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Crisis Communication for West Texas Fertilizer Plant in Waco: Why PIOs, Emergency Managers and PR People Should be Using CNN iReports

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By, Gerard Braud

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

IReport Voting pageAs I write this article, the media are reporting on the crisis in Waco, Texas at the West Texas Fertilizer Plant, which blew up.

In a news conference I’m watching on television, the Sheriff is admonishing the media that he has received their request to take video at the scene, but that he cannot yet accommodate them. This is exactly the kind of case that lends itself to the training and lessons I’ve been discussing in this series of articles about CNN iReports.  Companies, Public Information Officers (PIO), public relations practitioners, Emergency Managers, and government officials have the ability to use iReports to get critical information and pictures to the media.

As we watch this news cycle, the video we see the most, was captured by a citizen sitting in his truck with is daughter. He was video taping the initial fire, and then accidentally captures the horrific explosion. There are many other online images, as well as video on iReports and YouTube.

This one, specific video that captures the explosion will continue to run until someone provides new, updated video.

Isaac Flooding Gerard BraudIn most cases like this, Emergency Responders are so overwhelmed with the damage, dead and injured, that no one in the community is designated as the person who will provide new information and images to the media. The media crave images. The media crave new information. The media on the scene are bombarded by producers and editors back in their offices who are screaming, “Get me something new!” This is true in small towns and large communities alike. I’ve watched this happen repeatedly when I was a television reporter.

Every community, every company, every responding agency, needs to have either a trained public relations person on staff or a public relations and crisis communications expert that can be brought in quickly to manage the media and get the media new information. A modern media relations expert needs to know how to use an iPhone, iPad or other smart device to shoot short 30-second videos that can be uploaded as a CNN iReport, uploaded to YouTube, and uploaded to local media sites, so the media can download and use that video.

Gerard Braud Media Training and Crisis Communication with IPad IPhoneUsing your smart device you can shoot and upload images of the damage in areas currently not accessible to the media, but open to investigators and responders. You don’t have to take the media in physically, when you can take the media in virtually.

Please read the other articles that I’ve written on this topic for more tips. We’ll have more coming as voting continues for this year’s nomination of CNN’s top iReporter.

If you have questions, please reach out to me at gerard@braudcommunications.com

Here are links to previous articles on this topic:

iReports for Public Relations and Crisis Communications: Why Your Company or Government Organization Should Create a CNN iReport Account Today

Compare and Contrast News Stories: Secrets of the Media

Get the Right tools to be a good iReporter

Set Up Your CNN iReport Account on a Sunny Day

Hurricane Isaac: iReports Before, During and After. Is This Guy Crazy?

iReports for Public Relations and Crisis Communications: Why Your Company or Government Organization Should Create a CNN iReport Account Today

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By Gerard Braud

{Editor’s note: In 2013, CNN selected me as one of their top iReporters, out of more than 11,000 iReporters. This is part of a series of articles about how you can be a good iReporter and how to make CNN iReports a vital part of your crisis communication and media relations strategy.}

IReport Voting pageAs you read this, please be so kind as to also click this link to vote for me as CNN’s iReporter of the Year…  I’m one of 36 finalists and your 30 seconds of support is greatly appreciated.

Here is something you’ve likely never been told to do — start a corporate, business, or government CNN iReport account as part of your crisis communication plan.

Why? Just as you might use YouTube and your social media brand pages as part of your crisis communication strategy, you can use CNN iReports. With iReports, you get an accelerated path to the premier cable news network in the world.

Not every crisis warrants shooting a video and posting it to the web, and especially not to CNN iReports. However, if your crisis event is big enough that the media will show up to cover the event, then your crisis is big enough for you to shoot a short video and upload it to iReports.

The account is easy to set up. Visit cnn.com/iReport and follow the instructions. You’ll need a traditional e-mail address and password, just as you have for any of your social media accounts. You’ll be asked to post a photo of yourself and create a bio. It is important that you list your phone number and any way that CNN might contact you about one of your videos.

CNN Ireport AccountSome corporate leaders or government officials might object to this strategy of having an iReport account. Here is the reality about your possible crisis — if a crisis occurs, there is a strong chance that someone with a smart phone will photograph and/or videotape your event. They may share it on social media and send it to either your local media or CNN iReport. This means that during your crisis, you can either have your story told by an eyewitness, who may speculate and spread rumors, or you can post a report with better pictures, better video, and credible facts. Given the choice, you should choose the option that gives you the greatest control over the flow of accurate information.

