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.

If you need help with your crisis communications plan, we’re ready to help.

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Public Relations Help for the Asking

January 8, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Public Relations /by gbraud

Today’s public relations epiphany is that too many people in public relations fail to ask for help when they need it. There are many sources for expert help and advice. There are great professional organizations like the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRA), and the Southern Public Relations Association (SPRF).

Many members of these associations are willing to pick up the phone for free to answer a simple question. If most don’t know the answer to your question, they’ll gladly refer you to a colleague who is an expert.

One of my greatest epiphany moments is that public relations folks cause greater problems for themselves by trying to tackle tasks that they are not good at or for which they have no professional passion. In my own career, my passion for dealing with the media and crisis communications lead me to develop a niche’, rather than opening a full service PR agency. If I need other aspects of PR, I call other experts who have PR agencies in New Orleans, New York, Toronto or other cities around the world.

Trying to do what you don’t know how to do is noble. Trying, learning, and achieving great things are commendable. But reaching beyond your capabilities often leads to failure, which then leads to you being further undervalued by your employer, as we discussed yesterday. Sometimes you get fired when the failure is too big. Often the difference between success and failure is simply asking for professional help.

And based on the personality type epiphanies that we discussed two days ago in the blog, you need to realize that most of your employers do not understand your craft or your profession. They think it is easy. Business leaders think you can work miracles. CEOs expect you to create magic on a shoestring budget. And often you do create magic with no budget and it feels great when you do. But when you do, you reinforce the notion of every CFO that you don’t need a bigger budget to do what you do. In reality, often you need to push back and say, “No, we need an outside expert to help us with that because the value of success is important and a potential failure would be more costly.”

Some of you are blessed to be in organizations with a huge PR team with experts in many areas of social media, internal communications, employee engagement, corporate social responsibility, and media relations. Some of you wear too many hats and do it all by yourself, including marketing, branding, advertising, and customer service.

Before you reach too far and fail, consider picking up the phone and reaching out to a professional colleague to ask for advice, help, and mentorship.

By Gerard Braud

A PR Epiphany About Your Value As a Public Relations Expert

January 6, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Public Relations /by gbraud

Watch today’s video about Gerard’s latest public relations epiphany. http://youtu.be/XpMAsRLXoSY

Did you find your moment of public relations epiphany following yesterday’s blog and BraudCast video? I’d love for you to write me at gerard@braudcommunications.com and tell me what it is.

In addition to yesterday’s epiphany, there are several others I’d like to share with you as we all work together as communications professionals seeking to achieve effective communications in good times and in bad.

I had a huge epiphany when I realized how undervalued communications is in most institutions and companies. You are an expert at what you do, but you are undervalued in your workplace. Yet in your heart, in your head and in your gut you know there is a high value to effective communications.

While many of you can be considered an expert in the broad areas of public relations, my area of expertise is narrowly defined in crisis communications plans and media interview skills. Crisis communications and media interviews are even more undervalued than broader areas of public relations that the vast majority of you practice. And while strides have been made to measure the effectiveness and ROI of public relations to a brand, the reality is it is still undervalued. Many companies don’t want to spend the money to measure something they don’t believe in anyway.

The reason in part goes back to yesterday’s epiphany based on personality types and personality profiles. Many people who hold executive positions in companies come from an analytical and process oriented background, such as accounting or engineering. These personality types want everything quantified. But the reality is that in public relations many of you have seen enough case studies to know how to do what we do, the right way.

Yesterday I introduced you to the King’s Cake, so let’s use this as a metaphor. The cake has a small plastic baby. You hide the baby in the cake. Then people in the office cut slices. If your slice has the doll then you must buy a cake and bring it to the office tomorrow. Based on my experience as a New Orleanian, I can safely predict that someone will get the doll. For me, previous case studies are proof enough.

But an analytical person may undervalue my base assumption and want to have statistics to back up my belief. They may even want to establish probabilities of which color icing is most frequently sliced first, or whether people most frequently cut in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, or even whether the baby is most frequently hidden under a specific color of icing. And the people who think like that will completely undervalue my assumptions, regardless of my vast experience as a King’s Cake expert.

