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.

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Marshawn Lynch and the High Cost of Super Bowl Media Interviews

_If you could attach a dollar to every-1

With Super Bowl media day at hand, Marshawn Lynch, the media shy Seattle Seahawk, can expect more attention for what he does NOT say than what he DOES say.

In the past the NFL has issued fines as high as $100,000 for Lynch, because he didn’t want to talk to the media.

Can Marshawn’s media phobia be fixed?

“Fixing” people like Lynch is what I’ve done behind the scenes for organizations since 1996. People are dumbfounded when they find out I make a living by training people to be comfortable when talking to the media. But as a former reporter who has witnessed people say dumb things to me on too many days, I decided there were things I could share to help people get comfortable and say the right thing to a reporter.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

A situation like Lynch’s requires much more than a Washington, D.C. or New York City spin doctor who wants to throw out their conventional “three key messages.” They usually provide lessons on how to stay on message and how to bridge back to their messages if a reporter gets you off track.

A media trainer should have expert training skills combined with expert skills in identifying personality types, with the ability to pinpoint what deep seeded issues may be affecting Lynch’s willingness to speak to the media.

Many executives will confess secrets to me in confidence during media interview training. These confessions help me work through issues, such as past speech impediments, being an introvert, or having a personality based upon humility rather than bragging.

The rules for athletes, from professional football players to golfers, are the same.

Here are 5 tips:

#1 Invest time and money

Investing time and money to learn these skills is money well spent. The first question I ask of each trainee in my media training classes is, “If you could attach a dollar to every word you say, would you make money or lose money?” In fact, Chapter 2 of my book, Don’t Talk to the Media, Until…, is called The Big If. It addresses the value of a good or bad interview. The NFL obviously sees an interview as being worth at least $100,000. I wish corporations fined their executives each time one of them dodged a media interview.

#2 This isn’t your main job

For athletes and executives alike, doing media interviews is NOT your primary job and is NOT what you are an expert in. We get it. But like it or not, it IS part of your job. Like anything else in life that you have to do, you should do it well. Football players should understand they need an expert media training coach, just like each player needs a coach (or coaches) to help them be a better player. Rather than turning to an expert in media training, many rely on their agents for interview coaching. These agents have never been reporters and truly do not understand the complexities of the media and the best ways to master an interview.

#3 Is it too late now to fix this?

Preparation is the key to success. Football teams get to the Super Bowl when they start practicing in the off-season and continue to practice daily. Lynch should have invested significant time and money to fix his issues during the off-season. Trying to fix it the week of the Super Bowl is crazy. He should have addressed this a year ago when the NFL first levied their fines.

#4 Is there a way to simplify media interviews?

Yes. Simplifying what you want to say before an interview is the correct way to succeed. It is better than just standing there in front of a barrage of reporters asking mindless questions. Keep in mind, that at Super Bowl media day, the media just get stupid, by asking mindless questions and trying to pull stunts and gags. The dumb media represent the NFL’s acknowledgement that they want as much free press as humanly possible. I’d rather see reporters at media day be vetted so that only serious sports reporters are asking serious sports questions to serious athletes.

#5 Think like a reporter

Regardless of the type of media you face, the interview process can be simplified. It begins by thinking like a reporter. Each reporter is looking for a headline, a synopsis sentence, and a good quote.

If that is what the reporters want, the players should each be coached and ready to speak just like that: Give the headline, give a synopsis of what you want to talk about, then give a quote.

Is this easy?

No, not really. It is really hard work to make something simple, which is why you should seek out an expert coach to help you.

By Gerard Braud

Crisis Communications & Media Relations Strategies for Winter Storm Juno

January 26, 2015/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Rural Electric Cooperatives, Social Media for Crisis Communications /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

Good media interview skills, a properly written crisis communications plan, and command of technology will be critical in the next few days as winter weather moves across the United States, especially into the Northeastern states.

Click image to watch this video on 12 Crisis Communication steps you should take today

Good crisis communications means now is the time to begin managing the expectations of your customers, citizens and employees. Many of you will experience power outages that may last for days. Let your customers and employees know this through effective communications today.

Transportation delays – from streets to airports and airlines – will be challenging. Let the community know this now. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio began issuing warnings early. Well done mayor.

Meanwhile in Boston, (and I don’t want to deflate anyone’s fun here, but…) I question the sanity of a rally for the New England Patriots . People need to be getting home before heavy snow and the team should be moving up their departure time to beat the weather.

