Crisis communication resources to help you protect your revenue, reputation, and brand.
Effective crisis communications when “it” hits the fan.
1 Confusing Name and 3 Things You Need to Know to Have to an Effective Crisis Communications Plan
By Gerard BraudImagine this: You are eating dinner at a major corporate event. The event is only serving soup for dinner. You need only a spoon to eat the soup. However the table is set with a knife and fork. You don’t have the right tool for the right job. In other words, you can’t eat your soup.
Why do you have no spoon and only have a knife and fork? Because one of the top corporate officials declared that each person sitting at the table needed a utensil for dinner.
The terminology is flawed.
Now consider this: As a public relations expert and communications professional, you might not have the right crisis communications plan and tools because of one flawed name. That flawed name is “Crisis Plan.”
Three types of documents are generically – and incorrectly – referred to as a Crisis Plan. This is a confusing mistake for three areas of crisis response.
Every business should have three plans with three unique names. They include the:
1. Crisis Communications Plan
2. Emergency Operations Plan (also called Incident Command Plan)
3. Risk Management Plan (also called Business Continuity Plan)
If you are a communications professional, you need a plan specifically designed to meet your communications needs. Yet many communicators in public relations fly by the seat of their pants during a crisis because the company leadership has told them, “We have a crisis plan.”
I know this to be true because of the large number of public relations professionals who attempt to budget time and money to create the perfect crisis communications plan, but who get resistance from their corporate leaders who boldly declare, “We already have a crisis plan.” Many in PR struggle to explain the differences to their boss. If you are facing the same troubling situation, here are three things you should explain to your boss:
#1 A Crisis Communications Plan is used to properly communicate to the media, employee, customers, and other key audiences during a crisis. A crisis should be defined as any event that could damage the reputation and revenue of the company. Some crises are the result of an emergency, such as a work place shooting, fire or explosion. Other events, such as a high profile sexual harassment lawsuit or executive misbehavior, constitute a crises, yet do not have the characteristics of an emergency that require the emergency response of first responders.
#2 An Emergency Operations Plan or Incident Command Plan coordinates internal and external first responders in an emergency. This is the instruction manual for your internal responders for fires, explosions, and acts of violence. Should an emergency take place, the Crisis Communications Plan would direct the public relations team to share information about the emergency with the media, employees and stakeholders. Hence, both plans would be needed at the same time.
#3 The Risk Management Plan or Business Continuity Plan would help keep the corporate supply chain functioning if there was a significant fire and explosion in a production or distribution facility. The Risk Management Plan minimizes financial and logistical risks by having contingency plans for warehouses, production facilities and transportation options.
If a fire and explosion occurred, all three plans would be executed by three independent groups of experts.
1. Public relations experts would execute the Crisis Communications Plan.
2. Emergency response experts would execute the Emergency Operations
Plan.
3. Risk management experts would execute the Risk Management Plan.
Now consider this. The Crisis Communications Plan would be used every time the other two plans are being used. But the other two plans are often not needed or used when the Crisis Communications Plan is needed, such as in the example of sexual harassment lawsuit.
Now ask yourself and your corporate leaders, do you have all three tools to manage all three of your critical response business functions in a crisis? Or will you be ill prepared because of one confusing name?
By 
Crisis Communications Plan
with more frequent crisis communications directly to your audiences.
Excessive use of the phrase “Exclusive.” In it’s purest form, an exclusive is an interview all media wanted, but only one could get, revealing groundbreaking information.
Social media trends are taking precedent over real news. The Today Show and GMA feature their special rooms where they focus on what’s trending. Local stations are wasting valuable airtime repeating fluff on social media.
An increasing number of events are getting news coverage simply because they were captured on video. These days, if a tree falls in the woods and it’s not on video, it is not news. But if someone gets video, it may be on the news.
think and feel about various topics on social media. This makes your company face tougher scrutiny than ever, potentially damaging reputation and revenue.
The phrase “has not confirmed” has been used over and over in recent broadcasts, specifically 187 times on Morning Express with Robin Meade (Source: IQ Media). These news releases are unverified rumors, repeated from source to source.
It is all about ratings. Television news is all about ratings.
Even with my university degree in journalism, I had cancelled my newspaper subscription years prior to the paper’s drastic cutback. I canceled my Times-Picayune subscription because each morning when I read the paper, I already knew most of the facts because the same stories were featured hours and often days before, via television, radio and the web.
But the copycat effort by the Today Show made me truly embarrassed for NBC. Imagine the humiliation of knowing that very few people actually participated in the Today Show scavenger hunt. This dumb copycat imitation reconfirms my decision to leave television news in 1993.
For proof of mockery, watch my favorite television program, The Daily Show. Here is a perfect example of