Crisis communication resources to help you protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.
Effective crisis communications when “it” hits the fan.
Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog
Our blog is filled with deep resources to help with your crisis communication needs. Whether you are writing a crisis communication plan, seeking the best media training tips, or digging for case studies on crisis situations, you’ll find it here. Our goal is to give you all of the public relations resources you need to protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.
For those of you who love DIY and taking on a challenge, we’ve worked really hard to give you a good road map to follow. However, sometimes the fastest option is to bring in a pro. If that’s the case, we’re fully vaccinated and we’re ready to meet your needs, anywhere and anytime.
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Generally we talk about crisis communications. But sometimes, we need to talk about crisis management. If we manage a crisis to keep it from happening, then we don’t need to communicate about it. Often, crisis management can begin by looking at case studies.
The crisis in Ferguson, Missouri should have been a wake-up call that should have prevented the Baltimore riots from happening. The Baltimore crisis should be the wake-up call that prevents the next community crisis from happening. These are only two community crises that should warn us all that more will follow, if crisis management action isn’t taken.
Most amazing to me is how frequently police officers are caught on video these days doing something wrong. A law enforcement agency can have 1,000 perfect officers, but they only need one rogue police officer to bring an entire department and community to its knees. The number of unjustified shootings and arrests being captured on video is astounding. Each becomes a high profile example of a growing problem, regardless of all of the many justified arrests made by officers.
The margin for error is small. Wake up. Video cameras are everywhere. This is not a suggestion that officers need to learn how to avoid being recorded and caught. This is a suggestion that crisis management in communities must begin with self correction of bad behavior. Good cops need to weed out the bad cops. Police departments need to establish new integrity standards to weed out the bad officers before their behavior paralyzes another department and community.
Likewise, elected officials and police chiefs in every community need to enact crisis management techniques designed to aggressively weed out the rogue individuals who wear a badge. The high cost of human life and community destruction demand it.
As part of a crisis management strategy, elected officials need to start managing the crisis of poverty, under-performing schools, unemployment, and other community problems. No small task, but again, the high cost of human life and community destruction demand it. Aggressive policing in a high crime area doesn’t correct the problem, it only treats the symptom.
Preventing a crisis is economically more affective that dealing with the crisis and the aftermath.
Those of you in business, likewise, need to exercise your own crisis management by meeting with elected officials and law enforcement to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they are taking action. Their failings hurt you financially.
Businesses and business groups can also take direct action in communities to improve the quality of life, without waiting for government to lift the heavy load alone. Business groups can circumvent government to establish community centers, youth mentorship programs, and job training programs.
As we’ve seen in Baltimore, Ferguson and other communities, businesses are incapacitated and often destroyed when the crisis gets out of hand. Business pays a heavy price.
As it stands now, Ferguson and Baltimore have ignited the fires of frustration. Each serves as a model for the next community to follow. Now that the die is cast, you can expect each sequential crisis to be bigger than those before it.
The task of proactively changing a community is difficult. Failure to tackle the difficult task is costly.
What will you do?
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Forecasters are watching for what might be the development of the first hurricane of 2015. This happens just as the Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Association (LEPA) meets in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in advance of the official hurricane season.
I’m delivering the opening keynote presentation to LEPA emergency managers this morning as we look at how effective communications is changing. Emergency managers are being called upon to not only use all of their traditional crisis communications methods, but how to also incorporate social media and mobile technology.
Whether you are part of this group or not, you can take advantage of the lessons being shared using the resources below.
I’ve prepared two handouts for the group, which can be downloaded here:
If you’d like to perfect your skills for creating effective videos to communicate with your audiences during a disaster, I encourage you to watch this 23 lesson tutorial.
Also, when a crisis strikes you you need to hold a fast news conference or issue a fast statement, I strongly recommended that people use my first critical statement as a fast alternative to writing a formal press release. To get a free download use the coupon code CRISISCOMPLAN when you select the item from my shopping cart.