All day and night, CNN has a team of producers monitoring all of the videos that get posted to their website. A selected group of videos get “vetted” by the CNN producers, which is essentially a stamp of authentication or endorsement that a given video is worthy of stronger consideration by web viewers.

The iReport vetting team then notifies the producers of the CNN news programs when they see a video that might be worthy of being put on the air. Sometimes the live programs will run just video or still pictures from the event. Other times they will run all or a portion of the narration that might be on the video. On numerous occasions, CNN has run my video with my short narration. Then they take it a step further and contact me by e-mail or phone call to ask me to do a live report.

In each instance, I was acting as a citizen observing an event, but I could have just as easily done the same thing if I had been serving as a corporate spokesperson or if I was a Public Information Officer (PIO) for a government agency or for state, county or city government. This would also be very useful for Emergency Managers.

If your local media offer options for uploading pictures and videos, you should create an account using their website as well. All of this should be done on a clear sunny day, because you don’t want to try to rush through this on your darkest day when you are in the middle of a crisis.

Don’t put it off. Stop now and set up your CNN iReport account. While you are there, take a look at my videos that have been nominated as some of the top CNN videos of the year… and of course thank you for taking a moment to click on vote for me in the In-Depth Storytelling Community Choice award.

In our next article, we’ll look at the technology you need to effectively be an iReporter.

Crisis Communication Priorities for a Sudden Crisis

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(Writer’s note: Please take 15 seconds of your time to vote for me to win a CNN I-report award for my in-depth storytelling and reporting on Hurricane Isaac.  With your vote, I can win the Community Choice Award. Your first vote is greatly appreciated, but to make an even bigger impact you can vote everyday until May 6th.  Click here to Vote. )

By Gerard Braud

Media_Relations_CamerasIf you experience a crisis that results in the mainstream media wanting to cover your story, your highest priority crisis communications outlet should be talking to the media. In the vast majority of cases, you should want to have a live human being talking before the media, and not relying on a simple printed statement, e-mail or even social media post.

It works like this: If your crisis is big enough to command media attention one of two things will happen; the media will spontaneously show up at your door or you need to call a news conference and address the media about your crisis.

In a sudden crisis, such as a fire and explosion, or a school shooting, panic and chaos are likely to follow. The fastest way to settle panic and chaos is to calm emotions with a spokesperson that has command of his or her emotions, command of his or her words, and can demonstrate some degree of competence and control.

Many organizations think a written statement is sufficient. It is better than nothing, but those are cold words. A spoken statement is better than a written statement of cold words is. Audio of the written words creates warm words. Audio allows you to convey emotion. Best of all is a person with warm words appearing in person or captured on tender video. The look on a person’s face conveys more emotions than his or her words alone.

In the case studies I have mentioned in previous articles, including at Virginia Tech, at the University of South Florida, at Dominos Pizza, a human being before the media or on video could have made a huge difference in the first hour of the crisis.

The size of your communications department comes into play, as you determine whether you have enough people to record a podcast or web video. If you select podcasting and web video, keep in mind that sites like YouTube limit the length of what you post.

Add to your to-do list time to reflect upon what your technical capabilities are for using social media in the form of podcasting and web video.

Next on my priority list after the spoken word, is posting your information to your website… the website that you control. Next, a series of mass e-mails must be sent to various groups of stakeholders. These stakeholders will include the media, employees, and then groups specific to your organization, such as customers, parents, students, patient families, government officials, etc. If e-mail is down, you will have to contact some of those people by phone as a Plan B. If phones are down, you will have to have a Plan C.

Add to your to-do list the need to make sure you have those lists made on a clear sunny day. Have the e-mail addresses in group folders for fast e-mail notifications. Also, have a full written, printed version in your plan.

It should be noted that I have a strong belief that all audiences are equal and that you need to reach all audiences simultaneously, or as close to simultaneously as possible. When I first started writing crisis communications plans in 1996, my top priority audience was the media because, at the time, the media were the messengers to the masses. Back then, if a company needed to talk with their employees, the easiest way to do so was to put them in front of a television. Technology has changed that drastically.

There are so many ways to talk directly to your employees and key stakeholders. This means that in many respects you can circumvent the media and how the media might interpret the information before sharing it with your audience. Technology at your disposal includes e-mail and websites, plus reverse 911 phone call capabilities, plus text messaging and more.

