There’s No Room for Your Facts in a Media Interview

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When I was a reporter, I was always joking around in the newsroom. One day, I declared,

“Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

We all laughed. A colleague was pushing for a story to make the evening news, but there were lots of holes in the story and I wanted my story to be the lead story. I won and got the lead story. The colleague’s story was killed.

Over the years we used the joke here and there, but then we began to realize that way too much of what made the news at our TV station and at those of our competitors, made the news regardless of the facts. In the end, it was one of the reasons I left the news business after a great 15-year ride.

But let’s be honest. How many news stories are filled with facts? The truth is, not a lot. Newspaper stories will always have more details than TV and radio news reports. But TV stories, especially, are driven by visual images. The example that I always use is that if the story is about a brown cow, I need video of a brown cow. If I have no video of a brown cow, I can’t put the story on the evening news.

Another example I always use is the mixed metaphor that says,

“If a tree falls in the woods and it is not on video, is it news?”

When I used to cover hurricanes in the ‘80s and ‘90s I was always upset when I didn’t have video of something blowing away. I needed the visual on video to tell the story.

A print reporter will likely write only a 12-20 sentence synopsis, a radio reporter is only writing 6-8 sentences and a TV reporter is only writing 10-12 sentences.

The average person tries to give way, way, way too many facts in a news interview.

Take this comment with a grain of salt, but the reporter doesn’t really care about you or the facts. Sure, they seem interested in you, but their report is more important to them personally than your facts.

A news report is a puzzle. Certain pieces must fit exactly together. In a TV report, quotes make up one-third of the story. The lead and the conclusion together make up one-third of the story. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but can you guess how much room we have in the story for your facts? In a TV news report, that equals 4 sentences. In a print report that equals 8-12 sentences.

If there is no room in the story for a bunch of facts, why would you spend so much time giving lots of facts to the reporter? Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

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…”

More crisis communications articles:

Please Pick Me to be Your Media Trainer

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash

3 Steps to Make Your Mark in a Media Interview

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tartan-track-2678543_1920Have you put a spokesperson through media training only to have the news report turn out less than favorable? Have you ever put a spokesperson through media training, only to have the interview miss its mark?

If you answered yes to one or both of these, it is time to adopt maverick media training.

What is maverick media training?

Step 1:

Recognize the failing point of an interview. Bad ad libs are the leading cause of interview failures and news report embarrassment. Yet most media trainers still use the same old technique of giving a spokesperson three key messages, with instructions to ad lib about the key messages. The key messages are usually bullet points or slogan type phrases. They lack the parsing that leads to perfection in word choice.

Maverick media training relies on more preparation by a brilliant writer who can think and write like a reporter. Elements include first writing a strong preamble statement that adds immediate context when spoken. It must explain how your organization serves the greater good of humanity and the primary ways you accomplish this goal. The preamble statement must be written in a conversational tone and must foreshadow the aspects of the organization that the spokesperson is capable of discussing. This should then be followed by a series of paragraphs that simplify complicated issues, adding slightly more detail as you go.

Think of the writing process as a large tree, anchored by a solid tree trunk, that supports three solid branches. In maverick media training this is known as the key message tree. The more you grow your tree with well-worded, easy to internalize sentences, the greater likelihood you have that the spokesperson will internalize and use the sentences verbatim, thus replacing bad ad libs with great, quotable content.

Step 2:

Recognize that a direct answer to a direct question leads to failure. That’s because a direct answer has no context. This mistake is the primary reason spokespeople complain that they were taken out of context.

When you use the preamble and key message tree system described in step one, the spokesperson can add context with the preamble and transition from there to answering the essence of the reporter’s question.

If the actions of your organization are always in line with and congruent to your preamble, your interview will always go smoothly. If someone has done something wrong and created a crisis, the preamble can be modified to include an apology for failing to live up to the goals and standards of the organization. The apology can then be followed by an explanation of what corrective actions will be taken to avoid similar failings in the future.

Step 3:

Focus on the final edit. Many people lament that, “You can’t control the edit.” That is false.

If you recognize that every news report has a headline, a synopsis sentence known as a “lead,” and at least one quote from your spokesperson, then you can begin to control the edit.

Maverick media training stresses to the spokesperson the need to begin answers with a series of well-worded, well-written and well-internalized verbatim phrases that mimic the headline, lead, and quote. In essence, the key message tree mimics what reporters call the inverted pyramid. The inverted pyramid focuses on generalities first and adds more details as the news story progresses.

Ultimately, there is a psychology to greater success in a media interview. It involves thinking like, writing like, and speaking like a reporter. If you give a reporter the elements needed to do their job, in the very order and sequence that they need them, your victories in interviews and news report edits will rise exponentially.

