It’s been said that “If you fail to plan, then you should plan to fail.”
Sadly, most brands and companies lack best practices in crisis communications and lack the know-how to write a crisis communication plan. Hence, generally, organizations are reactive, rather than pro-active.
This FREE 5-part video series is a perfect way to put you on the road to strategic crisis communication planning. Plus, you’ll get a chance to schedule a free, private 15-minute phone call to discuss your challenges.
Whether you are in emergency management, business continuity planning (BCP), disaster recovery, HSE, or public relations, this 5-part strategy for effective crisis communications will help protect lives, protect reputation, and protect revenue.
Watch the video for more details on this series and then sign up today!
Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/tartan-track-2678543_1920.jpg4951920gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2018-10-08 11:45:082021-05-19 00:31:265 Steps Toward the BEST Crisis Communications Plan
Prepare for your crisis on a clear sunny day. Your darkest day is the worst day to deal with a crisis.
So, how do you do that? With a Crisis Communications Drill.
A Crisis Communications Drill can simulate realistic emotions and pressures in a controlled environment, where you can mess up in private, rather than messing up during a real crisis.
Your goal in every Crisis Communications Drill should be to test multiple aspects of the organization. These are the seven most important things I test in the drills for my clients:
1) Is there a properly written Crisis Communications Plan that is so thorough that it can be read during the drill, word-for-word, in real time? Does it ultimately result in flawless performance by the Crisis Communications Team?
2) Did that Crisis Communications Plan allow the organization to begin issuing news releases, postings to the web, texts, and e-mails to employees within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis?
3) Did executives within the organization slow down the communications process by excessively word-smithing news releases?
4) Did the Crisis Communications Plan have pre-written news releases that were pre-approved on a clear sunny day by the executive team, so they could be released quickly without re-writes?
5) Are their multiple spokespeople who are qualified to stand before my mock media and survive their questioning?
6) Did misguided egotists step out of their assigned roles and try to take over other people’s jobs? Did they withhold information that kept others from properly doing their jobs, thereby compromising the organization in its crisis response?
7) Did the drill create enough realistic drama and anxiety, to add a level of fear into all participating teams? Did it help them realize drills and media training must be treated like an athlete treats their sport? Did it help them understand that regular practice on a clear sunny day makes you your best on your worst day?
If your drill covers all of these bases, you are on your way towards effective crisis communications. You are not done, however, because crisis drills must be practiced multiple times throughout the year.
Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”
https://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.png00gbraudhttps://braudcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Logo-white-01-300x138.pnggbraud2018-09-26 11:48:512021-05-19 00:32:40What Does a Crisis Communications Drill Need to Test?
Many crisis communication experts have one goal – they want YOU to have a crisis so that you call THEM to repair your reputation so that THEY make a lot of money.
With that said, let me DARE YOU. I dare you, within the next week… or even within the next 30 days, to take one step to examine your crisis communications strategy.
2) I want YOU to have the best crisis communication plan possible, so that you can recognize a potential crisis early, and either eliminate the crisis or prepare to respond to the crisis.
3) I want YOU to have your own toolkit that allows you to communicate quickly, so that you control the narrative, rather than having the narrative defined by rumors on social media.
Each video is only eight to ten minutes long, so you can quickly steal time each day to watch them five days in a row. I dare you to commit to watch all five. That means you will get 50 to 60 minutes of the content I share when I’m delivering keynote presentations to various associations around the world.
And the choice is yours – after each lesson you can ask me questions or you can watch all five and then schedule a call to ask questions.
And the choice is yours – you can take all five steps or you can take my dare to do just one.
And the choice is yours – you can be a do-it-yourselfer DIY style and use my lessons as your outline for success, or you can ask me about some of my turnkey options that will have you up and running in one to two days.
The choice is yours. I dare you to get started.
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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC Crisis Communications Expert
How ready are you to communicate quickly, like an expert, in a crisis?
Adjacent to your Business Continuity Plan should be your Crisis Communications Plan. Your crisis readiness should position your organization to communicate quickly with your employees, the media, your customers, your community, and other stakeholders. Read more
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Variety magazine is writing about the CBS public relations crisis surrounding the sexual misconduct allegations against CEO Les Moonves. Many of you reading this blog could be faced with similar allegations against one of your executives and wondering what you should do and how you should handle such a potential crisis. This requires both expert crisis management and expert crisis communication.
