product management. We're going to talk to him about that crisis strategy piece a bit. he's worked at and advised for several tech startups. He's also worked for some really big brands, Disney and Princess Cruises. At Disney Studios, he oversaw the 3 billion, billion with a B, direct to video category, including digital and DVD slash Blu ray business. As well as Disney's movie rewards loyalty program. More recently, he was CMO and head of sales at Princess Cruises, where he launched the Discovery at Sea partnership, and the Ocean Medallion launch, which was considered the number one travel Internet of Things wearable device. And the reason we want to talk to him today is he was responsible for one of the most challenging, corporate communications issues I can imagine during the Diamond Princess COVID crisis., Gordon's on the board of, the Coalition of Asian Pacifics and Entertainment and, on the board of the Ronald McDonald House of Southern California. He is super smart, he's really fun, and he is, Brian, one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. Please say hi to Gordon Ho

Well, thank you, John, for that intro. I'm flattered and happy to be here. Well, we are thrilled you're here. Sorry, it was a little long, but you've got a, you've got a long resume, pal. so Brian, I've been talking about, um, corporate crises and how marketers and communicators can prepare themselves and respond when something goes wrong. in particular, we were talking about how Boeing, has been facing an awful lot of struggles recently. There've been, some people have kind of congratulated them for the way they've handled the crisis. Others have come out really strongly against them. How would you suggest Boeing respond to recent events, or how they should respond to what's been going on with them? Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I think you have to go back in history a little bit on Boeing because, you know, this, this all stemmed from a lot of culture. I think has been a big part of it, right? You had Boeing, which was very engineering technology, arguably safety focus. But then with the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. That changed, right? Cause you had a lot of executives at McDonnell Douglas who applied and nothing wrong. I mean the shareholder return affordability, but those principles took over the engineering first type of culture. And I think you hear when you talk to a lot of people at Boeing people in engineering, There is this sense that, hey, I'm afraid to speak up because of retaliation. And you also had this symbolic thing, right? You had Boeing move their headquarters to Chicago away from Seattle where the engineers were. So that's a sentiment of like, okay, what are you prioritizing? And of course, the big thing that happened in 18 and 19 were the two 737 MAX 8 crashes. And one could arguably, they prioritized profits over safety because they did not tell people about the new features that were on the plane. They said, Hey, this is just like the other 737 Max. Just a few things that you don't have to worry about. Well, the fact is you had to worry about it and they didn't. And one of the things they set forth was that there is no new simulator training that is needed. And that drove a lot of what they, I guess narrow minded focus, which of course led to pilots maybe not being exposed to the training and features that they should have been. In this case, where you have this, door plug blowout, one could, I think they're still looking at it, but I think the fact is there could be some of the same thing, which is, In a focus to get out and catch up maybe from some of the lost sails as a result of what happened in '18-19', they may have prioritized schedules and delivery of, jets and planes over the prioritization of safety checks. And the report from the FAA just came out that seemed to say, hey, look at, and this was the, this was the study that started in 20 as a result of the plane crashes, and they concluded. Number one, there is still this fear of retaliation, if you speak up. Number two, the safety procedures change so frequently, it's hard for the people to keep up, so I think there's the conclusion that Boeing has a lot of work to do still, and hopefully they're on that mend. To your question about what they've done to date, the fact that Calhoun, the CEO resigned, I think was an important symbolic gesture that you have new management coming in. If you remember Calhoun was the chairman of the board when the two plane crashes and all the fatalities happened. So that was a lot of people say, wait a minute, that seems like a continuity of management. But now of course he's gone. So I think a lot of the continuity that happened in 18, 19, at least symbolically with Calhoun leaving. That is maybe a change in direction. Let's hope. and we'll see what, what else they recover. and it's hard because you have a duopoly, right? With Boeing and Airbus. And so when Airbus says, Hey, we have a new lighter, faster fuel efficient plane. There is this huge pressure for Boeing to react. That's what happened with the Boeing seven 37 max. And it seems like maybe just maybe that. They went too fast, and you're seeing this ongoing repercussions. Yeah, I think the thing that struck me, in looking at some of the, some of the reporting was exactly one of the things you highlighted, this idea that, When they came out with that new plane, there was a pretty strong insistence from Boeing that pilots didn't need to turn themselves with a new, a new system and do that simulation. And, and, and that's the one that really struck me is like, it seemed like they were trying to just. Sell units and, really not focused on the safety piece. So that's struck out and John, and John specifically to build on that there, one of the biggest customers was Southwest airlines Southwest said, look it, we don't want our pilots to have to go through simulator training. So to make that sale, they committed to it. So that was a customer commitment. And they actually said, if you require additional training, we will pay you. I think it was a million dollars per plane. So that was the discussion throughout Boeing. We are not going to pay that. There is no training even, and that's, and that, that what's happened in blinds you, because that becomes the edict, that's