By Gerard Braud

In 2013 there is no excuse for such failed crisis communications. Any and every company should be ready to make a public statement on any crisis in one hour or less. It is good public relations; it is good media relations; it is good crisis communication; it is good social media crisis communication.

So here it is on Monday afternoon, February 18, 2013 as I sit in my office near New Orleans and Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked nearly 4 hours ago. The hackers make it look like a McDonald’s account.

 

Burger King eventually managed to get Twitter to suspend the account and pull down the content and ugly comments.

 

But in the 140-character world of fast news, the fast food company is SLOW to officially issue a statement.

 

 

 

Here Burger King, I’ll help you out. Go to my website and download a sample of what a First Critical Statement should look like:

 

Type in the coupon code: CRISISCOMPLAN

That way you can have it for free. And anyone else reading this blog can have it for free as well.

 

 

Every company should have a template like this for fast release to the media, your customers and to your website. In the crisis communications plans I write, this template would then have 100 more companion templates with more pre-written details about every type of crisis imaginable.

The time to prepare these responses is on a clear sunny day before you need them. The worst time to write a response to a crisis is during the crisis.

Burger King’s Facebook page is full of comments by followers, but Burger King hasn’t even bothered to post anything on their Facebook page to acknowledge this unfolding social media and public relations crisis. This is simply failed public relations and failed crisis communications.

 

Burger King’s official web page has a page for news releases, but as I write this nearly 4 hours after the crisis began, there is no official statement about the hacking from Burger King.

 

There is a page with names of media contacts. You would think one of these people would be issuing a statement, but no, that isn’t happening.

 

 

I decided to send them e-mail, but no one has replied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did find a news story on the Associated Press website that said, “Burger King plans to issue an apology later today.” Really? Later? How about right now? How about an hour or less after the event happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And just before hitting “publish” on this blog, I’ve tripped across a Chicago Tribune story with an apology message from Burger King.

Here is the statement it took Burger King 4 plus hours to write:

“We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics,” Burger King said in a statement to the Tribune this afternoon.

Long story short: Burger King PR Team – you guys are failures.

The next question is will the PR people who read this immediately gather their team together and update their crisis communications plan and prepare for a hack of their own social media accounts, or will they simply go about their daily PR task and hope it never happens to them?

 

 

 

 

Let’s be respectful here and realize that many poor people don’t have either dental insurance or the ability to pay out of pocket for dental care. And let’s realize that while hoping to someday fulfill the dream of home ownership, many people live in an affordable alternative – a mobile home.

Let’s also recognize that many of these people are in lower income brackets and therefore also tend to live near industrial facilities where the more affluent members of society may work, but do not live.

With all of that out of the way, let me acknowledge that when I was a journalist, people would actually ask me, “Why do reporters always interview people with no teeth who live in trailers?”

The answer was, because when the industrial facility blew up, no one from the company would agree to an interview with us. The people living near the facility were the only eye witnesses and they were willing to speak.

If you work for a company that has a crisis, you have the responsibility to provide a spokesperson as soon as the media arrives. Usually the media will be on site within 30 minutes to an hour, depending upon the crisis. And as more media outlets become dependent upon web based audiences, their need for news is even more immediate.

Reporters need facts and quotes and they are going to get them from somewhere. It is their job to get interviews and their job is on the line if they do not deliver.

If you don’t give the information to the reporter, the reporter will go get it from someone else and that someone else will likely not represent your point of view.

And as the age of Social Media and web based tools expands, more and more media outlets are dependent upon digital photos and video taken by eyewitnesses. A simple cell phone is capable of doing an enormous amount of reputational damage by providing the media with pictures and video.

So what do you do?

First you need to establish policy and practices that insure you have a spokesperson ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

Secondly, you need to have a crisis communications plan that contains a vast array of pre-written statements designed to address all of the many crises your organization could face.

With those two things, a spokesperson should be able to pull a pre-written template out of the crisis communications plan and walk out to the media to deliver that statement. It also allows your organization to post the template to the web, email it to the media, employees and other key audiences.

