Posts filed under 'Crisis Communications'
There’s a good story over at Highlands about self-storage auctions. I was glad to see it, because it showed the compassionate side of the industry and helps to educate consumers about the process. Here’s an excerpt:
Five owners of local storage centers offered the same feedback about auctions.
They feel guilty whenever they hold one.
“I don’t want to sell other people’s stuff,” said Beth Patrich, owner of County Line Mini Storage in Spring Hill.
She, like a lot of others, prefers to show compassion when it comes to someone’s personal property. When someone cannot pay their rent on time, they are usually willing to work with them. Maybe they will waive or extend the penalty fee or accept partial payments.
Of course, we have to be careful becomes in some states accepting a partial payment starts the whole process over again. And we know we don’t want to waive fees to often because it encourages late payments. But the bottom line is we should show compassion when compassion is due. It’s good community relations, which is good for business. Word of mouth is still the greatest marketing tool known to man.
March 3rd, 2008
Check out an excerpt from the Mini-Storage Messenger Xtra and then let’s consider the implications…The article by David Lucas reads:
The tragic murder of a self-storage manager during an armed robbery in Houston, Texas, in September shocked the industry. Unfortunately, robberies, assaults, and other crimes do occur at self-storage facilities, although, according to an industry expert, they are rare.
“It’s so rare that if we have an armed robbery, we don’t really address it much,” says Tom Litton, president of Lodi, Calif.-based Litton Property Management. “As an industry, we don’t do a lot of training on how to handle an armed robbery.”
Shaken by the violence at the Texas facility, some self-storage operations are putting personal safety policies in place and providing training on how to behave during robberies and other potentially dangerous activities.
The article goes on to offer some general guidelines on how to handle yourself during potentially violent encounters. But have you considered the public relations implications and guidelines? I submit to you that the industry, through its national and state organizations, needs to get proactive about counteracting all the negative media we see about crime in self-storage. Rare as it may be, that’s not the message consumers are getting.
The industry needs is own “McGruff” style branding campaign to get the message of safety and security out to the market. We’ve already lost ground to the ongoing media headlines and we’ve already seen the government amping up its spotlight on the industry. We can’t just sit still and fail to communicate how much more sophisticated our technology and security is today.
Let’s get busy.
November 19th, 2007
I hate to see these stories, but here’s another. According to the Associated Press, federal authorities have seized thousands of Ecstasy tablets from a San Gabriel Valley self-storage unit. The tablets are reportedly worth more than $2 million. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the Friday raid was part of an investigation into several Ecstasy-smuggling rings in the area east of Los Angeles.The Associated Press reports the probe has resulted in 11 arrests in recent weeks, including a Chinese national suspected of heading the largest smuggling organization. Seven of the defendants face federal charges, while the other four are prosecuted by local authorities.
Here again we have a major drug operation using self-storage as its base. We have to ask ourselves - what can be done to stop the madness. From our ‘Self Storage Promotions’ perspective, too, we have to ask how do we handle this mini-crisis that will see continued reference to this case as it makes its way through trial.
The industry has come a long way in overcoming its ‘dirty little warehouse’ reputation. We are still fighting the drug den reputation in some circles. In times like these, it’s important to reassure your customers that you keep a close eye on activities. It may also be time to consult an attorney about doing inspections on suspicious units.
Moreover, the industry needs to rally together to overcome this problem, both with clear actions to prevent it and clear communication that tells the world about those actions. We can fight the good fight and perhaps reduce the number of these types of incidents, but if we don’t tell the world about our efforts then, well, they won’t know.
October 30th, 2007
Is your self-storage facility complying with lien laws?
Vin A. Fichter, a nationally recognized expert in self-storage law, told the North Country Gazette that one of the primary legal issues facing the self-storage industry is the operator’s failure to follow the state’s lien sale procedure law
Fichter has said that he has seen example after example in which, for the sake of expediency and to save some small expenses, a self-storage company will discard the personal property of a tenant without following the easy “safe harbor” procedures in the state’s law.
“This is sheer folly and eventually will land the mini-storage facility in a lawsuit, one which might even affect the financial ability of the facility to survive. Plaintiff attorneys have a way of smelling money and will take such cases on contingency if there is ‘gold in them thar hills’. Then the mini-storage tenant has no risk because he or she pays nothing if the attorney does not recover anything. Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Fichter says. “Follow the Self Storage Act. It’s easy.”
I’ll take it a step further. If you don’t follow the laws, you may find yourself in a whole heap of bad publicity in your community in addition to a lawsuit. Avoid the need for a crisis communications campaign by taking action early. If you do find yourself in a PR nightmare, though, be sure to confront it head on with a communications plan that serves as clean up patrol. Staying silent only makes matters worse.
Click here to read the rest of this story on the North Country Gazette.
September 7th, 2007
New information released this week by the Alexandria, Virginia-based Self Storage Association (SSA) indicates that the number of primary self storage facilities in the United States has nearly doubled since the year 2000. At the end of 2006, 51,500 primary self storage facilities dotted the country, with 23,075 of those facilities added between 2000 and 2006. This represents 81 percent growth in the number of facilities during this period.
“The U.S. self storage industry continues to expand at a pace in step with growing residential and commercial demand,“ says Michael T. Scanlon, Jr., President and CEO of the Self Storage Association. “However, dollars that heretofore had been allocated toward ground-up development of new facilities are now being channeled toward expansion and renovation of existing facilities, conversions to self storage from other uses, as well as an increase in the number of acquisitions being undertaken, Nearly one-in-ten American households now rents a self storage unit and nationally commercial business now accounts for about 30 percent of total self storage rental space.”