governing your decisions. So, so how do you, as a marketer or, a communications person, how do you handle yourself in a situation like that and, and how do you make a recommendations to leadership teams that clearly have made mistakes? If you don't have a culture of allowing people to speak up, having management that's supportive, right? Instead of managers saying, you're making me look bad. How does it that when you complain, the manager says you're making me look good because you're one of the people that identified something that's hard. And so I think culture is a huge part of what has to, and that takes time and that's set forth by management, their actions. Right. And I think that's what has to happen. Yeah. That culture piece is huge and it is hard. Cause even public company or not, just, you know, a lot of times the CEO is getting a fairly whitewashed version of what's happening in an organization. People, even if the culture is somewhat open to it. People are pretty resistant to give the, the top person, uh, bad news sometimes. And then, and then you maybe say, okay, well, maybe the, maybe you have a chief risk officer or whatever that reports right into the board. Maybe co reports into the board and CEO so that there's an independent board director who can actually have these comfortable conversations, right? Separate from the CEO, right? There's all sorts of things that you can try to do to try to quote unquote, protect the The team that is bringing up issues. Yeah, it has to be real, right? Yeah. So this is where you have more and more companies setting up a separate risk committee on their board to deal with these issues and to have them directly responsible. Chief risk officer is duly reporting or directly reporting into them. There's a number of things that you can do to try to make it easier to have things come out. All right, Gordon, can you take us through the crisis that you and princess cruises faced back in February and March of 2020 when the diamond princess cruise ship was stuck in, I believe Yokohama, Japan with thousands of passengers and crew quarantined due to a very early outbreak of COVID 19. Right. can you kind of take us through that? Yeah. And then obviously it's, there's a, there's many elements to it, but let me at least set up the framework for the, the listeners, which is, you know, on January 20th, our diamond princess ship was leaving for a cruise from Japan or Yokohama, a passenger from Hong Kong boarded the ship with everybody else on January 20th. They then got off the ship on January 25th in Hong Kong. And didn't come back on the ship. And then we found out on February 1st, that that passenger who just embarked tested positive. We then immediately notified the Japanese ministry of health. And we rushed back to Japan and we proceeded to test a sample of passengers and unfortunately, 10 tested positive that then led to the decision by the Japanese Ministry of Health. We're going to have you in quarantine. So the decision was made is that our ship in the past, all the passengers, guests and crew would be put in quarantine for two weeks, which was the understood duration, if you will, of coronavirus or COVID. And that was the crisis. Suddenly we are trying to manage the logistics, communications, And ultimately partnering with all Japanese Ministry of Health and other health organizations to get through this quarantine, right? Our cruise ship is made for vacations. It's not necessarily designed for quarantine. And so think about the elements that we had to suddenly figure out. And you had to do it in a very, very public way. You were the center of the storm in terms of media coverage for, Oh yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. We were the front page headline news for, for a long time. And part of it is because if you think about all the people on the ship, we had Americans, Canadians, Australians, right? We had people from, Many, many nationalities. And for, unfortunately for those countries, that was the first time that someone from their country was known to have coronavirus. So in terms of Americans, we had several hundred Americans, right? And this, or when this started, there was no known cases of Corona virus or COVID in America. Now it is since been proven that there were cases we just didn't know at the time. So suddenly cruising became front and center for Corona virus and princess cruises and our diamond princess ship was the pinnacle of the press coverage. And of course, as you know, from a communications PR standpoint, the media. You know, and I, and I, as part of my teaching, I tell the class, look at for good or for bad, the media is compensated by flicks. They're trying to write click bait headlines. What click bait headline is going to get more clicks, right? Something like disaster and sickness at sea, or Princess Cruises doing a pretty good job of managing the crisis. Which, which one's gonna get more clicks? I don't oversee that headline. Yeah, but you had, you had, you had so many different, headlines. And that's because that's what got the clicks. And so there's no way you could have done it where everyone would have been. Oh, great job. Cause no one knew what the hell was going on. No, I think that was part of the thing. One of the, so when you think about a, we were probably more prepared than, than most, Because number one in, in, in the crisis management course, that we have at USC that I teach the first thing and Ninety percent of crisis management is the preparation, right? So the three-part framework is prepare, manage and recover. So, and a lot of people jump to the manage, but you, your ability to manage really is, is tied to how well you prepare. So, for example, we have designated crisis teams pre-assigned People know who is accountable for what we do drills quarterly. Okay. So we, and we even drill for an outbreak. I mean, now we didn't anticipate coronavirus, but we've drilled for things that like a norovirus, which is a stomach type flu. We do practice for that. We practice for hurricanes. We practice for anything, a mechanical malfunction. All right. So that's something And then we monitor, we knew about coronavirus because we have offices in Japan. We have offices in Shanghai, Taiwan. And all of them were telling us, Hey, this is a big deal. So we were on high