ChemEdge 2022 Conference: Crisis Communications Presentation

Fast. Factual. No Fluff.

The National Association of Chemical Distributor’s (NACD) ChemEdge 2022 conference is just two weeks away and I am putting the final touches on my crisis communications presentation for the event.

Fast, factual and no fluff is the core message I’ll be delivering as we examine a specific case study in which a major company experienced a devastating event, but it took the company three hours to issue a 7-sentence statement to the media and the public.

How fast could your company get a statement written, approved and released if you had a major situation?

The new SituationHub software could have written a statement in under 3 minutes.
Let that soak in – Instead of three hours… an approved statement could have been ready in under 3 minutes. This means that your organization can be doing crisis communications at nearly the speed of social media. That’s why SituationHub is a game changer for public relations and companies of all types.

The lesson I’m sharing with the chemical distributors are lessons that apply to all industries. These lessons are true for electric companies and utilities; they are true for schools and universities; they are true for banks and credit unions; they are true for hospitals.

Below are ten questions I’ll be asking the attendees at the conference. How would you answer these same questions?

1. How do you gather initial information?
2. Who gets the information and how?
3. Who writes the news release?
4. How long does the writing/approval process last?
5. Who is involved in the approval?
6. What are you really editing and approving?
7. How much time from flashpoint to statement?
8. How is the statement distributed?
9. Who distributes the statement?
10. How much time does that take?

If you’d like to discuss your answers with me, schedule a call.

Your next crisis situation could be minutes away. The time to prepare is 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…”

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