In your communications to your audiences, be very clear about the pain, problems and predicaments they will face.

#1 Do Not Sugar Coat the News

Tell people exactly how bad things may get. Make sure your messaging is direct and simple. Deliver the headline, give a good synopsis, and then give the details. Write your communications the same way a reporter would write a news story. Don’t overload your communications with corporate jargon, acronyms and politically correct phrases that may confuse your audience.

#2 Do Not Hedge Your Bets With Optimism

You are better off to tell audiences what the worst will be and then be happy if the worst does not come to pass. It is easier to celebrate good news than to apologize for a situation that drags on and gets worse.

Click here to watch Gerard’s video on winter storms

#3 Be Ready to Use Every Means of Communications Available to You

Traditional media will be overwhelmed with many stories. If you want to get their attention and get coverage as a way to reach your audiences, do these things now:

Be ready to post updates to your primary website
Use iPad and iPhone video to record each update and post it to YouTube
Send e-mails to employees with links to your website and video
Post that same video to CNN iReports
Add links to Facebook and Twitter that send your audiences to your website and your video

#4 Media Training for Spokespeople

Anyone who records a video or does an interview with the media should have gone through extensive media training prior to this crisis. Additionally, do role-playing and practice with them before each interview in the coming days.

#5 Be Skype Ready

In a winter storm crisis, media may ask you to do live interviews via Skype. Download Skype to your mobile devices now and practice using Skype. Additionally, all spokespeople on a Skype interview must be properly media trained in a Skype interview setting. Use my online tutorials to help you prepare spokespersons.

#6 Expect a Spike in Social Media Communications

Keep in mind that organizations that often have very little following on social media will see a spike in social media during power outages. As audiences have no computer access they will turn to their mobile devices. Your team needs to be prepared to monitor social media and reply to posts only when it is absolutely necessary. Too many replies to negative comments only lead to more negative comments and those comments keep re-posting more frequently in everyone’s news feed.

#7 Direct Tweets to Reporters

Increasingly, reporters respond quickly to Tweets. I find that in a weather crisis you can get a reporter’s attention faster with a Tweet than with an e-mail, phone call or text message.

#8 Be a Resource

Don’t confine your social media posts to only information about your organization. Post resources that your audience needs, such as locations to shelters, information about emergency supplies, and any other creature comforts they need.

#9 Don’t Be Left in the Dark

Now is the time to review your list of emergency supplies and gather all of the devices you need to power your mobile devices. Devices like Mophies can charge your phones and tablets. Make sure you have batteries and flashlights. If you can, get a generator and ample supplies of gasoline. Gather extra food, water and blankets. Make sure you can heat your work environment.

#10 Rest When You Can

Rest and sleep well before the crisis. Work strategically in shifts during the crisis. Everyone doesn’t have to be awake all of the time. Naps are allowed in the middle of the day.

#11 Victory from Preparedness

Don’t judge your public relations skills by how well you were able to wing it during and after the crisis. Victory is measured by how much you did on a clear sunny day to prepare for your darkest day.

#12 Update Your Crisis Communication Plan

When this crisis is over, evaluate whether your crisis communication plan worked. It should be so thorough that nothing slips through the cracks, yet easy enough to read and follow during your crisis so that it tells you everything to do with a precise timetable for achieving each task. If it doesn’t meet these criteria, evaluate it during and after your crisis, then prepare for a substantial re-write or re-design as soon as this crisis is over.

A small gallery

January 24, 2015/0 Comments/in News, Personal /by gbraud

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Selecting the Right Spokesperson: Should it be the CEO?

January 20, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Media Relations, Public Relations /by gbraud

In public relations, media training and crisis communications training, there are many debates about who should be your spokesperson for media interviews.

Many companies want to use their CEO as the only spokesperson based on the belief that it allows the company to speak with one voice.

Do you agree with that or disagree? I think this has always been a flawed assumption and here is why…

It is always appropriate for the CEO to be the spokesperson for media interviews about good news. This would be true for good financial news, corporate expansions, and for charitable donations.

The other time when the CEO should be your spokesperson is when condolences and empathy need to be expressed. This would be true in certain crisis communications when there has been a loss of life, serious injuries, or flawed corporate decisions that have an adverse impact on customers or the community. In these cases, the CEO should become the face of the organization’s compassion. Even then, the CEO as a spokesperson might come several hours into the crisis. In the first hour, when a statement needs to be made, the CEO is often busy with other issues. That is just one more reason to have multiple spokespeople who have been media trained.