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What do you think about the crisis going on in Baltimore?
Before you verbalize your answer, think not just about your answer to the question, but also the impact your answer could have on the reputation and revenue of your business. This is especially true for those of you who are in businesses that involve face to face contact with customers. While it is true that society needs to have discussions about the important issues of the day, what degree of caution should you consider in voicing a strong opinion to a customer who strikes up a conversation with you? And, what should be the guidelines for you or your employees when you consider whether it is appropriate to strike up a conversation with a customer?
Small business owners, such as her dental clients are faced with two situations when top news breaks. Situation one is that a customer may initiate a discussion about the controversial issues of the day. Situation two is that the business owner or their employees initiate a discussion.
This raises four questions:
1) Is this the right time and place to talk about these important issues?
2) Could the conversation result in the customer getting angry and taking their business somewhere else?
3) Is that a risk you are willing to take?
4) What advice should be given to business owners and their employees?
If an event affects your reputation and revenue, a crisis exists, in some degree. If customers elect to buy goods or services from someone else because they feel slighted by your business, then you have an emerging crisis.
In the video blog, Anastasia reminds us of what many of us were taught by our parents, which is to never talk about religion and politics.
In addition to the decision you make about having controversial conversations with your customers in person, you must also think about the personal opinions a business owner and their employees post to social media. Be especially aware of those employees who have accepted friend requests from customers.
My advice is that if you are passionate about the issues of the day, seek out the proper venue or community group to enact change. But consider carefully how your personal opinions and those of your employees will affect your livelihood, revenue and business.
I personally know of many case studies in which entertainers, celebrities and business owners have been put out of business and lost all they owned because of how and where they voiced their opinions. Consider what price you are willing to pay.
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The day is coming when you will need to be an expert in crisis communication using smart phone technology and social media. Actually, you should already be an expert and it is just a matter of time before we discover if you are prepared.
Saturday morning I turned on the Today Show and learned of the devastating earthquake in Nepal. As I flipped through the channels to CNN, Fox, Good Morning America, and to CBS, I was disappointed to once again watch a global crisis covered by reporters stationed in places such as London. Trust me when I tell you the reporter in London knows as much about the crisis as the reporter in New Orleans or New York. Only a person on the ground in that location can provide us with real details.
Eventually, one of the networks showed a smart phone video report filed by Arjun Vajpal, from a base camp on Mt. Everest, where we learned that there were avalanches on the mountain and climbers killed in base camps one and two. The selfie style video was posted to social media, where the mainstream media found it and began using it.
How well are you prepared to do what that climber did? Are you able to pick up your phone and in one take, record a narration with video that takes television viewers directly to the scene of your crisis? My experience while teaching workshops to public relations professionals is that most are shocked to learn just how hard it is to produce an effective video. My 15 years as a television reporter doing live shots daily have prepared me to use this technology. But people without live shot experience struggle to find the words to tell a story in one minute, without messing up the narration and defaulting to 10 to 20 tries to get one good take, if they can ever get one.
My fascination with smart phone and social media news coverage began with my reporting for CNN and The Weather Channel during Tropical Storm Lee in 2011. I took it to a whole new level during Hurricane Isaac in 2012. I reported for both networks for five days, while living without electricity and being surrounded by seven feet of flood waters, four ten foot alligators, thousands of snakes, and more than 50 dead animals killed in the storm.
Often video of a crisis is provided by an eyewitness, who usually provides poor quality video that is often laced with f-bombs or crazy comments. Imagine how much better it would be when a crisis happens at your company if quality video and a quality narration were provided in expert fashion? Imagine if that video was narrated by a well trained spokesperson with real facts, rather than the crazy speculating eyewitness?
The report from atop Mt. Everest was better and more accurate than the on-camera narration from the reporter in London. Likewise, my reports in Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Isaac were more visual and informative than the reports being provided by network correspondents. Those reporters were much farther from the storm than I was, leading the networks to lead each newscast with my reports.