One problem that many organizations face is that their IT, or Information Technology departments, severely limit who has the ability to update the corporate website. This can be a fatal flaw if you do not have the ability to update your website.

I recently heard a speaker with a public relations firm present a case study lauding how she and her client so masterfully used Facebook and Twitter to reach out to their community during a crisis. When I asked how they used their own website, their answer was, “well, we didn’t have the ability to use our website, so we had to use Facebook and Twitter.” Whoa?! Really? What that tells me is that both the PR person and the communicator at the company did not have a crisis communications plan in place. Instead, they selected to wing it. It says to me that these are people who failed to plan. When you fail to plan, plan to fail.

Add to your to-do list the need for a meeting with your IT department to make sure you have access to a portion of your website so that you can control the content of information regarding your crisis.

In a previous article I discussed how a WordPress blog template is your best tool for fast web updates.

Controlling the flow of information on your website and getting it posted quickly requires a number of things. Previously I mentioned that every one of my plans has dozens of pre-written crisis communications templates. Each one of those templates can be:

a) given to your spokesperson to read to media on site

b) given to a spokesperson from human resources to read to employees if an employee meeting is called

c) can be posted in its entirety to your website

d) can be e-mailed to your key audiences, while still including a link in the e-mail that brings everyone back to your website

To speed the process of posting to your website, you can create what is often called dark pages. These are web pages that are written and coded and sit unpublished. When you need them, you simply hit publish and the information is up for the world to see. This is also covered in more detail in my previous article about using WordPress.

AirplaneMany major organizations do a poor job of being ready to use their websites. I find airlines to be among the worst. On September 11, 2001, neither American nor United Airlines were ready to use their website for crisis communications. In January 2009, during the miracle on the Hudson landing by US Airways, the company was still more focused on selling tickets on their website than informing the world about their crisis. The US Airways website, to their credit, had a hyperlink on their home page, which I recommend. The link took you to a page in the corporate newsroom with more information, which I also recommend. However, on subsequent visits to the home page, the hyperlink would disappear. If you tried to navigate with the back button to the home page, the home page defaulted to a ticket reservations page. Overall, it was a frustrating experience trying to get first hand information about the unfolding event. If you frustrate your visitors, they will get their information from other sources, which may be less reliable, yet more accessible than your site.

Add to your to-do list the need to convert your pre-written templates into dark pages that are ready to be used quickly.

As mentioned in previous articles, a blog is easy to use and gets high rankings in search engines. It allows you to store many unpublished pages, which are just one click away from being published. Also, search engines place a high value on your blog because a blog is treated as though it is the most current news on the web. Furthermore, the title you place on your blog is quickly picked up by search engines. Hence, if my crisis is food tampering at Dominos, my blog headine would be Dominos Pizza – Food Tampering – Employee Hoax. Simply think of the words that your audience would put in a search engine and use those words in your headline. Don’t sanitize the words in the headlines because the search engines need to see the words that the web searching audience would use.

Additionally, a blog gives you the ability to open the conversation through the comment section of the blog, if you’d like. There are other benefits that you can achieve by using a blog on a regular basis. Industry bloggers and trade publications will follow your blog and use it daily, as well as on the day of the crisis. Add to your to-do list to have an official blog.  Many corporations still are of the opinion that a blog is a bad thing because they don’t want to hear the nasty things customers say about them.

 

What Are the Secrets to a Crisis Communications Plan?

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

By Gerard Braud

Braud Communications Training web photoIt is critical to pick the right tools for crisis communication and your crisis communications plan.

The right fit for crisis communications includes your official website, and a mix of crisis communications channels, placed in a priority and used according to that priority. That priority needs to be established during the planning stages of writing your crisis communications plan. That priority needs to be established on a clear sunny day, when emotions are low, anxiety is low and everyone has clarity of thought and purpose. That priority needs to be tested during crisis communications drills, so that everyone in the organization will trust the crisis communications plan and not second guess the plan on the day of your crisis.

