CrowdStrike strikes out on communications following global outage
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CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz has received a lot of criticism from the communications community for his statements following the global outage that took down airlines, financial institutions and medical facilities.
Why it matters: The outage on July 19 — and Kurtz's response to it — not only hurt CrowdStrike's reputation but could impact the reputation of its major customers like Delta and Microsoft.
Catch up quick: In Kurtz's initial statement, he identified the problem, described who was impacted and let customers know where they could find updates.
Yes, but: What was missing was the word "sorry," as many comms leaders and reporters pointed out.
- "Some committee of corporate comms people and lawyers wrote this very heartless, indifferent-sounding tweet, which became the first thing to really travel," Rostra founder and CEO Lulu Cheng Meservey said in an interview with John Coogan of Founders Fund.
Zoom in: While forensics will determine CrowdStrike's liability, issuing a human-sounding, empathetic statement could have salvaged the company's reputation, Meservey said.
- "There's a trade-off between increasing legal liability versus losing trust, and you just have to know that," she said. "But there's a lot of times when just taking the lawsuit or fighting it in court is cheaper than the damage to your reputation, which can be a lot more expensive and take longer to repair."
Another miss was how the outage was communicated given that most news travels across very visual platforms — whether it's TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
- While Kurtz did go on a small TV media blitz, appearing on the "Today" show and CNBC, the company mainly relied on lengthy, jargon-filled statements.
- CrowdStrike did little to offer clear visuals to social media audiences, says Arvo Advisory principal, Doug Busk.
- "My view is to leverage that we live in a video and meme era," he said. "If your explanation for a crisis like this can be transmitted via meme or graphic, use it."
Zoom out: Delta Airlines has struggled to overcome the effects of the outage, including significant groundings through the weekend.
- However, Delta CEO Ed Bastian continues to offer updates across social media, saying Wednesday that "the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us" and publicly apologizing for the effects it has had on flyers.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's communications team worked overtime to ensure customers and the media understood it was a CrowdStrike issue, not a Microsoft outage.
What they're saying: It's about understanding how to communicate and apologize to a broad base of consumers even when you're not at fault, said one tech executive.
- "When the consumer experiences something with a brand attached to it, that brand must be able to thread the needle by saying it's not our fault, but it is our problem. And it's our problem because you are experiencing real challenges."
The intrigue: Airlines faced a similar challenge this year during Boeing's quality control crisis. While it wasn't Alaska Airlines fault that the plane door flew off midflight, it was its problem.
- Boeing's reputation took the biggest hit in this year's Axios/Harris Poll reputation rankings, while the reputations of the airlines that operated its jets were not affected.
- So if the Boeing crisis is any indication of how a vendor's crisis can impact its customer's reputation, Delta and Microsoft should be fine.
The big picture: Even though CrowdStrike is a 13-year-old company and a leader in the cybersecurity space, this outage is most people's first introduction to it.
- This represents the blind spots of strictly B2B communications, because while other businesses might be the customers, the end-user is an individual consumer.
What to watch: CrowdStrike will have to rethink how it tells its corporate narrative to the general public moving forward — and it's next big opportunity will be Kurtz's congressional testimony.
💭Thought bubble from Axios Codebook author Sam Sabin: Seeing a cybersecurity CEO even apologize and confirm the source of an incident like this within the first 24 hours can be rare — although it still falls short of what the public wants to hear.
More on Axios: CrowdStrike CEO called to testify on global IT outage