A CEO who wants to be the only spokesperson is destined for failure. In a crisis, the CEO should be:

1) Managing the crisis

2) Managing the business operations

This is especially true in the first hours of a crisis when information is just becoming available.

Also, if a CEO misspeaks early in a crisis, it destroys his or her credibility and undermines the reputation of the organization. Whereas, if anyone else misspeaks early in the crisis, the CEO can step in to clarify the facts and becomes the hero figure.

The worst time for the CEO to be the spokesperson is for a minor crisis. Having the CEO as your spokesperson for something small adds greater emphasis to the crisis.

In our next two blog entries, we will give you options as to who should be the spokesperson in a minor crisis.

Speaking with one voice is a noble pursuit, but through good media training numerous people can be taught to speak with the same message and in essence with “one voice.” That one voice doesn’t have to come from a single mouth or spokesperson.

Remember BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, who uttered, “I want my life back.” That line caused him to be fired as CEO.

My Mentor is Dead

January 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Public Relations /by gbraud

Wiley Hilburn, Jr. has died. He is the man who shaped my writing and my career as a journalist. Each day, I think of myself first as a writer, knowing that writing is the root of my media training and crisis communications programs. Likewise, my skills as a journalist and television reporter, cultivated by Wiley, allowed me to have two great careers that have sent me circling the globe.

The death of Wiley Hilburn, Jr. is not breaking news. January 16, 2015 marks one year since his passing. Although a year has passed, I think of him often because he is alive in me. Not only is he alive in me, but he is alive in the pens and keyboards of journalists and public relations people across America.

Wiley was the head of the Louisiana Tech Journalism Department. He launched young journalists, like a parent should launch their children. Wiley nudged us, the way a mocking bird nudges a chick from the nest. He made sure we could fly. He nudged more than a few chicks out of the nest knowing they were better off eaten by a cat than to be in a newsroom. If you had the right stuff, Wiley praised you and nurtured your writing. If you didn’t have the gift for writing, he didn’t mince words in advising you to seek another career path. Every quarter he would bring each writer for the Tech Talk student newspaper in for a personal evaluation of their clipping file. We used to take bets in the newsroom as to who would leave Wiley’s office crying after his evaluation.

He was also famous for his back-of-the-classroom private evaluations about what you wrote for each class assignment. He never knew everyone could hear him until the day he praised me for having no misspelled words, just a week after giving me a C on a paper, upon which he wrote, “I’d like to take this to the Shreveport Times, where I’m known as a horrible speller, just to prove there is someone who spells worse than me.” On the day he gave me his “private” praise, the class stood and applauded. Wiley turned beat red and asked, “Have ya’ll always been able to hear all of my evaluations?” Wiley and I laughed about that day every time we visited. After my first week as a television reporter – a job he helped me secure – he sent a handwritten note that said, “You are doing great Gerard. As far as I can tell from your reports there are no misspelled words. You were made for TV.”

My creative writing style has never come close to Wiley’s. I’m envious of great creative writers who have a true gift of describing details and sounds and scents and moods. News and television writing were the places where I found my comfort zone.

Wiley took Mark Twain’s advice to write what you know. His writing was brilliant enough that he could have lived and worked anywhere, but he chose to stay close to home, living in Ruston, Louisiana writing as a columnist for the Shreveport Times and the Monroe News-Star. His columns were about the people, places, and unique little tidbits that only people along this Bible Belt region of Louisiana could appreciate.

My friend Bob Mann wrote of Wiley’s death one year ago as, “The Passing of a Louisiana Journalism Giant.”

Indeed, we all looked up to Wiley. And he always looked at us over his heavy rimmed glasses, which were broken at one hinge and held together with Scotch tape for most of the years that he was my professor. His thinning hair was always tousled. Wrinkles in suit never bothered him.

My hope for each of you is that there is someone special in your life who was pivotal in shaping your career. I hope you remember them with great fondness the way I remember Wiley today.

By Gerard Braud

The Fog of Decision Paralysis: A Lesson in Crisis Behavior

January 13, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Public Relations /by gbraud

You should know it is fog season in New Orleans. With fog season comes some significant lessons about human behavior in a crisis.