If you don’t know how to do a great video, please take time to view a free tutorial I built on the CNN iReport website. If you’d like to take your skills up a notch and do the same for your colleagues, please contact me about setting up in-person training at a future conference or workshop.
Effective communications is in your hands. The reality is that you can be the expert who provides effective crisis communication or you can take your chances by relegating your responsibility to the reporter in London or the random eyewitness with a smart phone.
Experience tells us that trying to perfect this skill in the midst of your crisis is the wrong time. The best time to prepare for your effective crisis communications is on a clear, sunny day when you have all the time in the world to practice. Practice until you can call yourself a crisis communication expert who can effectively use a smart phone to file stories to social media and with the mainstream media.
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In the past three weeks there have been three big public relations crises that have lead to unprecedented crisis communication. In these crises public relations professionals used phrases we should all say more often to the media, to our employees, and to our stakeholders.
They include:
I Was Wrong.
I Made a Mistake.
I Apologize.
We’re Going to Make this Right.
The cases involved the accidental shooting of Eric Harris by reserve officer Robert Bates in Tulsa, the death of Freddie Gray while in the custody of Baltimore Police, and the drone strike that inadvertently killed an American and an Italian hostage being held by terrorists in Pakistan.
In Tulsa, the officer went on the Today Show and in a live interview while surrounded by his family, he confessed to the accidental shooting and apologized to the victim’s family.
In Baltimore, the mayor and police chief stood before the media in a news conference where they said the death should have never happened and that they would fully investigate the matter to make things right in the community.
In Washington, D.C., President Obama stood before the media in the White House briefing room to take responsibility for the deaths caused by the drone strike. He apologized to the families and he said that the U.S. government would pay restitution to the families.
What is amazing is that in each instance, words were used that lawyers never want you to say. Legal advisors consistently warn people in a crisis to never use words that could be used against them by the plaintiff’s lawyers when you get sued.
The fight between lawyers and public relations experts is as old as time. We have competing interests. The lawyer is trained to get paid to fight a case in the legal system, while the expert in public relations is trained to mitigate the damage and make the crisis go away through effective communications.
Theoretically, the lawyer makes more money by letting the crisis continue if they have to see it through trial. That seems like such a conflict of interests, which could lead to flawed decision making. Is the legal expert giving advice that is in the best interest of the client or in the best interest of the law firm?
When I was a television reporter, I interviewed countless people who were suing an offending party. An incredible number of the victims and family members said to me, “If they had only said they were sorry I wouldn’t be suing them. But they never said they were sorry.”
Morally and ethically, I think saying you are sorry and taking responsibility is the right thing to do. There is a huge financial cost and liability to screwing up and causing a crisis. But there is also the possibility of settling out of court and making the crisis go away so that your institution or company can begin restoring its reputation while mitigating the impact on revenue.
Legal spin is spin and spin leads to distrust. Conversely, honesty leads to trust and trust leads to healing. Both have a cost to reputation and revenue.
As a war room veteran in many crises, my advice to clients and executives has always been to take the high road and to do the right thing on behalf of victims. Sometimes I win the argument and sometimes they listen to their lawyers. On numerous occasions, my moral compass has instructed me to terminate my working relationship when the best interest of the client is lost because they want to follow their lawyers. Sure, I make less money, but I feel much richer knowing I’m true to an honest goal and a principle of fairness.
Experience tells me that having these discussions during a crisis, while in the war room, is the worst time to be making such critical decisions. The best time is to talk it out and establish policy on a clear sunny day before your crisis happens.
Consider scheduling a meeting with your executives and leaders to discuss this one day soon. Another option is to test the decision making and arguments in a crisis communications drill. In many of the crisis communication drills I conduct for clients, one of my goals is to force executives and lawyers to hash it out during the simulation, so that we can evaluate the discussion and decision making during the evaluation phase of the drill.
Try saying these words to determine how comfortable you and your organization are with them:
I Was Wrong.
I Made a Mistake.
I Apologize.
We’re Going to Make this Right.
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