alert already., and when this hit, we stood up the teams, right, we, we, we stood up a team in Japan. We stood up a team in our headquarters in Santa Clarita. We actually flew out our, one of our senior executives who ran international Tony Kaufman to fly out to Japan, to oversee. The crisis management efforts in market. And of course we had a crisis team on the ship. The captain of course is in charge of the ship. And then of course we had various leaders in Santa Clarita managing various components. And so I would say that this was kind of a multifunction management of which you could break it down to maybe three key things. One, well, the first thing is just the priority. The priority was pretty easy. The safety and health of everybody on board. Every decision that was made was made with that principle in mind, which made it easier because if somebody at a different, at various levels of the company, if they had to make a decision, they made a decision that this is going to make things safer, right? Or more comfortable for our crew or passengers. And that allows you to make decisions. Sorry to interrupt you Gordon. Can you give us a quick example of one of those decisions that took place that where you kind of had to weigh the trade off. of. This versus that Right right off the bat, you know, we knew hey these a lot of these people have prescriptions. Think about it How much medicine do you bring on a vacation? Enough for the vacation, right? What happens if you have to spend two more weeks unplanned on your vacation in quarantine? You're going to run out of medicine. So immediately the teams that local doctor says, Hey, we have an issue here. We're going to have to start coordinating with the Japanese ministry of health. All of these medications, which are in different languages, think about the logistics of that guys, right? You got all these prescriptions and different languages in dosages that may be metric or non metric. And you have the Japanese, working with the Japanese Ministry of Health to figure those medicines out in Japanese, figure out the right dosage, convert it, get the medicines it was quite the logistical complex effort, but the teams rose to the occasion, but that's example that you just have to do it, another example is the fact that we didn't know a lot about the disease. So all of us stepped up to try to figure out, okay, what do we know? How can we learn more? For example, in my case, I actually, this is my wife. My wife reminded me, Gordon, don't, don't remember. There's a gentleman who is a friend of ours. Didn't he work with the WHO? So we called him up and sure enough, he put me in touch with the director of communications at the WHO, the world health organization. So I gave her a call and I'm on the phone with her. Next thing she knows, she puts me on the phone with the director. of immunology who's overseeing the WHO's efforts on coronavirus. So then I proceed to get our chief medical officer on the phone, right? Because this is above my pay grade, trying to discuss, like, solutions for the virus. But she is literally telling us in real time what the WHO knows about the virus. For example, that hand gel kills the virus. I don't know if you know this, but hand gel or alcohol does not kill norovirus. It's useless. But it works against coronavirus. So these are new things we're learning real time, right? From the director at the WHO about things to do. So you literally have to step up and figure, who do we know? Who can help us out? And I'll give you another example is your customers. You might think, okay, in a crisis, you're trying to manage the story, right? A lot of people talk about, oh, we got to control the narrative. It's really hard to control a narrative when every single person on that ship has a smartphone documenting any announcement, any piece of communication. And you know what they're doing? You know what's happening to them? CNN, CNBC, Fox News, ABC, whenever they see a tweet, Or Facebook posts from any of our passengers they reach out to them say hey, this is CNN We'd like to talk to you in an hour. Are you available? And they're doing literally live interviews from the ship The idea that you can manage the narrative when you have real time interviews with the people on board, not going to happen. So it's better instead to solve the problem. In today's modern crisis management, it's not about, certainly you don't ignore the narrative. focus is solve the problem. Like you said, You know, your number one thing is to try to keep everybody safe. That's there. And if you, if you do things that help in that direction, then the narrative will be right. Brian, you bring up to build on that, right? Because does the media want to hear what princess is doing? That's good. Yeah, I'll take it. But for more often than not, they want to know sensationalistic what's going wrong. Right. Cause that's just more clickbait. Unfortunately, I hate to say it. Mayhem is just more riveting for viewers for whatever reason. It's terrible, but it's true. So if we can't get our perspective out Because they're more focused on certain sensationalistic elements. By treating and solving the problem, you let your guests tell the story. So I'll give you an example. During these interviews, a common question would be, Hey John and Brian, you're never going to go on a cruise again, are you? 9 said, we're already booked on our next princess cruise. Wow. Really? And then they'll say while they're quarantined. While they're in quarantine. While they're quarantined. That's amazing. Right? And part of it is because we gave them all a free cruise pretty early. We said, we're so sorry this is happening. We're going to reimburse you for what you paid. And we're going to give you an equal amount to try a future cruise with us. They had nothing but time, so they were all booking cruises using the credit we gave them. I'll give you another example. One of the couples that were on the ship was on a honeymoon and they were very prolific on digital. They, they had Reddit has something called ask me anything. AMA their AMA was the world's most popular AMA of all time. It's now number two because they were doing real time AMA is here's what it's like to be on this ship. All right. They were young. They were a honeymoon couple. So it was very interesting, right? Oh