Generally my priorities are:

1) Talk to the media on site (If there are media onsite)

2) Post information to your official website

3) Send an e-mail to all employees with a link to the website and a complete text of what is said on the website

4) Send an e-mail to other important stakeholders

5) Post short messages to your official Facebook & Twitter pages with a link to your primary website

youtube6) Post a YouTube video with your official statement

During the planning stages, let me establish the fact that size matters. By size, I mean the size of your communications team. The organizations that use my crisis communications plans vary in size. The Internal Revenue Service has a huge staff of communicators across the U.S. There are global organizations that have employees all over the world, but some have only one or two people on their global communications staff.  There are national retailers with a staff of two. There are manufacturing companies that have no communications staff at all. Therefore, when I say size matters, which tools you use and in which priority you use them is directly dependent upon how many people can help you during a crisis.

If a company has only one communicator on staff, it is difficult to do the basics of a news conference, web statement post and e-mail, and still have time to deal with social media. If a company has no trained communicator, they may have difficulty getting a statement on the web and updating social media at all.

Since so many companies have no trained communicators on staff or because they have only one or two communicators, every crisis communications plan I write is created with a failsafe mechanism. This mechanism takes into account that the person executing the plan may have zero training. I have colleagues in the communications world who disagree and believe that plans should be written for communicators only. That is a flaw, first because is failure to recognize some companies have no designated communicators. Secondly, it is a failure to realize that, in some crises, the communicator may be out of pocket and unable to execute the plan.

Your plan must be so thorough that it dictates that you sequentially do everything that a seasoned, senior communicator would do in a crisis. At the same time, it must be so clearly written that anyone who can read and follow directions can execute it. This is a much more difficult plan to write because it must be thorough, yet simple, while at the time not being simplistic.

When I first set out to write such a plan, the first draft took 150 hours and the second draft took another 100 hours. At 250 hours of writing, I tore it down with the goal to make it easier to execute yet impossible to screw up. That plan now has 1,500 hours of development in it and guess what? It is a living plan, which means it continues to evolve and grow.

I consider plans that state only standard operating procedures to be too simplistic and dangerous.  This is because there are no mandates to take action in the plan and there are no timelines that must be met in the plan. You can find them online just by searching for crisis communications plans. Many universities use these flawed plans. On the day of the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, the university had just such a plan.

Virginia Tech Shooting - Gerard Braud blogThe Virginia Tech plan had not been updated in five years, which means it wasn’t a living plan. It contained no names or contact information for anyone. It had no pre-written statements. The directions were so simple that the entire plan looks like it could have been written by a freshman PR student on their first day in class. The plan simply listed standard operating procedures.

Meanwhile, the thorough yet simple approach I advocate embeds the standard operating procedure with a list of chronological steps to take. It has specific instructions to communicate at specific time intervals. It includes a statement within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis, and again at the beginning of the second hour of the crisis, if it is an ongoing crisis.

Take a moment to add to your to-do list time to review your plan and ask yourself if your plan is a simplistic list of standard operating procedures that can only be executed by a trained communicator. If it is, add to your to-do list the need for a major re-write.

If you have questions, I welcome your phone call. I’m at 985-624-9976. My two-day workshop to write and complete your crisis communications plan is the fastest way to get what you need.

 

The Media Are Listening in a Crisis

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(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

By Gerard Braud

Among those listening IMG_0470* copyand fostering social media are the mainstream media. CNN’s i-
Report format is perhaps the most dominant among mainstream media, but other media outlets have their own channels for sharing photos and videos. The same is true for local media.

Because I am a regular contributor to i-Reports during weather events and natural disasters, CNN has turned to me on numerous occasions to provide live, on the air interviews. This is something each of you should be prepared to do should you experience a crisis where you work.

I first discovered the power of i-Report during an unusual snowstorm in New Orleans in December 2008. I posted a 15 second i-Report, which CNN pulled off of the web and aired going into their weather reports. It was shot with a point and shoot digital camera, then uploaded via my laptop. I was able to be on location in the snow where no reporters were and I was able to shoot and upload the video faster than any news crew could. Before any assignments editor could think about sending out a news crew, I had already done the job of the assignments editor, the reporter, the producer, the photographer and the editor. Furthermore, it cost the network nothing to have a timely news report.

CNN liked my video so much that they asked me to do a live report via my laptop web camera. Unfortunately, the live report was cancelled at the last minute because a bigger story broke on the national scene. Minutes before airtime, the body of Caylee Anthony was discovered in Florida, after months of speculation that the child had been killed by her mother, Casey Anthony. But just the same, technology placed me where they had no news crews.  The media’s own social network allowed me to speak and the media listened.