Variety asked for my thoughts as a crisis communication expert. My quote to Variety is identical to expert crisis management and crisis communication advice I would share with all of my clients. It begins with deciding a proper course of action and then sharing a sincere statement that explains what you are doing and why. CBS has said they will leave Moonves in his position while they investigate. I would have gone one step further and asked Moonves to take a leave of absence during the investigation. Trust me, he won’t really be doing his job well with the weight of the accusations and the negative publicity of the crisis. This is the crisis management phase.
First, you should consider the perspective of the crisis. People believe they were hurt and want justice, while someone has been accused. Without a confession, it becomes a situation that requires a third-party investigation. This is the personification of “she said; he said.”
Secondly, consider that this is a highly volatile topic and that the #MeToo movement evokes strong opinions. There will never be a 100% agreement on how to handle such matters.
Thirdly, in business, the decision makers must remember the saying, “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” Hence, when multiple accusers come forth with similar allegations, it is logical to assume the accused person is likely guilty. But lost in many sexual misconduct cases is the basic American principle that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. CBS, however, is following that principle.
My crisis management advice to any company facing allegations against an executive would be to ask the executive to take a leave of absence with pay while an investigation is conducted. My crisis communications advice would be that such a move must be accompanied by a thoughtful and sincere statement, such as:
“Because of the sensitivity of the allegations being made, we feel the best course of action is to conduct a thorough investigation. Because such investigations can prove disruptive to the day-to-day operations of the organization, we have asked the accused individual to take a leave of absence until the investigation is completed. Once the investigation is completed, we will share our findings with you.”
Of note in this modern age of frequent sexual misconduct allegations, employers would be well served to work out the logistics of such a leave agreement, during the hiring and contract phase of onboarding any new executive. Take your cue from police departments, who take an officer off of the street after a shooting, while an investigation is conducted. Some police officers are put on desk duty while others are put on paid leave. The police departments know that a distracted officer should not be on the street with a gun. Likewise, a distracted CEO should not be making decisions that affect the reputation and revenue of the company.
Finally, remember that the time to address your crisis management and crisis communication plan of action is to make these hard decisions on a clear, sunny day, when you have clarity of thought. The best time to deal with a crisis is before the crisis happens.
Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”
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Papa John’s Pizza has a crisis. The crisis communications lessons, lessons for CEOs, for marketing and public relations teams, seem endless. This is a public relations and marketing crisis that appears to lack an expert in public relations and marketing. If you don’t believe me, look at the Papa John’s website as well as the images that I have included here.
If you could attach a dollar to every word you say, would you make money or lose money?
If you could attach a dollar to every word you say, would you make money or lose money?
Papa John’s founder John Schnatter has resigned as of 10:59 p.m. on July 11, 2018 because he used the “N” word in a conference call conversation. As I write this at 10 a.m. CDT July 12, 2018, the company’s stock has lost $96-million dollars in value. The phrase, “If you could attach a dollar value to every word that comes out of your mouth, would you make money or lose money?” is from Chapter 2, page 3, of the book, Don’t Talk to the Media Until… 29 Secrets You Need to Know Before You Open Your Mouth to a Reporter. Of course, in this case, the “N” word was not said to a reporter directly, but the dollar impact and lesson of guarding your words still applies.
I had planned to stop with just this lesson until I went to the Papa John’s website to get more information, which brings us to…
Lesson 2:
Does your crisis communications plan include contingencies for your CEO’s resignation and if your CEO is literally the face of the company, does your crisis communications plan include steps to remove that face from the company’s website?
Yes, John Schnatter’s face is in the logo, and as I write this, it is still live on the web.
Really? Did no one in marketing, branding, public relations, legal, or any other department think, “Hey, we should take John Schnatter’s picture off of the news release that announces his resignation.”?
And look at the all-important About Us page. Here you will find a huge picture of the CEO with his team.
Does your crisis communications plan dictate how to remove the founder’s face and image from your webpage if he resigns?
Lesson 3:
Every crisis communications plan should have a massive library of pre-written news releases.