my goodness. We're so sorry. And they happened to be medical professionals as well. One of them was, I reached out to them, got ahold of them on Reddit and said, I'm here to help you. Let me know what things you need or, and they happen to be very connected to the people on the ship. And they would tell me and the rest of the princess team, Hey, cabin number, you know, four 22 could use some of this and they would provide feedback. And so we had this real time communication loop, which enabled us to be more responsive. And so when they then did an interview with CNN or Fox news, whatever they would say, and we're, you know, we're working with, you know, princess executives. Right to try to provide as much and so it was partnership So a lot of times people forget the people in the crisis can be a partner with you most people want to do well, they don't want their fellow passengers suffering You know, beyond the self interest, we're, we're, we care most, you know, most people are very caring. They want to, we're, most people want to help others out. Yeah. So that's another example. That's fascinating. I mean, just the, you know, you go on with the mindset that anything that you communicate to somebody on the cruise ship, that's going to get out in the media yeah. So then the question is. You want to make sure what you issue, you know, okay, this is like going to get out into the press So let's be careful about it, but you have to do it quickly So another recommendation for anybody going through a crisis is you need to stand up communication teams to write content Whether it's press release media release stuff for your website. We were recording Videos every day because we had a video from the chief medical officer, video from the chief experience officer talking about how we're trying to make them more comfortable videos from our CEO, right? We, we, we got people who didn't necessarily do this for princess. We then onboarded them and say, Hey, we know you're a good writer. Could you help us write this stuff? We needed people around the world. Think about social media. We had to monitor social media boards around the world in local languages. But ultimately that content was key. And the other thing I would say is you need to have an approval process that is quick. So we would say like, okay, this is going out noon every day. We will have a draft up by 1130. Everybody get on this shared site and provide shared comments so we can see it all and it will be approved. At noon, you have the set schedule, right? And everybody knows, all the way up to the CEO, you have access, take a look, otherwise it's going out. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, because, you know, even in the best of times, getting everybody to agree on what something should be, uh, can be difficult, but the fact that you don't even know all the information you need to know, and you have to constantly communicate things, knowing that it, it probably did change, constantly, but being able to enable and activate. That type of ongoing communication is it's so key because, you know, we've all been in situations where you just can't get the message out I think that's key getting the facts was key. And this is where establishing clear communication with the Japanese ministry of health was coordinating the testing to make sure what is the accurate number of people that have been tested positive, right? How many people have they been transported off the ship, all this stuff. This is real time information that we tried to convey to the guests. And this is where you can have version creep, right? With the, it's very possible, right? Who has the right data. And so you have to validate the data. And once you confirm it, we put it up on the website under a new area called notices and advisories. So that was our Bible. And so when social media, when our team on social media posted something, they would always refer back. To the notice it is my notices and advisories page. So we would always know we were going back to our single source of truth. That's an important thing that every crisis team should think about. Where is our single source of truth? Let's make sure everybody internally and externally refers to it. And that way you won't have version creep because that's going to make you look bad when someone interviews you and says, wait a minute, you've reported 22 people were impacted and this thing says 32. What is it? Seems like you don't know what's going on. Just makes you look bad. Those two things you just mentioned that that kind of single source of truth and the daily publishing schedule were those things that you had, from all of your preparation were those in place or were some of those real time decisions you had to kind of put into place? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, certainly the idea of, common goal so we can make decisions, but I do think this rapid communication to the passengers, I think maybe that was, we've had done versions of it, but not to the refinement that we had to and standing up all these content teams and all this stuff, because there was an, the amount of communication we had to try to get out because we had so many stakeholders. Think about every embassy reaching out to us because they had citizens aboard the ship. Think about that. Then the other thing would be regarding the notices and advisories. Yes, that was a new section of our website that we stood up. I mean, we've had versions of this, but to have to do this like couple times every day with new information, you know, I think that became a lifesaver that we set up this whole thing so that we wouldn't have version creep. So we've had versions of it, but maybe not to the extent that we had to create for this And were you, were you grounding other ships at that time or were they still No, that's a good question. So at the time we took additional precautions. So one of the things that we did is as we were getting real time learning, we were passing it on to the fleet, not just the fleet, but the whole industry. We actually wrote up certain best practices, shared it with the industry organization because we don't want to compete on health and emergencies, right? That's not good for the industry. Right. Right. So for example, the prescriptions, you know, we said, Hey guys, here's a tip