Dive in with me, if you will, on an incredibly foggy morning. We are crossing a 12 mile long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain from Mandeville, Louisiana to New Orleans. We’re on this 12 mile bridge because the 24-mile long Lake Pontchartrain Causeway bridge is closed because of zero visibility.

The fog is so thick it’s as though our headlights are reflecting off of a bright, white wall.

Our forward visibility is at most three to four feet.

If you were in this situation, what would you do?

What would you foresee happening?

I was actually in that situation on December 31, 1996. I was still asking myself this question and preparing for a possible crisis, when a white, Ford F-150 pickup truck swept by me. He was in the left lane driving far too fast. It took only a flash for him to disappear into the fog.

Within an instant I saw his taillights bounce high into the air. He had rear-ended a slower moving car. The two cars were then faced sideways blocking both lanes of the interstate.

Because I was driving slow… I was able to stop short of making impact. But then I heard the horrendous sounds of screeching brakes behind me.

As I looked in my rear view mirror. I could see headlights closing in on me rapidly.

I steered slightly to the left; the lights veered to my right and smashed into the truck.

I was witnessing the beginning of what would soon be a 70 car pile-up.

There were more screeching brakes… more headlights… more crunching metal.

I continued to steer slightly more to the left and out of the way with each continuing wave of arriving headlines. Each cluster of cars piled into the debris field in front of them.

Soon a green minivan hit the pile and flew in the air tumbling end over end. It landed upside down. Soon a small white pick-up was being crushed like an accordion.

The sounds of crashes seem unending. By now I had inched from the right lane, across the left lane, and onto the shoulder of the bridge. I was making spit-second decisions. I was taking action based on the events around me.

Then there was a brief lull. I reached my left hand slowly across my body and unbuckled my seat belt so I could help rescue those in need. I suspected some are likely dead. The lady in the flipped minivan was first on my mind, followed by the guy in the truck that was squished like an accordion.

But before reaching for the door handle I glanced in the rear view mirror one last time.

And as I looked up into my rear view mirror, all I could see were these letters. They were backwards: G- r- e-y-h-o-oohhhhhhhhh…

I jerked the car one last time to the left until my rims were grinding against the curb. And by some miracle… the bus slipped by me in slow motion.

And as I followed the bus with my eyes, there in front of it was the first car to have been hit. It was still blocking the highway. The woman driving the car had been frozen in panic. All this time she had done nothing. All the while I was making spit-second decisions and taking action to avoid being hit. Meanwhile she was just sitting in her car, sideways across the left lane of traffic; the left lane now occupied by the Greyhound bus that was sliding past me in slow motion as the bus driver stood on his breaks. And the woman in the car… I watched the horror on her face… she raised both of her hands across her face. I watched as she screamed…

…and the Greyhound plowed into her car door. He windows shattered into a thousand shards of glass. Her car crumpled like a tin can, spinning down the bridge the way a tin can spins when kicked down the street by a child.

Then there was silence.

I exited my car. I crawled out onto the railing of the bridge.

I walked around the back of my car into the piles of crumpled cars and dazed drivers. The space between my car’s right side and the side of the bus was approximately eight inches. I eased between my back bumper and the bus so I could go check on the lady in the first car.

Out of 70 cars, my car was the only one without a scratch. No one had hit me.

It was a miracle. But I also did something the driver hit by the bus did not do: I took action.

In this world… there are some people who react and respond… and there are some who fall into fog of decision paralysis.

The fog of decision paralysis often strikes people in public relations, the men and women in the c-suite, and the leadership positions in the corporate world. When faced with a crisis, they often do nothing to effectively communicate to key audiences, as if they are paralyzed with fear.

Sure, fire crews are authorized to fight their fire without approval. But it often takes 4-8 hours for a news release to be written, approved and released, following the onset of a crisis.

Doing nothing is unacceptable. Doing nothing makes things worse.

In the age of Twitter, you must decide today how you will communicate at the speed of Twitter when a crisis strikes.

If the answer eludes you, call me at 985-624-9976. Your answer awaits.

by, Gerard Braud

Crisis communication resources to help you protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.

Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog

Marshawn Lynch and the High Cost of Super Bowl Media Interviews

A small gallery

Selecting the Right Spokesperson: Should it be the CEO?

My Mentor is Dead

The Fog of Decision Paralysis: A Lesson in Crisis Behavior

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