You may be familiar with this PR horror story: You have constructed a comprehensive communications strategy for a brand or entity taking on a project of great significance. You’ve planned for almost every contingency and have briefed everyone in the inner circle on how to respond to almost any question.
One dark and stormy night, you check your social and news searches and spot an off-the-cuff comment from a “source close to the mayor.” It’s inaccurate, but that doesn’t matter: Twitter/X has turned it into the hashtag of the day and, suddenly, your meticulously planned strategy is being dismantled piece by piece. Your mouth opens in horror, and you think, “The mayor said WHAT?!”
Rather than being a story about an actual statement from an actual mayor, the title of this post refers to the volatility of public comment and the importance of staying ahead of shifts in public sentiment. It’s also about the impact a timely response can have on a city or entity’s reputation and its relationship with its residents.
That’s where agencies like Tripepi Smith enter the picture. We’re often retained to control the conversation surrounding everything from power outages to natural disaster cleanup; or, as in this particular case study, a county public works project that could have easily gotten away from us without a careful and calculated response.
Case Study: The Big Dig
“The Big Dig” was the nickname given to a regional, four-year effort to remove almost 2 million cubic yards of dirt from a reservoir to protect downstream communities—including our client, a California city—and manage flood risk. The project was massive—it took almost 100 trucks and about 500 round trips over eight months to complete the excavation—and although the project was essential for safety, public concerns were understandably intense. Residents’ apprehension about the project ranged from potential environmental impacts to day-to-day community disruptions.
At Tripepi Smith, we turned to Meltwater to track real-time social media discussions related to the project. We monitored the conversation using our local custom categories in combination with keywords related to environmental and infrastructural concerns in local news sources and social media. Using these searches, we configured customized alerts in Meltwater to help us quickly spot and react when the conversation shifted toward the negative, leaning heavily on Spike Detection and Sentiment Shift.
Spike Detection
Meltwater’s Spike Detection alerts compare mentions over an hour with mentions over the preceding 12 hours to spot when specific keywords rapidly increase in volume. In the case of the Big Dig, Spike Detection helped us spot and defuse several volatile conversations before they became a problem.
We used project-specific keywords like “truck,” “dust,” and “traffic” in combination with our city-specific Custom Categories to set up Spike Detection alerts to spot and respond to community concerns. For example, when our team noticed that truck staging and queuing on city streets started to trend on socials, we could recommend action swiftly. The city stepped in to provide an alternate staging area for the trucks, removing the source of residents’ complaints and alleviating growing tension.
Our “dirt” and “dig” keyword alerts immediately notified the city when concerns about dust and emissions in school zones started trending. This empowered our client to stop conflict in its tracks by redistributing traffic to reduce congestion, rescheduling haul routes to avoid school drop-offs and pick-ups, and partnering with the school district to support a monitoring system that provided real-time information on pollution levels in the area.
Our team also used focused educational messaging about the low-emission vehicles in use for the actual excavation and dust-reduction practices the city had implemented in the interest of public safety. This targeted messaging and the city’s good-faith actions to minimize the project’s impact on schools resulted in swift resolution and a return to more productive conversation.
Sentiment Shift
The hypothetical horror story I presented in the introduction to this post is the perfect illustration of Sentiment Shift in action. Sentiment Shift alerts help you see the peaks and valleys in tonality. It’s similar to Spike Detection, but rather than volume, Sentiment Shift shows positive and negative sentiment changes compared to your baseline.
Our Sentiment Shift alerted us right away when a piece of inaccurate “inside information” shared by a source close to a local stakeholder sparked a social media conversation dominated by negative language. While the source in question wasn’t necessarily an “insider” in their own right, their proximity to the project increased their visibility. It implied credibility, and this well-intentioned but misinformed statement exacerbated the community’s anxiety.
Our team immediately advised the city to take action by organizing a town hall meeting of local residents and city representatives. This move allowed us to regain control of the narrative and connect residents with local officials face-to-face. We prepared city officials to respond honestly to comments and questions by educating them on trending topics and empowering them with talking points crafted to address resident concerns and correct misinformation comprehensively.
After the town hall meeting, we could watch in real-time as the public conversation shifted in sentiment from panic to trust. Our client was able to retain the goodwill of their residents in the face of what could have become a communications disaster.
Public sentiment analysis tools allow cities and other entities to remain in tune with their residents and to adjust their messaging accordingly. Public information officials frequently have differing views with attorneys, law enforcement, and public works staff about responding to public concerns or articulating certain stickier aspects of a project. Using data from Meltwater, communicators can identify weaknesses in messaging and advocate for plain language instead of jargon. To use a pertinent example from the Big Dig project, our team recommended using the term “dirt” instead of “sediment” for clarity, and thanks to our sentiment analysis tools, we had data to back that up.
Our ability to stay informed, engage with stakeholders, and manage communications related to the project was instrumental in keeping our strategy on track and ensuring the success of the Big Dig. Spike Detection and Sentiment Shift alerts helped us not only to demonstrate our communications prowess to our clients but also to help them strengthen their connection with their community and build trust among their residents. Through careful monitoring and timely response, we demonstrated that a large-scale municipal undertaking like the Big Dig doesn’t have to be painful—and can indeed serve as an opportunity to foster trust within a community.
P.S. - This Thursday, I’ll be joined by two Tripepi Smith clients, Renne Public Policy Group Director of Government Affairs Sharon Gonsalves and Los Altos Hills City Manager Peter Pirnejad to discuss this topic live at the 2023 League of California Cities Annual Conference & Expo. I’m excited to be sharing how communication influences trust with an audience of over 2,000 elected officials and municipal staff, and I’d love to invite any mCommunity members attending the event to join our session! Catch our panel, “The Mayor Said What?! Staying Ahead of the News,” on Thursday, September 21, at 8:30 a.m.