that you should tell all your passengers bring extra medication. We shared that freely through the industry channels to all the other cruise lines. We did ground our fleet, a month later. We were the first cruise line to decide, you know what? We're going to ground our whole fleet. Then I think it was a day later, the CDC shut down the rest of the industry. Well, I'm sure you had a, even before they became grounded or docked or whatever the C term of that is. I I'm sure you were getting flooded with customer service questions about whether the thing was even going to happen or not, right? Like you guys were, there was lift. Yeah, there is. There's definitely questions about like, okay. Cause like for diamond princess, we had people who were booked on the next cruise and the next cruise, and we have to tell them, Hey guys, we're not sailing, we're in a quarantine. Certainly that had to be managed. And I would, you know, another element of the crisis that I'll share with you. Well, well, even fresh air breaks, right? You had people who are on a cruise ship who maybe didn't have balconies or windows. So we had to coordinate, how do we get them out logistically to get out to fresh air? I mean, even that is an impromptu thing that we had to manage. Like how can they do it? How far away should they be walking between each other? Right. Getting guidance from the Japanese ministry of health, WHO and all those partners, so I think we managed it so well, but then the, you may have heard the state department decided we are going to send a military aircraft to pick up all the Americans off the ship, because we just think as a matter of precaution, it's better if they serve a new quarantine. In military bases on land in the U. S. So suddenly these passengers were I think it was day 12. They thought they're almost done They're told the americans are going to the military going to pick them up Bring them to the u. s to military bases in california and texas nebraska And they're going to need to serve an additional two weeks of quarantine now. They don't have to go It was recommended that they go. Yeah, most went several of those stayed on the ship They said no, I don't want to go But most went on the plane and then they flew to these military bases. So here's a question, John and Brian, what is princesses cruises obligation to those passengers who have now been taken off the ship and flown to military bases? You'd think it'd be over. You'd think it'd be over, right? When you fly on a flight, let's say you fly to New York city, John, let's say I'm going to visit you in Philly. I take, let's say American airlines, get off the plane. I'm in the airport in Philly. Is American Airlines still accountable for me? No way! If I trip and fall in the airport, it's not American Airlines fault, right? So one could argue as soon as they left our ship, we've, we're done with those. Those are less people to be worried about, right? But when you think about it, they haven't gotten home yet. They're going to military bases and in the memo written by the U S state department, they said, we will get you to the military bases, but it's up to you to get home. Really? Oh yeah. That was in the memo. I have to admit, I was one that noticed that and I said to the team, I think we need to stand up care teams to work with the military to help take care of our guests and get them home. Wow. Gordon, I'm sorry. So one day you wake up and your job is all about creating a fantastic, luxurious cruise experience. And the next day it's about how to keep people alive, work with state departments, militaries. And, uh, World Health Organizations. How did you keep it together, man? Well, I think the whole team did a remarkable job. One is, you know, we had great leaders. Jan Schwartz, who was running Princess Cruises and really setting a good tone. In fact, there's a Harvard Business Case Study that talks about how do you keep your cool. Right? Because the way you handle the crisis, people can gather, right? If you're distressed, that echoes throughout the room. If you're calm and collected and able to make smart decisions, that also resonates. So I think that's a whole nother case that I recommend you read. you know, we just, because we had this common goal and we had, everybody was supporting each other. I will tell you a few people found it too difficult. They said, I need a break. And we were, we understood it. We're glad that they were transparent. Because it was hard and, but we did have just even fatigue, right? We set up a nap, nap room nearby. We brought in food every day. So people were fed and we did have different things because when it was daytime in Japan, it gave some relief for headquarters. So the Japan team could manage locally what was going on. We would come in. And so when the captain needed to do a press release during our time, we would write it. The captain would always make an announcement to the ship at the same time Even if there was nothing to be said. Yeah our job in santa clarita California was to make sure we said here's your announcement for the day or twice a day. It was important to have this pattern this sequence of regular events. I think that helped us give us purpose. And then we also stood up different leaders managing different components of the crisis. When we decided we were going to help the military take care of our guests, I was the head of that team. So I enlisted my sales team in Texas and California to go to the military bases and lend support there physically. And we were on the phone. We had daily calls with the military bases. I'll tell you something funny. The passengers didn't know where they were going. They weren't told. So we didn't know, nor did they, we actually looked up on the internet, the phone numbers of the military bases, called them up and said, Hey, you may have heard some of our passengers are going to your base. We want to help you. Can we talk to your commanding officer? Literally. That's how we did it. Wow. And then they, and at first they were skeptical, but then they said, you know what, we're going to keep your passengers safe and healthy, but we're not very good at hospitality. We could use your help. And they agreed, and it was a great partnership. It really was a great partnership. your own employees and staff on the ship itself, did