If media interviews in the past have failed you and your spokespeople, or you are unsure about the logistics of a potential future media interview, be a maverick and adopt new media training techniques.

 

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…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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3 Key Messages for Communications and Interviews? – MYTH!

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https-::pixabay.com:en:business-businessman-finger-show-2962348:In public relations, corporate communications, and media training, the concept of identifying your “Three Key Messages” is often taught.  In other words, what are the three most important things you need to communicate during your interview with the reporter?

But wait, what exactly is a key message? Is it a talking point? Is it a bullet 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 as a media trainer, it is a set of verbatim words that incorporate both truth and quotes. But many PR pros and media trainers teach only bullet points and talking points. I call this “The Myth About Three Key Messages.”

For instance, imagine 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.”

STOP THIS BULL!

Each time you give a CEO or spokesperson 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? Winging it! And when you wing it you crash and burn.

Start each interview with three 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 three areas should have three key messages of their own, that are well written, internalized and quotable. And conceivably, each of those three key messages will have three more messages to go with them.

Pretend your conversation is a large live oak tree like you see in the South. Picture that tree with a huge, sturdy trunk and three large branches. Your “Tree Trunk Message” should consist of two 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 two more sentences for each of those three 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 three limbs to each of the large branches. Then add three twigs to each of the limbs. Then add three 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 analogy, the leaves represent great detail while the tree trunk and three branches symbolize very basic facts. If you invest time to populate your tree with verbatim, quotable sentences that you internalize, you will ace your next interview. 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.

This is not easy. It takes a great amount of 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.

 

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…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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You May Be Guilty of PR Word Vomit

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https-::pixabay.com:en:business-adult-people-office-3365365:By Gerard Braud

Before every media training class I teach, I ask the PR team to provide me with their existing key messages. Most are word vomit.

Many public relations people “vomit” every word they can, every cliché they can, and every statistic they can onto the page they submit to me. As you might guess, I have to do major key message re-writes before every media training class.

While teaching interview skills in a media training class, a participating executive provided expert insight to the lesson I was teaching.

“So you don’t want us to word vomit everything we know in a media interview, right?” he asked.

That isn’t how I would have phrased it, but now that I think about it, many spokespeople, and the public relations people who write the key messages for the spokespeople, are guilty of “word vomit.”

When a spokesperson is being interviewed, more is less. You must help them fight the urge to say everything they know about the company or organization.

The more you say to a reporter, the more you subject yourself to editing that you may not like.

It may not be pretty, but today’s media training expert advice is:

  1. Avoid word vomit when you write your key messages.
  2. Avoid word vomit when you are speaking to a reporter in a media interview.

If someone read your key messages right now, would they think, “Ugh. Too much information!”?

If you need help finding the perfect way to write your key messages, check out my “Kick-Butt Key Message” writing program.

 

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…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

 

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Take This Step FIRST to Begin Effective Social Media Communications

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By Gerard Braud (Jared Bro)

First Step towards Social Media Communications

In every crisis communications workshop or media training I teach, people ask, “How should a public relations team, company, non-profit, or government agency best use social media for effective crisis communication?”  They ask it from New Orleans to New York and everywhere in between.

I respond by asking, “When ‘it’ hits the fan, and you need good crisis communications, is social media right for the company or organization you work for?”

Your job will be discernment. Your assignment is to discern what is right for you, your PR team, your company or organization,  and your audiences.

You are invited back to these informative blog articles as you wish, to spend a few quick minutes absorbing the perspectives shared here, then decide what is the RIGHT fit. (Good ‘ol option B is to just pick up the phone and call me at 985-624-9976 and we’ll talk it out now.)

Unfortunately, public relations communicators are often like sheep in the social media world, following the flock, taking the advice of consultants who tell you that you MUST use social media. I say bull! I’d rather see you as a lone wolf charting your own course of action than to see you as a sheep.

Make no secret about it, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. In certain situations, it is the right fit and in certain situations, it is a wrong fit.

But before we get into the specifics of social media, we need to agree upon the rules of engagement “When ‘It’ Hits the Fan.” As we go through the various steps we’re going to outline for you, I’m going to give you a specific list of action items to place on your to-do list.

First, let’s agree that in a crisis, the organization you work for has an obligation to talk with several key audiences, which include employees, the media, and your other stakeholders, which could be your community, families of employees, government leaders, etc. If you work for a school, the audience extends to students and parents. If you work for a hospital, the audience extends to patients and their families. A retail company needs to talk with customers. A non-profit organization needs to talk to contributors. Each type of company or organization has a unique set of audiences.

That being said, today’s assignment is for you to make a clear list of audiences you must communicate with in various types of crises, so you can decide how you can best reach them and how they want to get information.