Everyday you fight a battle against executives who will spend money to promote and market a brand because they expect it to achieve a return on investment for both reputation and revenue. Yet most are in denial about how quickly they can see their brand reputation and revenue destroyed by a crisis or even a poorly worded quote to a reporter.

Today’s revelation is that we are undervalued and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. Yet your job is to do your best and keep striving to make your case that PR on a good day and PR on a bad day are great ways to protect the brand’s reputation and revenue.

I value what you do. Keep doing it and do it well.

By Gerard Braud

(To order a King Cake for your office, visit Haydel’s Bakery online.)

What is Your Public Relations & Personal Epiphany?

January 5, 2015/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Public Relations /by gbraud

View this and subscribe to this channel http://youtu.be/ZeNyTcoQX3k

I’d like you to stop for a moment as you plan for the New Year and your public relations goals. Reflect if you will, on the year that just ended, as well as the years before.

Today is the Day of Epiphany, and I’d like to challenge you to identify moments of epiphany in your own life and in your own career. I’m even going to share with you some of my own moments of revelation and epiphany in order to help you out. We’ll get to that in just a moment, but you’ll do better if you understand why today’s focus is on moments of epiphany.

January 6^th is the Feast of the Epiphany (and it is my favorite day of the year). Here in New Orleans we celebrate it in multiple ways. Today is the last day of the Christmas season. It is the 12^th day of Christmas that you’ve probably sung about. According to Christian tradition, this is the day the Magi – or three kings – reached the baby Jesus in the manger.

Gerard Braud as King of the Krewe of Mid-City with his father Allen Braud in 2001.

In New Orleans, this is also known as King’s Day. It begins our Carnival season leading up to Mardi Gras. This is also the day that many of the King’s are chosen for the various Carnival and Mardi Gras parades. In 2001 I was one of those King’s.

So, here is your assignment or challenge… Today is a natural day for you to go beyond setting goals and making New Year resolutions. Your ability to achieve those goals and keep your resolutions is directly tied to who you are and the revelations or moments of epiphanies that you have had.

For example, some of my greatest revelations have come when I have taken various personality profile tests over the past 20 years. These tests can be a window into your DNA and can affect your career and life positively or negatively.

I’m labeled as a Maverick Leader by Sally Hogshead’s How You Fascinate test. Sally will be speaking at the IABC World Conference this year.

I’m labeled as an Activator and Maximizer with high ethics by Marcus Buckingham’s Strength Finders.

Myers & Briggs confirmed I’m an ENTP – An extravert, dreamer, with opinions who values fairness.

True Colors indicated I’m an extravert who values fun more than money.

This means not everyone is going to like me. Highly emotional people and introverts are repulsed by me. My maverick approach to crisis communications plans is to get finished in two days, but analytical people who value a longer process and a series of deadlines may reject my maverick approach.

On the flip side, if you are a fun-loving, extravert who wants to get in, get out and get done with a crisis communications plan, then we are soul-mates, according to the epiphany presented by these tests.

My challenge to you is to dig up your old personality profiles or take a new test and see what moments of epiphany you have. It could help you know who your allies and enemies will be at work. Like-minded people give you permission to proceed in attaining your goals. Like-minded people are your advocates and will help you get the money or resources needed to achieve your goals. Conversely, those not like you may shoot down your great ideas or setup roadblocks to derail your efforts and ideas.

Who you approach for help will determine if your goals are achieved. Even the best ideas, presented to the wrong person at work, can go down in flames, ruining your year.

Happy King’s Day. I hope you rule your entire year.

By Gerard Braud

Media Training 29: Conclusion

December 22, 2014/0 Comments/in 29-Day Media Course - Don't Talk to the Media /by gbraud

By Gerard Braud

www.braudcommunications.com

We began this 29 lesson discussion with the admonition, “Don’t talk to the media.” The original admonition was that you speak through the media to your audience and the media’s audience.