Even if you only have partial facts, your organization still needs to make a statement. And it is critical that the statement is delivered by a person and not just issued on paper or via the web. The human element is critical in gaining the trust of the media, employees and other key audiences. A written statement is simply a cold cluster of words.

In my world, the spokesperson should be able to deliver the statement live within one hour or less. It should never be longer than an hour and hopefully much sooner than an hour.

One of the biggest delays in issuing statements is the lengthy process of waiting of executives and lawyers to approve a statement. This delay should be eliminated with the pre-written statements. The statements should be pre-approved by executives and the legal department so that the public relations or communications department can issue statements quickly.

Certain portions of the template must be fill-in-the-blank, and the communications department must be authorized to fill in the blanks with information such as time, date, and other critical facts. Executives and lawyers need to establish a trusting relationship with the communications department so that they help speed up the process rather than hinder and delay the communications process.

When you follow these simple steps, you begin to manipulate the media because you are meeting their wants, needs and desires.  You also become their friend. The more you can provide the media with information, the less need they have to interview an ill informed eyewitness who is thrilled to have their 15 minutes of fame. The more you can occupy the media’s time, the less time they have to spend interviewing people with no teeth who live in a trailer.

Check out my 2-day crisis communications plan course: You will knock out your plan and templates so your organization is never ill-represented in the media.

Media training teaches the concept of identifying your “3 Key Messages.”  In other words, what are the 3 most important things you need to communicate during your interview with the reporter?

But what exactly is a key message? Is it a bullet point? Is it a talking point? Is it a set of words that incorporate more spin than truth? Is it a set of verbatim words that incorporate both truth and quotes?

In my world, it is a set of verbatim words that incorporate both truth and quotes. But many media trainers teach only bullet points and talking points. I call this “The Myth About 3 Key Messages.”

Let’s put this in the context of a U.S. political candidate in a debate with his or her opponent. The moderator of the debate might ask a question such as, “Please give me your thoughts on education.”

The candidate, whose strategist may have determined that the key messages should only be about energy, the economy and international relations, is left with nothing to say. Therefore, the candidate will BS his or her way through 50 seconds of a 60 second answer, then conclude by saying, “Education is important and you can get more details on my website.”

That is such bull!

When you give a spokesperson or executive only bullet points and talking points for an interview, you give them license to ad lib. Have you ever seen anyone who can truly ad lib well? They are few and far between. The person who ad libs is doing what? They are winging it! And when you wing it you crash and burn.

You should start an interview with 3 key AREAS that you want to talk about. For each of those areas, you should have learned and internalized several pre-written sentences that are also very quotable sentences. Then, each of those 3 areas should have 3 key messages of their own, that are well written, internalized and quotable. And conceivably, each of those 3 key messages will have 3 more messages to go with them.

Think of your conversation as a large live oak tree like you see in the south. Picture that tree with a huge, study trunk and 3 large branches. Your “Tree Trunk Message” should consist of 2 sentences that anchor the entire conversation. These are the first words out of your mouth when the reporter asks the first question and they provide context for the entire conversation. Both sentences must be quotable.

Next, write 2 more sentences for each of those 3 large branches that grow from the tree trunk. These sentences must also be highly quotable and will add a few more overarching facts and point to other important areas that you may want to talk about.

Now add 3 limbs to each of the large branches. Then add 3 twigs to each of the limbs. Then add 3 leaves to each of the twigs. Ultimately, just as a tree sprouts limbs, twigs and leaves, your conversation needs to sprout additional sentences with slightly more detail. Draw it out. If you can visualize the tree, you will begin to understand how the conversation grows.

In our visualization, the leaves represent great detail while the tree trunk and 3 branches symbolize very basic facts. If you invest time to populate your tree with verbatim, quotable sentences that you internalize, your next interview will be the easiest interview ever. Basically, your populated tree has created a full conversation and an interview should be a conversation. It should tell a story.

The Conversation Tree analogy has prepared us to tell our story in the inverted pyramid style – the same style reporters use when they write.

Is this easy? No. Does it take preparation? Absolutely. How much preparation? An interview is as important as any business deal. If you could attach a dollar to every word that comes out of your mouth, would you make money or lose money?

Bottom line – know what you want to say, know it verbatim, and be prepared to tell a story.