any of them get sick? Oh, yes. I'm sure they're not prepared to be able to manage. People under quarantine, like, you know, for that long, I mean, I don't think anyone was prepared the Japanese ministry of health. I mean, no, one's had to do a quarantine of this scale for decades of any. And, so I'll, I'll say that everyone, the crew was so courageous. The captain called the crew, his gladiators, because he said, look at we're fighting a war and we're going to win, and he actually said, you know, diamond princess, what is a diamond? And the diamond is, under pressure, so he says, we're going to be a diamond. We're under pressure, but we are going to emerge as a diamond. Ultimately the crew was fantastic. You know, some of the crew, like I mentioned, may have gotten stressed, et cetera, it was hard for them because they were doing all the work. Think about room service, right? Suddenly you have to deliver meals to almost 3000 passengers, three times a day. Think about the logistics of that. Cause that's not how meals usually are done. People are eating meals in the dining hall, on the pool deck or all these different places. But no, three, almost 3000 meals. And then you have dietary restrictions that you got to manage for. Right. So you had so many things that they were doing, but they were amazing. And ultimately the passengers started to put notes outside of their door, expressing their appreciation for the, the, the crew. And we actually took that as a sign that says, Hey, we're going to To spread the happiness, we created a hashtag, hang in there, diamond princess. And there was then a global movement of support where people were creating content, music, songs, et cetera, for people to see. So the crew understood how the world was really appreciative of the hardships and the courage that they were exhibiting. Really is amazing. And so much to learn from this. I'll tell you the thing that's really hitting me is in the face of constantly changing information and misinformation and chaos that you are, you were able to create some predictability and routine. Seems like it did an awful lot to get through that crisis. So cheers to you and cheers to your wife for being smart enough to, Remind you of your personal connection to someone at the World Health Organization. You want to hear from everybody. What ideas do we have? And I think that a leader in a crisis needs to assimilate all the information. And, but they have to make that courageous decision. That courageous decision may not be, for example, what your legal team advises you, I mean, I mean, this is where I'm not telling you to break the law, but obviously the business affairs team may say, Hey, to reduce our liability, maybe we shouldn't do this, but sometimes you may say, wait, wait, this is going to help solve the problem. We need to do this, so those are tough. Those are tough decisions that. And a leader needs to have the courage to make. Gordon, I remember years ago, and I think the last time I saw you pre COVID, it sounded like you had the greatest job in the world, you know, traveling all over to build food programs with celebrity chefs and cocktail nixologists., Maybe tell us about one of those highlights, because I'd love to hear about the shiny side of the experience. You know, I think there's, I think a lot of people, because most people have never cruised before, and so this is where a lot of cruising is really about growing the category, because a lot of people misunderstand cruising. And it's just, it's a wonderful category from a standpoint of building amazing experiences for vacations. And marketing them. Right. So I'll, you know, I'll tell you an example of something that I think taken from my entertainment media days from Disney, you know, I, you know, when you're doing marketing, movies, whatever, you're always trying to find that, that positioning line. Right. And maybe like from the creators of Lion King comes our next big motion picture. Right. Right. There's always IP. And so when we were trying to figure out, how do we reinvent maybe our entertainment? We have broadway style shows. We actually have kind of a big theater, better than many broadway theaters. And, we were thinking about what do we do because there's other ships that have broadway shows. You actually have mama mia on Royal Caribbean, right? You have these broadway shows, but it's expensive, right? You got to license them. So instead we said, look, why don't we do borrowed equity? Could we get somebody to work with us? And so we were fortunate to have gotten Stephen Schwartz, the creator of Pippin, Godspell, and of course, Wicked. We could say, you know, from the creator of Wicked comes his next great Broadway musical premiering exclusively on Princess Cruises. So when you think about movies going direct to Netflix or at Disney, I was lucky enough to help invent, direct to video. We now had Broadway shows from the creator of Wicked going direct to Princess Cruises. Neat. Great. That's an example. And that gives you a marketing hook for people who are interested in that. And we did also a partnership with discovery channel where we brought experiences, like we had the deadliest catch tour in Alaska exclusively on princess cruises, because we had a partnership with discovery and their sister division, animal planet. So that allowed us to create these amazing branded experiences. Very cool. I'm trying to imagine Brian's reaction when I told him he just got the job where he has to go, find the entertainment and the desserts and the cocktails for a cruise. I think all over the world. I think his head. I mean, cocktails are big. our cocktail mixologist, He, created these amazing cocktails. And a lot of them were destination theme. Cause we always were like to try to embrace the local destinations that we went to. So, our wine program, our cocktail program, our, chocolate program, our, our bed, we created a new bed. We hired one of the best sleep experts to create our Prince's luxury bed because people go on vacation to relax and sleep. So we wanted to make sure they had the best sleep on vacation. It got so popular we had to sell our beds because people said, can I buy this thing? That's crazy. Who knew you had to think of a chocolate program. That's the news to me learning so much today Yeah chocolate. I mean think about