But as we conclude, let me take this thought a bit further. We’ve poured out for you 29 lessons of best practices for dealing with the media. These practices are tried and true. They work. Please use them.

If you deviate from any of these lessons, you will likely face consequences that damage you, your reputation and the financial health of your organization, whether it be government, non-profit or corporate.

My mentors and personal business coaches always tell me that if I want to achieve higher successes, I should hang around with and learn from people who have achieved the success I would like to achieve. My personal business coaches are the people I turn to in order to learn skills I don’t currently have, or to coach me through improving certain skills that need improving. My coaches remind me also that just as great athletes and performers practice constantly, so must all of us practice a variety skills in order to be better at them.

Dealing with the media and doing interviews with the media is not easy for most people. Some make it look easy, but those are the ones who have great coaches and who have taken the time to practice on many occasions.

I hope the information in these lessons is useful to you. I encourage you to hire a personal media trainer or coach to take your skills to the next level. Don’t allow yourself to feel embarrassed because you are asking for help and be willing to exercise a degree of humility if you don’t meet your own expectations in the early stages of training. Furthermore, I encourage you to make training and practice a regular part of your professional career. Media training is not something that you put on a list, then check off as completed because you have done it once. Learning the skill of talking to the media requires a commitment to training over many years.

If, on the other hand, you chose not to take the advice that has been so freely shared with you in these lessons, at least take this piece of advice: Don’t talk to the media.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

December 19, 2014/0 Comments/in Media Relations, Public Relations /by gbraud

It is time to turn your corporate work brain off.

It is time to rest.

We’ll be taking our blog silent until January 5, 2015. But before we go, you deserve a special thank you. Your loyalty, support and readership over these many years is constantly appreciated.

Many of you have grown from being colleagues in a professional organization, to being clients, to being great personal friends. That’s really cool.

I feel so blessed that I get to serve you by doing the things that come natural to me. This day marks 21 years since I left television news and embarked on this journey with you. You’ve paved the road for me and for that I am most grateful.

At the end of every year, many public relations people tell me they feel undervalued in their professional careers. For example, many who hoped to do media training or write a crisis communications plan were told, “No, it is too expensive,” or, “We don’t have budget for that.” This negative response is also true for many of your other strategic communication and brand goals.

Rest your mind and put those negative thoughts out of your head for the next few days. We’ll revisit your goals in January.

For now, focus on spending time with your family. Focus on giving love, joy or gifts to all, whether they are best friends or complete strangers.

Please take time to experience the joy of the season.

By Gerard Braud

Scroogenomics and the Company Christmas Party

December 19, 2014/0 Comments/in Crisis Communications, Media Relations, Public Relations /by gbraud

In this joyous time of the year, have you noticed how grumpy some people are about their company Christmas party?

Well, have you heard of Scroogenomics? And does it apply to your company Christmas party?

Do you hear these things where you work?

Our party is so lame.

I wish I didn’t have to go to the company party, but I feel like I have to.

My boss is a jerk and I hate that I have to pretend I like him/her at the party.

Scroogenomics is essentially the theory that every Christmas billions of dollars are spent on obligatory actions or gifts that are unappreciated by the receiver. The theory goes on to say that those billions could be better used in ways that have greater value or which are appreciated more.

If your company party brings out more grumpiness than happiness, why not suggest a change next year. Why not convert the party to a toy drive and toy give away party.

The average cost per person for a Christmas party, including food, booze and venue, is about $125 per person. Multiply that by the number of employees at your company and the dollars add up quickly.

Is your company spending $125 per person to fund grumpiness?

Could it be used to fund happiness and unity?

What can you do to make a difference next year?

By Gerard Braud

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

Welcome to Our Crisis Communication Blog

Public Relations Help for the Asking

A PR Epiphany About Your Value As a Public Relations Expert

What is Your Public Relations & Personal Epiphany?

Media Training 29: Conclusion

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Scroogenomics and the Company Christmas Party

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