The industry’s most recent research confirms whatmembers have been saying – that the rising costs for land, tighter capital markets and the added costs associated with a longer entitlements process, have all had a negative effect on ground-up development.
The question is what will the industry do about it? A strong and strategic community relations program doesn’t hurt — in fact it can pay major dividends. Self-storage operators looking to do new projects should communicate the benefits of their plans to community stakeholders. If you can get the community on your side, it will be easier to get the politicians to follow suit.
September 4th, 2007
Hillary Kramer discusses Public Storage stock. “The past six months have been brutal for Public Storage Inc. (NYSE: PSA), which has seen its stock price lose about 35%; it’s now trading below where it was 12 months ago. The company’s net income in 2006 was well below what it was in 2005, after a few years of steady growth, and the first two quarters of 2007 haven’t been much better. Net income in the second quarter was down nearly 25% from the second quarter of 2006, and for the first six months it is down nearly 50% from the first half of 2006. No wonder investors have been worried.”
Would you invest in Public Storage? Is there an advantage to being an industry powerhouse? Or are market conditions changing? What’s your take? Does Public Storage need a new strategy?
Click here to read the rest of Hillary’s views.
August 13th, 2007
In case you wondered, big media is following big storage.
AMERCO, parent of U-Haul International, got some ink in the form of a press release posted on CNNMoney. The company reported net earnings for its first quarter ending June 30, 2007, of $38.5 million, or $1.93 per share, compared with net earnings of $52.2 million, or $2.50 per share, for the same period last year. That’s not a particularly shiny, happy report, but at least the head honcho got an opportunity to get his plan out.
“Our team is focused on improving operations for future growth and profitability. We have implemented a rate system as well as a new repair diagnostic system. We expect to see a positive impact from both of these initiatives. I am obviously disappointed with the results for the quarter. Self-storage continues on plan through expansion at existing locations, development of new properties and growth of our self-storage affiliate program,” stated Joe Shoen, chairman of AMERCO.
For better or worse, self-storage will get more and more attention. Shoen spun the poor earnings report news like a veteran. The rest of the industry should follow his lead: honest, upfront, and with a clear vision for the future.
August 10th, 2007
Today’s Internet threat environment is characterized by an increase in data theft, data leakage and the creation of targeted, malicious code for the purpose of stealing confidential information that can be used for financial gain, according to the latest Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec. The National Portable Storage Association, , a nonprofit membership association dedicated to the advancement of the portable storage industry, is helping the storage industry fight back with timely alerts about e-mail scams.Symantec reports high levels of coordinated attacks combining spam, malicious code, and online fraud. During the second half of 2006, spam made up 59 percent of all monitored e-mail traffic marking a steady increase over the first six months of 2006. Over the last six months of 2006, Symantec detected a total of 166,248 unique phishing messages, an average of 904 per day, marking a 6 percent increase over the first six months of 2006. Phishing messages attempt to get the recipient to disclose personal information that bad guys can use to steal their identities.
“Part of the solution to malicious spam lies in software products, but part of the solution also lies in vigilance,” said John Finnessy, CMP, Executive Director the NPSA. “The NPSA is keeping a close watch for e-mail scams that affect our membership and we have been successful in sounding the alarm and preventing the victimization of containerized storage vendors. The bottom line is this: don’t click on any links in an e-mail from a person or company you don’t know. You never know what’s malicious software could get installed on your site.”
Click here to read the rest of this release on FastPitch.
July 30th, 2007
Ouch. The author of “Sorting It Out: One Disorganized Woman Solves the Problem of Too Much Stuff” just blasted self-storage. She writes:
“Renting storage space is generally one of the most useless expenses anyone can add to the household budget. I’m hard-pressed to come up with a legitimate reason for it, except for those rare instances when the rental facility is truly a temporary or seasonal solution to a storage problem.
“Temporary does not mean forever; that would be permanent. So, if you have stored something for longer than a year (a very generous length of time), it is probably no longer a temporary arrangement. If you haven’t accessed what you have in storage during that year, unless you were off having a fine old time touring the continent (or facing the challenge of serving our country abroad), it’s pretty safe to conclude that you don’t need what you’ve stored. That means it’s time to unload the burdens of the storage unit and all of its unnecessary contents.”
Good grief. Not someone we want evangelizing for the industry, is it? This is the kind of information that needs to be combated with information to the contrary. This author goes on and on and on about self-storage’s origins — all in the name of promoting her book.
See, if you buy her book, she figures, you won’t need self-storage because you’ll be organized. What she fails to acknowledge is that there’s many other reasons people use self-storage, among other key points.
What do you think? Is she accurate in her description of “selfish storage?” Or shouldn’t we do some education to the contrary here?
Her blog comments have plenty of supporters. What say you?
Read her blog here.
June 29th, 2007
The Wall Street Journal published an article last month that got the full attention of the self-storage industry. The article, entitled, “Self-Storage REITs Lose Heat,” chronicled the rise and fall of what it called a “tiny niche of real estate investment trusts in the self-storage sector.”
“A recent Wall Street Journal article reported that self-storage REITs are showing some softness. Same-store growth in net operating income declined a few percentage points,” said Michael A. Mele, Senior Investment Associate at Marcus & Millichap’s Mele Storage Group. “That may be true, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still solid investments in the market. It just means investors of all sizes need to be more cautious about their acquisitions.”
Click here to read the rest of this release on PR.com.
June 13th, 2007
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