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.
Why are so many powerful people oblivious to the potent, negative power of social media? Every day there is a new crisis communication case study and today it is from Aaron Schock, who has resigned as Congressman from Illinois.
Schock created his own crisis with excessive selfies and posts on social media, showing him engaged in a rather lavished lifestyle of travel. This raised questions about whether taxpayers were footing the bill for his fun.
Tip 1: Establish guidelines for what should be posted and what should not be posted as an official representation of the corporation and the leadership of that organization.
Tip 2: Review your current social media policy for all employees to make sure best practices are being followed. If you don’t have a social media policy for employees, make it a priority to write one.
Tip 3: In a corporate environment, require that three people concur about an image or post before it is shared on social media. Get feedback from one another to measure positive and negative reaction before anything goes online.
If you have a great social media policy that you’d like to share with your public relations colleagues please send it to me at gerard (at) braudcommunications.com
If you’d like guidance on setting up a system that works for your corporate culture just give me a call at 985-624-9976.
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Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy said it took five days before he was informed that a car carrying two agents struck a security barrier outside the White House.
How long does it take in your company for you to find out about an event that could be a potential crisis that requires you to implement your crisis communications plan and begin communicating with the media, employees, customers and other stakeholders?
Most public relations people tell me it is a constant challenge for the home office, leadership, and PR staff to find out what is going on in the field. Often, you find out only because the rest of the world has already found out and the issue is getting negative attention on social media or with the mainstream media.
How do you change this? It begins with new policies and procedures, supported by employee training, as outlined in the five tips below.
The reality is that the average employee, supervisor or manager is mostly afraid that they will get in trouble if they report a problem, large or small.
But an unreported problem creates problems for those of you who are the company expert in public relations, crisis communications and media relations.
Ultimately, you need to know about events that could damage the company’s reputation and revenue.
What are your solutions?
Tip 1: Conduct training programs that inform employees about the need to protect the company’s reputation and revenue through good reporting. Many employees and leaders never really make the full connection to the bottom line. Help them.
Tip 2: Establish an easy way for employees to notify the home office of a potential problem.
Tip 3: Train employees to get in the habit of using that notification method.
Tip 4: Provide positive recognition for employees who use the reporting mechanism and appropriate repercussions for employees who fail to report an event that could damage either reputation or revenue.
Tip 5: Do your part to speed communications by spending time on a clear sunny day to write a library of pre-written, fill-in-the-blank news releases so that you are not responsible for delaying crisis communications.
Crisis communications is a team effort and the team needs to be built for speed, both in the field and in the public relations office. One way to address this is to use the current Secret Service headlines to open a discussion with your executive staff.
If you have a great system you’d like to share with your public relations colleagues, please send me your thoughts in a guest blog post. gerard (at) braudcommunications.com
If you would like to discuss best practices for a public relations and crisis communications team built for speed, feel free to call me at 985-624-9976.
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Robert Durst has a crisis on his hands here in New Orleans. He is under arrest on murder charges, because of a major media interview goof-up. While being videotaped for a documentary on HBO, he went to the bathroom while still wearing the wireless microphone.
In every media training class I’ve ever taught, I’ve said, “Assume the camera is always rolling and that the microphone is always recording.”
Durst, suspected of three murders, mumbled to himself, while in the restroom and still wearing a wireless microphone, “What the hell did I do? I killed them all of course.”
Outside the restroom, the video camera was still rolling.
Every media pundit and legal expert is speculating about whether the recorded mumble was a self-confession or the mumbles of someone who talks to himself. But for the sake of this article, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that a crisis has taken over the life of someone who was careless on camera and someone who should know better. His life will be thrown into turmoil because of that microphone and video camera.
The lessons for all of you who must do interviews with the media is to assume the microphone is on and that the camera is rolling and recording at all times. Presidents have been burned by this and news anchors have been burned as well.
Fox News Reporter John Roberts in the scrum of reporters covering the Robert Durst hearing in New Orleans.
(It was somewhat ironic to see John Roberts covering this story today for Fox, knowing he is married to a friend of mine who wore a microphone into the CNN bathroom during a live presidential news conference, only to have her confidential remarks broadcast around the world.)
Rule 1: Only put the microphone on just before the interview starts.
Rule 2: If you whisper anything to anyone while wearing the microphone you can assume the audio technician and the videographer will hear you, among others.
Rule 3: If you have to go to the bathroom, take the microphone off.
Rule 4: As soon as the interview is over, take the microphone off.
Rule 5: Remember there is also a boom microphone on the video camera that can still pick up your audio.
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Judgment day in the Biblical sense is the Godly determination of your fate at the end of time.
We’ve been taught that we do not know the hour or the day of our death or judgment.
But in the world of your brand, your products, and your services, we do know the day and we do know the hour. In fact, we know the minute.
The time is now. Social media and the throngs of participants on social media could be described as the most judgmental slice of humanity that civilization has ever seen.
[My goal is to interview both the fraternity brothers and the photographer to learn more about their experiences of being judged so harshly and so quickly. If you can introduce me to any of these folks, please call me.]
Swift social media judgment is a rather interesting phenomenon, considering the societal emphasis placed on political correctness. The political correctness movement had its roots in the 1990s.
When you think about it, an entire generation of young people have been taught that a person should not be judged by the color of their skin, or their ethnic background, or their religion. From there it grew into not criticizing someone because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.
Perhaps an unintentional consequence of the political correctness movement is that many people feel compelled to correct everyone else’s speech or behavior. Essentially, people anointed themselves as the police of appropriateness. Individuals became self-ordained. Many attempt to shame the rest of the world into adhering only to thinking as they do and approving only what they approve.