Since then, my i-Reports to CNN in Tropical Storm Lee in August 2011 and Hurricane Isaac in August 2012, resulted in the networkCNN iReport Lee Web asking me to be their correspondent, providing live reports for several days. I’ll explain the technical side of how you can do this in a future article.

In the case of the Haiti earthquake in 2010 and the Japanese tsunami in 2011, CNN i-Reports allowed CNN have to have reports in the early hours of these crises. However, as the infrastructure of electricity and communications weakened and collapsed, social media tools became less effective for CNN.

There are two events that I consider as game changers in the world of social media, and especially how it brought out of reach crises to the mainstream media.

One is the January 15, 2009 miracle on the Hudson, in which US Airlines flight 1549 made an emergency landing in the Hudson River. What makes this a game changer is that New York is the undisputed media capitol of the world. No single city in the world has a larger collection of global media correspondents. Yet the first official picture used by the media was a Twitter picture taken with an i-Phone by a man who was on a ferry. He tweeted that the ferry was going to rescue survivors and he included a photo. He was there, where no other reporter could be. Additionally, he knew more about the crash than anyone at US Airways corporate headquarters. So, in this case, the company could use Twitter as a way to listen and get updates. It required the airline to proceed with caution as it attempted to verify facts. We must all be careful not to fall victim to a possible hoax or a Photoshopped image.

To verify what the airline saw on Twitter, should the airline start tweeting back? As we’ll discuss a little later, that depends on many other variables.

The second game changer was on April 16, 2007, when a gunman went on a shooting spree at Virginia Tech. That day is filled with more crisis communications lessons than we have time to cover in this series of articles. These are lessons I am happy to discuss with you in depth in another forum.  On the day of the shooting, a student with a cell phone innocently stepped outside of a building and came upon police trying to storm a building where the gunman was killing 30 people. The student was so close that you could hear 26 gunshots in his video, which he immediately uploaded as an i-Report to CNN. The student took the global media and their global audiences into a place where no media should have been and where no media could go.

I think we can use these game changers as a launching point to emphasize the need for speed in crisis communications. Among the lessons that we should touch on here is that, had the university had a properly written crisis communications plan, it would have dictated communications within the first hour of the crisis. All of this was covered in a previous article. Add to your to-do list that in your crisis communications plan, it clearly needs to state that your organization will begin communicating with the outside world within one hour or less of any crisis going public.

Most crisis communications plans have no mandates at all. Most crisis communications plans, like the Virginia Tech plan on that day, are fatally flawed because they state standard operating procedures, but contain no mandates or timelines for implementing those standard operating procedures.

In this case, the first shooting happened at 7:15 a.m. and the first communications should have begun no later than 8:15 a.m. Proper communications would have likely cancelled classes and locked down the campus, in which case, the student with the cell phone would never have had the opportunity to stumble across this news event and become an i-reporter. More importantly, communications within one hour would have kept most, if not all, students from entering the campus, which would have prevented the deaths of 30 people.

For the record, the first communications from Virginia Tech came out at 9:25 a.m., which was 10 minutes after the second shooting began. Here you clearly see several compelling reasons why there is a need for speed and why you must always begin communicating within the first hour of the onset of the crisis.

This Virginia Tech cell phone video is further a game changer because the university was so oblivious as to what was happening. They waited a full five hours after the crisis began before sending forth a human to make a public statement. A human should have been making a statement within the first hour. Instead, the world was clamoring about the shooting and the story was being told from everyone’s perspective except the university’s.

For timeline purposes, let us note that Facebook was functioning at that time as primarily a tool exclusive to college students, so the outside world was limited on how much they could look in. Also at this time, Twitter was about to be launched and didn’t play a role in this crisis.

Without getting side tracked on the sins of Virginia Tech, the bottom line is the media monitor social media for breaking news, and in the case of CNN, they have a team of people who are constantly reviewing and vetting i-Reports. If you are not ready to use these tools to control the flow of information about your crisis, expect that eyewitnesses with smart phones will control more of the story than you will.

Tomorrow, I’ll teach you about the tools I use to file my live reports, even when I have no electricity in a hurricane.

 

How to Write a Crisis Communications Plan with Pre-Written Statements

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By Gerard Braud

In crisis communications, you should have two types of pre-written communication Gerard Braud * 15
documents. The first is for fast release, called a “First Critical Statement.” Some companies call these “holding statements.”