Paramount in that library of should be a pre-written news release for the CEO’s resignation. Twenty years ago I created a library system that relies on a variety of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank options. My theory is that on a calm, sunny day, your clarity of thought is better than on your darkest day. Hence, you can pick your words more carefully and have them pre-approved by your legal team.
But… and let us call this Lesson 3.2: You call this a news release?
This Papa John’s news release contains no context, empathy, or apology. Context, empathy, and apology are key components in crisis communications.
What should you do?
Every crisis is a time to gather your executive team, with your public relations, marketing, and branding teams to discuss the crisis of the day, the lessons learned, and to update your own crisis communications plan to handle just such a contingency. If you fail to do so, then you are failing to do your job.
Crisis communications should not be considered the art of putting lipstick on a pig after a crisis. To be a crisis communications expert you must anticipate every sort of crisis you could face, and write a living crisis communication plan to handle every scenario.
Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”
Regarding crisis communications and crisis communications plans, does this adage apply?
“The person who says something can’t be done is always right.”
In so many crises, public relations professionals and the media proclaim phrases such as, “This is unprecedented. You can’t prepare for this.”
Pardon me, but that’s bull$h*t.
As a defiant, non-conformist, contrarian, nothing inspires me to do something more than doing something they said couldn’t be done.
If you want to prepare and you are willing to put forth the effort, you can write a crisis communications plan and a library of pre-written news releases that will serve you in any crisis. Public relations people without the expertise, who are unwilling to put forth the effort, take the easy way out by saying, “It can’t be done.”
Here is the backstory of how defiance turned into a process that allowed public relations teams to put an effective crisis communications plan in place in as few as two days.
In 1996, I begin doing extensive research on crisis communications plans and found each plan repeated the same flaws as the ones before it. All conformed to public relations standards of then and today. Being a contrarian, I researched the common communications mistakes made in each crisis. I poured over case studies from when I was a member of the media. I analyzed why spokespeople said dumb things to me in most crises when I was a television reporter. I analyzed why corporations were slow to communicate about each crisis.
The pain, problems, and predicaments of the communicator and the corporation were scrutinized. Once this was done, I began to work backwards, with the end in mind. Multiple end points were identified, which consisted of the intervals at which a statement would need to be made by a company to the media, a company’s employees, and the stakeholders most affected by the crisis.
From 1996 – 2004, I wrote crisis communications plans for a wide variety of businesses, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. The process often took a year of collaboration, which for me was too long. Dealing with the slow pace of corporate collaboration didn’t fit my personality.
In 2004, while recovering from a near-death-illness, I began looking for the fastest way to deliver a crisis communications plan. I had so many plans written that I was able to condense the crisis communications plan writing process down to two intense days of a group writing retreat. I provided the expertise and base documents, while the public relations team provided a workforce to modify the documents.
Ten years later, the plan still works in every crisis. Granted, the base crisis communications plan is a living document that undergoes constant modification to incorporate the ever-growing list of communications outlets, such as social media.
The reality is, you don’t know how every crisis will unfold.
The secret is to understand the intervals at which you must communicate to key audiences. You must make sure your crisis communications plan has a system in place to gather information, confirm information, then release that information.
The biggest breakthrough for me was unlocking the secret to creating a library of pre-written news releases. Starting with the end in mind, I was able to analyze the questions that get asked in every news conference by the media. Based on those questions and a clear understanding of how journalists will write their news reports, I was able to create a series of statements that include multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank options.
Some of my pre-written news releases have as few as five paragraphs while others have more than 30 paragraphs. Some pre-written news releases are for an event that can be handled with a single press release. Others are three-part releases that can be used to issue advisories before, during, and after an event, such as for an electric company dealing with a winter storm. Still others must exceed three parts, to use during ongoing crises. These pre-written news releases can usually be edited and released in as few as ten minutes. This is in stark contrast to the typical problem of a public relations person sitting before a blank computer screen and writing from scratch, then facing hours of revisions and hours of delayed communications.
What are the constant realities for the company you work for? Virtually every set of scenarios can be broken down into fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice options.
A crisis communications plan can be structured to identify your key audiences, the various ways you must communicate to those audiences, and the frequency of your communications.
Is writing this type of crisis communications plan easy? My original plan took about 1,000 hours to develop – that’s six months. Since then, it has evolved with many more hours.