Step ONE: Make a list of audiences, how to reach them, and how they want to be reached. Set aside 5-15 minutes and do this right now.

 

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…”

More crisis communications articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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Papa John’s Pizza Crisis: 3 Crisis Communication, Public Relations, & Marketing Lessons to Learn

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by Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

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.

(Watch and share more about the Papa John’s crisis case study on YouTube)

Lesson 1:

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?

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.

Website Papa Johns Gerard Braud Crisis Communications Expert

Yes, John Schnatter’s face is in the logo and the news release announcing his resignation. Really? Did the public relations, marketing, branding, investor relations, and legal teams… did none of them think, “We need to change the logo.”?

NewsRelease Logo Papa Johns Gerard Braud Crisis Communications Expert

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?

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?

NewsRelease Logo Papa Johns Gerard Braud Crisis Communications ExpertThis 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…”

More Crisis Communications Articles:

3 Lessons the Melania Trump Coat Can Teach All Public Relations People

The Biggest Lie in Crisis Communications

4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

3 Ego Driven Comments and 5 Ways to Combat Denial: Expert Media & Crisis Skills

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

https-::pixabay.com:en:press-camera-the-crowd-journalist-2333329: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 NACD during my presentation at their conference in St. Louis. 

 Attendees can download handouts here.

https://braudcommunications.com/pdf/2018-NACD-Hanout.pdf

 Attendees can download this great special report about media interviews here.

https://braudcommunications.com/store/

 Copies of Don’t Talk to the Media Until… can be purchased here.

https://braudcommunications.com/store/

 

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.

 

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Stop Un-Selling: Roseanne Uses Social Media to Create a Costly Self-Inflicted Crisis

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Roseanne Barr TweetBy Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

 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.

 

 

Media Interview Secrets: 4 Steps Every Company Needs to Take in Order to Avoid the Default Spokesperson

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Crisis communications Expert Gerard Braud - QuoteBy Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC

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.

In two weeks I’ll be speaking at conferences for both the National Association of Chemical Distributors and the International Association of Business Communicators. Later in the month, I’m part of a crisis drill team for a nuclear power plant. The need for speed will be a key point in each of my presentations and training programs.

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:

  1. Designate multiple people who can serve as your spokesperson.
  2. Hire a media trainer to properly train those spokespeople.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

Facebook Crisis: 3 Expert-Inspired Crisis Communication Truths

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By Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IECZuckerburg Silence

Crisis Communication Truth #1

You must communicate quickly in a crisis.

Crisis Communication Truth #2

If you fail to communicate quickly in a crisis, the narrative will be controlled on social media.

Crisis Communication Truth #3

Failure to control your communications, the narrative, and the truth, will result in damage to both your reputation and revenue.

Boom: Enter the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica crisis and the absence of a statement from Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg.
When I went to bed Tuesday night, March 20th, comedian Stephen Colbert was showing tumbleweeds rolling past an image of Zuckerberg, as the comedian noted the absence of a statement from Zuckerberg. At that time the stock value had dropped by $39 billion dollars.

By morning, Wednesday, March 21st, as I watched HLN, their graphic showed Zuckerberg with question marks all around him as they asked, “Where is Mark Zuckerberg?” By this time, stock value had dropped by $50 billion dollars.

It was Wednesday afternoon before Zuckerberg released a statement on Facebook, trying to explain what happened. This brings us to a bonus truth that we will call Crisis Communications Truth #4: When you attempt crisis communications via social media, the angry mobs, trolls, and haters will unleash on you in a way that is uncontrollable and accomplishes nothing, except allowing space for people to vent.

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Ironically, I’m in the midst of preparing a presentation called, “Social Media is at the Crossroads.” It will be presented at the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) conference in Montreal, Canada on June 4, 2018 at 10:30 a.m. This case study personifies so many challenges that companies face in a crisis.

Facebook and Zuckerberg did what most companies do; they made no statement because they are gathering more information.

WRONG. It is always wrong to remain silent, because the void is filled with speculation by the media, pundits, social media, and comedians.

The RIGHT way to handle this begins with a simple statement that says your company is aware of the crisis, that it is being investigated, and that you hope to issue a statement shortly with more information. That’s it.

  • Acknowledge the crisis
  • Empathize with those who have been harmed
  • Apologize where possible
  • Promise to deliver more information within a reasonable amount of time

While the silence prevailed, the primary discussions were people asking, “Where is Mark Zuckerberg?” and “Are you getting off of Facebook?”zuckerberg2

Behold: A crisis of communications that damages reputation and revenue.

Behold: A crisis made worse because of the lack of proper crisis communications.

Behold: A crisis that cannot be controlled by releasing a statement on social media.