The First Critical Statement is a way to tell the world that a) a crisis has happened, b) you know about it, c) your organization is dealing with it, and d) you will provide more information as soon as you have it. To get a free download use the coupon code CRISISCOMPLAN when you select the item from my shopping cart.

The second type of statement is much more thorough, which brings us back to your assignment to conduct a vulnerability assessment.

The reason you are asked to conduct a vulnerability assessment is because as a communicator, you may be called upon to issue one or more statements or news releases about any or all of these events.

Referring back to my previous confession of my propensity to always be prepared and to go above and beyond when writing a crisis communications plan, my goal for you is to create a large addendum in your crisis communications plan, where you will have written one document for each crisis you identify in your vulnerability assessment.

Because I’ve written crisis communications plans since 1996, for organizations in every conceivable business, government sector and non-profit sector, I maintain a huge library of pre-written documents. When writing a crisis communications plan with clients, we convene a writing retreat with a team of writers. The outcome is that we customize templates using a proprietary writing technique. The end result is that at the end of the day, your crisis communications plan addendum is quickly filled with 75 to 100 pre-written documents.

The documents contain a series of multiple choices and fill in the blank options, mixed with factual statements that are true today and will be true on the day of the crisis. The document provides great context, the appropriate degree of remorse or contrition, plus great quotes designed to drive public and media perception.

Because these are written on a clear sunny day when emotions are low and anxiety is absent, we are able to produce a better document than the one you might right when you are under a crisis deadline with high emotions.

Additionally, because these crisis communication documents are written on a clear sunny day, you have ample time for your executive team to read and pre-approve the documents for fast release.

Previously I set for you a goal to communicate effectively within one hour of less of the onset of the crisis. Often, critical life-saving time is lost because executives and lawyers anguish and languish over words in your news release. You then lose valuable time in rewrites. This pre-written and pre-approved approach works wonders and speeds up the entire crisis communication process.

The rule here: One pre-written document for each item in the vulnerability assessment.

Your options are to write them yourself, call on me to hold a writing retreat for you, or hire and agency to write them for you. Pick the one that works best for your, your time budget and your financial budget.

In our next article, we’ll cover the steps you need to take to get from the flashpoint of the crisis to the release of information about your crisis.

How to Write a Crisis Communication Plan? Step One: Identify What Could Go Wrong?

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By Gerard Braud

(Writer’s note: Every day in March we’ll have a fresh, free, new article on this topic. If you’d like to dig deeper, you may wish to purchase a recording of the teleseminar called Social Media & Crisis Communications. Here is your purchase link.)

The decision to use social media for crisis communications is not a decision you should Gerard Braud Audience 11make independent of considering your holistic approach to crisis communication.

Social media is only one set of tools that may be in your communications tool box. All tools must be considered, including very traditional approaches, including news conferences, news releases, e-mail and your website. In the workshops I teach and at the conferences where I am asked to speak, I often tell the audience that “tried and true beats shiny and new.” And helping you understand the pros and cons of social media in a crisis and what is the best approach for your organization, is the purpose of this series of articles.

My goal is for you to decide what the “right fit” is for you, rather than perhaps the “force fit” that I see many people using.

But before we go further with our discussion of social media, we must lay a solid foundation for crisis communication with a solid Crisis Communications Plan.

If you want to write a successful Crisis Communication Plan, you need to start with the end in mind. This is a two-fold process. Part of the process is to know every crisis your company, school, hospital, chemical plant, refinery, electric company non-profit, or government agency may face. Another part of the process is to imagine how each of these crises will unfold and what you will be called upon to communicate during the crisis. What will the media want to hear from you and when? What will your employees want to hear from you and when? What will your other stakeholders want to hear from you and when? Should social media be part of your crisis communications strategy?

Step one in writing a Crisis Communications Plan is to conduct a vulnerability assessment. I have two different approaches I use with my clients, and you can use either of these approaches where you work. You can either do this on your own or call me for assistance.

Approach one is to schedule visits with many individuals throughout your organization to ask them what they fear may go wrong and cause a crisis. It is important to visit with people from all layers of your organization. What your top executives experience every day will shape their perception of what might go wrong. But there are many people in middle management and entry level jobs who see risks every day that you need to be aware off.

As you gather their thoughts, compile them in a spreadsheet so we can evaluate them further. Cluster them by types of crises, such as natural disasters, criminal, business operations, financial, technical, computer/IT related, or executive misbehavior.