If you think it can’t be done, you are correct for yourself. You are not, however, correct for everyone.
Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC (Jared Bro) is an international expert, coach, trainer, author and professional speaker, who has worked with organizations on five continents. Known as the guy to call when it hits the fan, he is widely regarded as an expert in crisis communications and media issues.
Certain crisis communication and media interview scenarios send shivers up my spine. Would you love to know the top three?
When someone says they don’t need to prepare for something, I cringe.
When someone says, “I’ll wing it,” I feel a disaster coming.
When someone rejects writing a crisis communications plan with pre-written news releases and says, “We’ll just get everybody in the room when it happens and hash it out,” I gasp in disbelief and wonder which world they live in.
Why are these so cringe-worthy?
The answers are below and I’ll be discussing these issues with members of ACD during my presentation at their conference in St. Louis. [EDITOR’S NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect that The National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) has changed its name to The Alliance for Chemical Distribution (ACD). This may affect some links.]
In a world that moves at the speed of Twitter and mobile phone images, a crisis communications expert would tell you that seconds REALLY, REALLY, REALLY count.
But what do we see too often?
We see human egos telling executives that they can wing it and spontaneously crank out great media statements when a crisis hits.
Other companies operate on hope and denial, hoping a crisis never happens and denying the reality that it only takes one event to destroy the reputation and revenue of an organization.
The best companies take these five steps:
1. Conduct a Vulnerability Assessment
Hire a facilitator to help you build an extensive list of all of the potential issues that could affect your reputation and revenue. The facilitator will help you sort out the vulnerabilities that affect your incident command plan, your business continuity plan, and your crisis communications plan. Some types of crises will affect all three plans. But you’ll be surprised to see how many only trigger your crisis communication plan.
2. Write a Crisis Communications Plan
This task can take a year of collaboration to get it right. After too many years of exhausting collaboration, I’ve created a crisis communications system that can be licensed and put in place in a single day. If you are going to tackle this yourself, the key is to build a plan that can be read and simultaneously executed in real time, so nothing falls through the cracks. The more specific, the more terrific. When written properly, it perfectly captures the complicated process of gathering information, confirming the information, and then disseminating that information to various stakeholder groups. It is a fool’s bet to think you can hash out communications decisions spontaneously during a crisis. A great crisis communication plan should have decision trees built in to help your team select the best options based on the uniqueness of each crisis.
3. Write a library of pre-written news releases
Yes, with skill and time, you can write a news release today that is still perfect and ready to use ten years from now. The secret is to write statements with the proper multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank options, based on questions reporters are most likely to ask in a news conference. I typically license 100 at a time to most companies I work with. Short of subscribing to my library, your task is best achieved through a writing retreat. Realize that most companies take three to five hours before they release a statement during a crisis. In contrast, Twitter takes 60 seconds. Your job is to close that gap. Getting everyone in the room and hashing out a news release by committee during a crisis is the worst thing you can do.
4. Do Media Training for your spokespeople
The best athletes have coaches. The most successful business leaders have coaches. And yes, the best spokespeople have coaches. Oh, and yes, you will pay your coach a fair price for their skills. Interview your prospective coaches to see if they are a good fit. For crisis communications media training, be skeptical of a public relations firm that offers 20 different services plus media training. Also be weary of any trainer who tells you to ignore the reporter’s questions and talk about only what you want to talk about. That sort of bad advice will result in embarrassment, public outrage, and degradation to the company’s reputation and revenue. Media training should go hand-in-hand with writing your pre-written news releases. Those news releases, when written properly, should be the script you read to the media during a crisis news conference. Oh, and remember that one media training class doesn’t let you check this task off of a bucket list. Annual practice is a must.
5. Conduct a crisis drill to test your various plans and your people.
Many organizations conduct an emergency drill and only test their emergency response. Never do they role-play the scenario of conducting a news conference or facing an unruly mob of reporters. Likewise, many are not ready for the negative onslaught of social media during a real crisis. Hence, when a crisis happens, folks are outdone and beside themselves because the media and social media consume their time and attention, taking them off of their response game. These days, your drills must be holistic. Test every plan and every person all in one comprehensive drill.
Next time you hear a colleague suggest you hash it out on the day of your crisis and then wing it in interviews, feel free to challenge them, their ego, and their denial.