chocolate, right? If you look at our one of our core targets of women who often help drive the vacation That's one of the few indulgences they give themselves is chocolate We actually did surveys, right? We actually asked, so I apologies for your listeners, but we asked women and men the same question. Would you give up chocolate or would you give up sex? And you can imagine the answer. Women were different than the answer than what men gave. That's because they have to sleep with men sometimes. So, can you talk a little bit about how, technology, transformed that, that guest experience over the years while you were there? Cause I can only imagine the types of strides that. you were able to make and incorporate into the, the cruise experience that hadn't traditionally been there. I think the biggest thing is what, John, you mentioned earlier, the Ocean Medallion smart wearable. that was really advanced and continues to be right. You would wear it. It would sync to the, an app on your phone, as well as all these various, sensors on the ship. So we would know. All sorts of things to personalize our vacation experience for you. So you could check in on the ship quicker. You could open your, your room with your medallion. You could order things and things would be delivered to you. So you don't have to be at the bar to order a drink. I mean, I would say it's a bar wherever you are, or since I'm from Wisconsin. You know, and I come from Milwaukee, a beer is always near. How's that? And, and, and I think that's one of, these are the things where technology and smart technology can improve the experience because it was saving you time and time is what you want. That's the most precious commodity on vacation, right? Whether it's, I don't want to spend 10 minutes going to the bar waiting and coming back to my, my lounge. Not don't have to, we'll deliver a drink to you wherever you are. That's amazing. Was it something that you were able to implement pretty quickly once it was ready, like how do you make sure that like that is cruise ready? Because I can imagine that, minimum viable products, versus the full reality is a difficult long run. Yeah, Brian, you're right. It took time. I mean, it was, I would say it was a soft rollout. And it just gradually, because there was clearly just like with any initial rollout, there's going to be some, things that aren't working perfectly. So you have to constantly try to refine it. So it took time to get it to a place where you felt, you know, every, every month, it made a difference in terms of how well it was operating, meeting expectations and so forth. so, yeah, it was quite the learning curve because it is very advanced in terms of that smart wearable. So good point. Brian and I always talk about marketing. We love marketing and this podcast is about how brands position themselves. It seems like when you ask someone about cruising, there's kind of like two kinds of people out there. Those who say they love cruises and those who say they will never go on one. Did you market? Cruises to people who were those kind of nevers. And if so, how did you do it? Yeah, John, good question. So part of it is, you know, the people who said, Oh, I get seasick. And we try to educate them. Look at what, what you experience a seasickness rarely happens on the ship because it's so big and all these things. But the common thing is just misunderstanding. Like they said, yeah, a lot of people were, I would do it. I just haven't needed to because they are just doing land vacations. Right. So one of the things that we came up with was this idea is there's cruise vacations that you can only do on ocean. You can't do it on land. Give me an example, Panama canal. If you want to go through the Panama canal, you got to do it through a cruise. And it's one of the greatest man made wonders. It's amazing to go through the locks. Alaska, really the best way to see Alaska is through a cruise. Yeah. Right. And so we created with Condé Nast Traveler what we called the seven cruise wonders of the world. Right. The idea that these are vacations that pretty much exclusively are better or only available through an ocean based cruise. So people would read this article on Condé Nast and say, oh my goodness. We really should do the Panama Canal cruise. You've always like, you know, you're big into engineering things. Let's go check it out. Or I'd love to see wildlife. Let's go on an Alaska cruise. Right? You know, those are the type of things that we would help promote through that. So that's an example of us trying to grow. The cruise never's. The other thing we would do is we promoted celebrations because John and Brian, you may be say, Oh, I'm indifferent, but I haven't had a need, but let's say I said, you know, Hey guys, I'm retiring. I would like you to join me on a cruise. We've got a great rate. It's just a three day short cruise. Please come join me on this great retirement, shindig. You might go. Yeah, we're in. We're in. This is where celebrations are a great way to get newbies to come aboard, right? Someone's having a honeymoon or an anniversary, a retirement party, whatever it is. Brian, I am hereby inviting you and Gordon to take a celebratory cruise when Snap Decisions makes this one millionth dollar. We'll do a live broadcast from the ship. There we go.. I'd love to hear a little bit about your time at Disney and, what that experience was like. It seemed like the larger part of your earlier career was from there. Disney was 18 years. It was wonderful. You know, I will tell many people who asked me about like what they recommend in terms of careers and jobs, you know, obviously find something you're passionate about, find something ideally you're good at, but if you can find a market that's growing, right, there's just more opportunities when it's growing and the home entertainment market was exploding with people buying videos, buying DVDs. But then of course, there was a road bump when people eventually transitioned from ownership to access, right? But for the years I was there, it was mostly rapid growth. It was, it was great. When. you were working from people like with ABC and we, we made lost one of the best selling TV box sets of all time, right? That was amazing to, animation working with the Pixar people and Steve jobs on finding Nemo and toy story