A second approach I use is to facilitate a group meeting with people from each department within the organization. I segregate them by departments at round tables through the room. Each group is lead through a facilitated discussion about what defines a crisis. Next, the groups are asked to discuss and list all of the potential crises within their realm of responsibility. Each group then presents their list of potential crises for the group, so we can engage in discussions about how to deal with these crises. In some cases, we come up with great ways to eliminate problems and change policies or procedures in order to lesson the chance that a specific crisis might happen.

In both approaches, I define a crisis as any event that may affect the reputation and profits of the institution, which may also affect the institution’s ability to serve their customers.

A few words of warning: Risk managers often offer to let you use their vulnerability assessment. The problem with the vulnerability assessment from a risk manager is that they base their responses on high, medium and low probabilities of a crisis happening. In communications, the risk probability is irrelevant. Your job is to communicate any time a crisis happens.

Another warning is that risk managers and emergency operations directors often focus only on production related crises, such as the products made, the services offered, the equipment used, or the direct threats to human health or the environment. Absent from their lists will be things like sexual harassment, discrimination based on race or gender, or embezzlement.

Please don’t let their approach overshadow the approach you must take to plan for and exercise your communication functions.

Please recognize that if there is a fire and explosion, the Risk Management Plan, the Emergency Operations Plan, and the Crisis Communications Plan, will all be executed simultaneously. We call this type of crisis a “sudden” crisis. But if an executive is accused of sexual harassment and the case is getting public attention, neither the Risk Management Plan, nor the Emergency Operations Plan will be triggered. But the Crisis Communications Plan is triggered and must be used. We call this type of crisis a “smoldering” crisis.

A final word of caution: Don’t let the people who use the Risk Management Plan or the Emergency Operations Plan convince your executives that they have everything covered, because they may call their plan a “Crisis Plan,” and confuse it with your “Crisis Plan.” Truth be told, everyone should stop using the term “Crisis Plan” and use 3 specific names for their plans: Risk Management Plan, Emergency Operations Plan (sometimes called an Incident Command Plan), and Crisis Communications Plan.

With that said, we’ll stop for the day and your assignment is to begin your vulnerability assessment.

 

Lone Star College Shooting – Crisis Communication Case Study

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I’m frustrated by the continued failure by schools and colleges to communicate well during a crisis.

Rather than adding thoughts here, please visit http://blog.schoolcrisisplan.com/?p=95

What Leaders & PR People Can Learn from Lance Armstrong: Denial & Crisis Communication

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By Gerard Braud

Lance Armstrong’s denial of doping over the years provides a valuable crisis communications and public relations case study for analyzing denial by powerful people and how they communicate in a crisis.

This is important for two reasons:

1) Public relations people may give excellent advice and professional council, but be rebuffed by their corporate leaders.

2) Corporate leaders may be blinded by the view from their high perch and ignore the wise council of their public relations professionals.

Lance Armstrong appears to have shifted from a position of denial to a position of doing his duty and coming clean.

Denial is also a critical marker in crisis communications, especially in a smoldering crisis. Penn State is a perfect example of an entire institution where the leaders were in denial.

As a rule, the longer you remain in denial, the more you cause monetary and reputational harm to the institutions with which you are associated.

Lance Armstrong has harmed his Livestrong Charity, his sponsors and his businesses. (PR Daily, CNN)

This is true for denial at Penn State and many other organizations with allegations of child sexual abuse being swept under the rug.

PR people – When you see denial, urge the leader to come clean. If they don’t come clean and follow your advice, then it is time for you to polish your resume and find a job where you are respected for your advice and where the leaders have higher ethics

Leaders – When your public relations team tells you that the best thing to do is to come clean, please humble yourself to take their advice.

Here are a few important leadership lessons.

In every crisis I have witnessed and in every case study I have analyzed, individuals in leadership positions follow distinctive, easy to identify patterns that foreshadow their future success or failure.

• Some leaders do their duty, while others are in denial.

• Some take action, while others are arrogant.

If a leader does their duty and takes action, then their constituents (employees, stakeholders, etc.) will be responsible and remain loyal. However, when the person in the leadership position is in denial and is arrogant, their constituents blame everyone for the failings that occur, and the individual in denial and showing arrogance also blames everyone for his or her failings. (In the case of Lance Armstrong, he has spent years blaming his accusers.)