Un-Selling. It is the opposite of selling. It’s not good (he writes sarcastically). Stop Un-Selling, people. Stop it!
I could stop there, but today’s case study looks at ABC canceling their hugely popular television sitcom reboot of the Roseanne show, which drew upwards to 25 million viewers per week.
The Roseanne show was selling. The reboot of the sitcom was a huge moneymaker for ABC. Money was pumped into production and marketing. Huge salaries were paid to stars. Jobs were created for writers and the production staff.
Then this morning, Roseanne made the unwise decision to Tweet something racist. Yep. In a nanosecond it is all gone. Roseanne tweeted that, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby-vj.” VJ is indicated to be Valerie Jarrett, a former senior advisor to President Barack Obama.
The revenue is gone. The jobs are gone.
Like many people; like many companies; this is a self-inflicted crisis. I like to call these self-inflicted crises an act of “Un-Selling.”
The world is hypersensitive. Social media fuels hypersensitivity.
Corporations can no longer defend themselves in a hypersensitive world. Admitting defeat and closing up shop is more cost-effective than fighting a controversy and the fallout associated with the crisis.
Somehow, after 12-14 years of social media, many people and companies still seem oblivious that we are at the crossroads of social media; we are at the crossroads of crisis communications; we are at the crossroads of selling.
Roseanne has always been controversial and has said many things in her comedy that offend people. When she went off of the air 21 years ago, social media didn’t exist. Heck, 21 years ago the internet and email were just making their mark.
There was a time when a network like ABC would experience a crisis like this, then hunker down with lawyers for a few days, then count how much money they would lose if the show got canceled. They would compare that number to the revenues they would earn, before making decisions. Those days are gone.
These days, decisions are swift, brutal, and costly.
Every corporation is vulnerable to Un-Selling these days. It can be from your own post. It can be due to a bad situation captured on video and shared with the world.
I can’t help but notice the irony that I’m typing these words at the very moment every Starbucks store is closed for sensitivity training because the arrest of two black men was captured in one of their stores, causing the company to lose customers. (Yes, Starbucks was Un-Selling.) It happened when United Airlines dragged a passenger off a flight. It happened when Wells Fargo created fake accounts. It happened when Facebook sold your data.
Everyone one of these is an act of Un-Selling by a company. Un-Selling requires crisis planning and crisis training.
Plan, practice, and stop Un-Selling.
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Who is the default spokesperson? In my expert opinion, the default spokesperson is the eyewitness who controls the media, because a company in a crisis has not provided their own expert for a media interview.
Think about it. A guy named Bubba – an eyewitness – controls the reputational fate and financial future of your company, if he is talking to the media, and an official company spokesperson is not being quickly provided by your company.
It blow’d up real good.
is the quote I once put on TV from a guy named Bubba following a chemical explosion, as he stood outside his mobile home.
When I was a journalist, I remember people would actually ask me, “How come reporters always interview people with no teeth who live in trailers?” They were referring to the eyewitnesses, like Bubba, who were often interviewed near industrial facilities following a chemical explosion.
These days, before reporters even arrive on the scene of a crisis, eyewitnesses like Bubba, are posting pictures, videos and personal accounts to social media – especially Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
As a company, you have
4 communications obligations in a crisis:
Designate multiple people who can serve as your spokesperson.
Hire a media trainer to properly train those spokespeople.
Train the spokespeople to be ready with a written and oral statement that can be shared within one hour of the onset of the crisis.
Hire someone to write a crisis communications plan with a library of pre-written statements and scripts that can be used to quickly and accurately communicate with the media, employees, community, and other stakeholders.
I’ll add a bonus 5th tip: Budget for media training and a crisis communications plan with the same priority you budget for safety training, sexual harassment training, and diversity training. Justify the expense by recognizing that your corporate reputation and revenue hang in the balance for each crisis.
Remember, the destiny of your company is in the hands of a guy named Bubba, when you fail to provide a spokesperson in a crisis.
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The pain, problems, and predicaments of the communicator and the corporation were scrutinized. Once this was done, I began to work backwards, with the end in mind. Multiple end points were identified, which consisted of the intervals at which a statement would need to be made by a company to the media, a company’s employees, and the stakeholders most affected by the crisis.
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