So would this also be true? Would it be true that as the political correctness movement spreads, parents, teachers, and well-intentioned folks enable a new breed of judgment that replaced the kind of judgment they were actually fighting against? Did they endorse and encourage judgment? And was the new judgment harsh?
For a large segment of the population, every day is the day they judge everyone around them. Hence, everyday is judgment day.
About this same time political correctness judgment took hold, talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh began their own breed of judgment. This opened the floodgates of copycat radio shows, which made many older adults also increase their level of harsh judgment and verbal criticism.
As this age of judgment was born, unto everyone was also born the Internet, social media, and technology.
Blogging and anonymous comments on blogs represented phase one of judgment. Phase two of judgment began when media news websites opened their doors to anonymous comments. Then phase three emerged with the birth of Facebook and Twitter.
Specifically to Facebook and Twitter, what could be a platform for sharing joy and goodness has become the trolling grounds for those who judge, hate and comment negatively with gusto. Social media can be a real hellhole for your brand.
The truth is, we all judge and pass judgment with every thought. You have thoughts about the products you buy, services you contract for, people you encounter at work, etc. You also have thoughts about every person you see. Your mind creates a near immediate impression as to whether you initially like someone or not. Your judgment on that may change within moments. You make judgments based on what a person is wearing, their body type, their ethnic background, and what they say.
You are in judgment of others, regardless of whether you have pleasant thoughts about a person or negative thoughts.
But do you verbalize every conceivable thought you have or have you been taught the art of self-control?
Many of us were taught the adage, “If you can’t say something nice about somebody, then don’t say anything at all.”
The political correctness age shifted that to, “If someone says something that is not nice about someone you should correct him or her and put them in their place.”
That is called judging those who judge.
This has all morphed into a self-ordained right to comment on social media about everything in society. I don’t see it stopping anytime soon.
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The media love their gadgets. They also love promoting their gadgets.
At KSLA 12 in Shreveport, Louisiana, LifeEye12 was our mother ship. That is why I laughed so hard when the opening scene of the movie Anchorman shows Ron Burgundy stepping out of his helicopter. I’m not, however, laughing at CNN’s disgraceful coverage of the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama.
Disgraceful, I say, because of CNN’s coverage of their drone video of an empty bridge.
Flashback to the 1970’s and 80’s — a news helicopter was the epitomy of status and the gadget of all news gadgets. At KSLA, it was
so important for us to mention and show the helicopter that I was almost fired as weekend anchor because I failed to show our anchorman landing in LifeEye12 at a local festival. Silly newsman and journalist Gerard Braud thought it was more important to report on the four different stories involving fatalities that day than to feature our helicopter. CNN is the latest sinner. CNN is using a drone and they are supporting my premise of the media making it all about them. (See Chapter 3 of my book Don’t Talk to the Media Until…)
Jon Stewart did a brilliant job of calling out CNN for their excessive coverage of the fact that they were using a drone to photograph the Edmund Pettus Bridge, even though there were no people on the bridge. If you haven’t seen it, watch this clip four minutes in. He calls out their sin better than I can even dream to.
Click to watch video
The lesson for all of you is that each day it becomes harder to get the media’s attention. CNN would rather spend valuable airtime talking about themselves and their drone than reporting on the issues of the day. And because media copy media, you can expect to see valuable airtime on your local television station wasted as your local media praise themselves for buying, owning, and using the same toy that all of us have access to.
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Today’s crisis communications tip looks at what happens when angry customers take to Facebook to complain about your company. Complaints on your Facebook page or complaints on a Facebook group page built for and by the complainers is creating public relations problems for companies.
All of us can learn from this perfect crisis communication lesson — It can be found at every utility company, where customers who are angry about their high winter bills and are venting their frustration and anger on Facebook.
Many utility companies do exactly what they should not do: They do nothing.
The men and women in leadership positions at both investor owned electric companies and rural electric cooperative companies have spent decades practicing the art of hope, as in, “I hope this just goes away.”
Hope is not a crisis communications strategy, especially in the age of social media.
However, engaging with these angry customers on Facebook can be problematic because social media is filled with traps.
Trap 1: If you comment on a post that is either positive or negative, it can lead to an exponentially high number of negative responses.
Trap 2: If you comment on any Facebook posts, it sends it to the top on everyone’s news feed.
What do you do?
Solution One: Fix the problem and/or make the anger and hostility go away. The reality is there will never be a refund for electricity used. And chances are, the customer has forgotten that their bill was likely this high during the coldest month of the year 12 months ago and just as high during the hottest month of the year six months ago. But they would rather blame their electric company than to take personal responsibility.
The solution is to manage the expectations of the customer by eliminating the peaks and valleys in their bill by offering an option to have what many companies call bill averaging or bill levelization. It means the customer will see nearly the same amount on their bill every month. Often, it will reduce this month’s $400 bill to an easier to pay $250 bill, which makes the customer happier.
Solution Two: Take the discussion offline. In many cases, the best way to handle an angry customer is to have customer service pick up the phone and call them directly. Customer service is able to demonstrate the type of soothing, personal concern that would be lost on a Facebook post.
Make the Crisis Go Away
The problem with the, “I hope it goes away” philosophy is that the problem will go away within the next two months as spring arrives and many customers use little, if any heating or air conditioning. But the problem will return during the hottest month of the year, then go away, then return next winter.
If you have a solution that can make the crisis go away once an for all, then by all means do it.
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By Gerard Braud –
Tip 2: Review your current social media policy for all employees to make sure best practices are being followed. If you don’t have a social media policy for employees, make it a priority to write one.
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The media love their gadgets. They also love promoting their gadgets.
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company than to take personal responsibility.