to, the people at the Disney channel, high school musical was a huge seller on DVD to of course, pirates of the Caribbean and Disney live action movies, right? It was amazing how. There was all this consumption and people wanted to have their library. And of course, from a marketing standpoint, there was this idea that hurry, get the Lion King before it goes back into the Disney vault. Yes, and this is and I will give credit to roy disney He came up with the idea for theatrical back I think in 1945 because they needed money So they said let's bring back snow white into theaters So we we copied that but what we did is we added this concept of a disney vault. We actually Created a vault that slammed shut. So in our commercial, Ariel would swim into the vault and we would slam shut. And you don't want to be that bad parent that prevents your kids from experiencing Sebastian founder and Ariel. Right. So that was great. And of course that doesn't work as well now with everything being accessible, but back then, oh my goodness, our disappearing classics campaign was huge. Yeah, gee, thanks. Thanks, Gordon. Thanks. Yeah, sorry. Sorry, John. But those, those were examples of things that were so much fun creating those type of things, did a lot of testing with packaging, because we would test our packages and see which ones would pop off the shelf that people want to buy. And then even, and I mentioned to you, inventing direct to video was, was quite the thing that we're very proud of, which made a lot of money for the company. And the last thing I would say is recognizing that we needed data because most of the data for movies were with the, with the theater chains like AMC or they're with Walmart. So we decided to create our own loyalty program, Disney Movie Rewards, and that allowed us to have a huge database of millions of people, which have then was used as a foundation for Disney Plus. So I'm very proud that we come, we came up with that loyalty program because data is the new digital gold, if you say so a little bit of some of the things that we worked on that, that very proud of the teams and what we were able to do during a category that was growing rapidly until it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good lesson for, for any marketer is just, not being afraid to evolve and change before it changes you, you know. Yeah. Yep. Guys, it was a pleasure talking to you, John. Fine, thank you so much. You, your, your students are so lucky. It's no, you're so high. You are truly a masterclass. I feel like we can do this all day, and learn from you. So, your, you're so well, we'll do a part two. That's fine. We'll, we'll look forward to it. But guys, congratulations on your podcast, and it was a lot of fun talking to you guys. Awesome. Thanks, Gordon. Thank you very much. We appreciate it. You guys take care. All right. All right. Well, John, Gordon, just brought so much intelligence and, great examples. just fantastic. Example after example of just amazing what they had to figure out. Yeah. Yeah. And the attention to detail to me, that's such a huge thing. And, the big learning I got out of it was just how prepared he was. And you know, anybody could be in a, in a position of being in a crisis one day, but just staying ahead of the game is so important. And it's hard, so hard to see that sometimes when you're kind of in the middle of your job day to day, but. You really need to be able to, prepare for any type of situation that might pop up. Yeah. Yeah. And even though the way it unfolded, there's no way they could have prepared for all of that. There's no way they could have done what they did if they hadn't prepared. I also loved the, the, the notion that they were able to share best practices with the industry, because to his point, that's not good for anybody. If there's calamity happening, across, you know, an entire section of tourism, especially with the way that everything was unfolding during that time. everything was falling apart. So the fact that, they're able to share how to get through this that's the right thing to Do. interesting. Hopefully, hopelessly unattainable guests for you, John. I think it's somebody that we need to be talking to. We can gain some intelligence on business and, financial acumen. And, the person that, I'm reaching out to here is Warren Buffett. Oh, good. Yeah. Good one. So, here's my letter to Warren Buffett. Dear Warren, help. Please help us understand how you became an investment genius. We want to know, no, we need to know Mr. Oracle of Omaha, your 45 steps ahead of everyone else, your patience and perseverance in the market and in people exudes leadership and confidence. We believe in you and your actions. So help us learn on our podcast, snap decisions. We'd love to go back to the beginning, how you found inspiration in the 1930s from the book, 1000 ways to make a thousand dollars. All that business acumen you gain from your jobs and your youth, how you place pinball machines in local barber shops, how you graduated early from the university of Nebraska at age 19 in 1947, you were a millionaire by the early 1960s and a billionaire by the mid eighties. But we want to know about the famous long game you play, the trust you place in a stock's value, in the people that run companies, how you're able to cut through the pressure and the noise and operate on simple terms. You're unlike anyone, and you're still going strong today at 93. Let's talk on Zoom or at that Omaha house that you have 1958. What has and hasn't changed in the life of Warren Buffett. Our giant base of listeners want to hear about it. Let us know a time that works for you. Feel free to send your jet or horse and buggy. Thanks, Brian and John. Wow. That's a good one. We need to get Warren into the top of the queue here in terms of Our hopelessly unattainable guest. We need to get to him first because he's 93. We better hurry. Indeed. Although he strikes me as someone who may actually keep going for quite a while. Yeah, yeah, he seems, like he's gonna defeat time. All right, well, it's a race between him and Jason Kelsey, so let's, let's see what we got. Let's do it. All right, well thanks, good episode, loved, loved hearing, from Gordon, liked talking to you about Boeing, and, till next time, eh? Yeah, let's shut it down. All right, bye. See ya.