Remember this:

Duty vs. Denial

Action vs. Arrogance

Being Responsible vs. Blame

 

The best way to exhibit leadership in a crisis is to plan ahead on a clear sunny day, starting with a three-plan approach including a crisis communications plan, an incident command plan and business continuity plan.  Armstrong makes a perfect example for this three-plan approach because he is a leader and CEO who is continuously in the media, he is a brand, and he runs a business.  Most organizations and leaders are up to date on their incident command and business continuity plans, but most fail to plan for speaking to the media, employees, and other key audiences.

My crisis communications plans usually have 100 or more pre-written and pre-approved templates, each containing the words a leader would

use to communicate when “it” hits the fan, especially during the early hours of a crisis when emotions and anxiety are high.

As new issues arise, a document must be created for these new issues. This is especially true of smoldering issues, such as allegations harmful to the brand. Having the proper statement depends upon the leader telling the truth and not being in denial.

The best time to write such templates is on a clear sunny day and the worst time to write and formulate your words is in the throes of a crisis.

Managing a business and making money are too often the characteristics executives consider the mark of a good leader.

In my world, a leader is someone who uses effective communications in critical times to get their audience and themselves through what may be our darkest hours, so we can emerge into a bright new day.

Feel free to download this PDF and share it with your fellow leaders and PR teams.

One Month After Sandy Hook: Effective Crisis Communications In Critical Times

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One Month After Sandy Hook Elementary: Effective Crisis Communications In Critical Times

(Free conference call – Listen on Demand REGISTRATION IS FREE TO ALL)

[Editor’s Note: I recall the morning I received a frantic call from my daughter when there was a shooting on her campus. The school failed on a grand scale to achieve effective communications and failed at crisis communication. I hope this article and telecast will provide food for thought that leads to real change at schools and businesses.]

The tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut will raise many questions about school safety and gun control. What will it not do? The Sandy Hook shooting will likely not raise any discussions about effective crisis communications, although it should.

As television viewers, we see the coverage, but most people don’t realize that such a crisis immediately brings 500 media outlets and approximately 2,500 people to your town and to your front door, all with questions they want you to answer now.

Why no attention to communications? Schools will review emergency procedures. School safety consultants will call for more security measures. Companies that sell school text messaging systems will be in full sales mode. But few if any schools or school systems will do anything to prepare for the day when they might have to communicate with parents and the media about a tragedy at their own school.

The sad reality is that school shootings and workplace violence happens all too often. If you are the leader of a school or company, or the designated spokesperson, examine whether you are prepared to flawlessly and effectively communicate amid chaos, trauma and grief. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if you had a personal relationship with any of these victims. Now imagine trying to talk with parents or loved ones to break the bad news, then respond to hundreds of media calls, while dealing with your own personal grief.

The worst time to deal with crisis communications is during the crisis. The best time to address all of these issues is on a clear sunny day.

As it relates to tragic shootings in schools, be aware of these realities:

• A text messaging system is not the same as a Crisis Communications Plan. A text messaging system is only a notification system. Your text messaging system may save lives on a college campus when you can warn students to take cover from an active shooter. But when those texts are going to parents, a text sent too soon will lead to panic with potentially thousands of parents attempting to reach the school. This traffic jam then keeps emergency responders from reaching the scene. A text messaging system is notification; it is not communications.

• If you are unfortunate enough to experience a shooting at your school or workplace, you can be assured the media will be on the scene in greater numbers and nearly as quickly as emergency responders. You have an obligation to speak to them within one hour of the onset of the crisis, regardless of how tragic and personal the event is. For that reason, on a clear sunny day you should write the statements you will say to the media, parents, employees or any other stakeholders. You must successfully use three types of sentences in such a pre-written statement, which would include 1) fill in the blank statements, 2) multiple choice statements, and 3) declarative statements that are true today and will still be true on the day of the crisis.  I’ve successfully used this system in every Crisis Communications Plan I’ve ever written. On the day of your crisis, your template can be customized for release within 10 minutes. This message should then be shared simultaneously with all audiences, including communications to the media, e-mail, the web, social media, employee meetings and with all stakeholders. No audience should be told anything that is not told to all audiences.

• Denial and ignorance are the greatest evils that keep organizations from writing an effective Crisis Communications Plans. Denial means many will never take this step because they don’t believe they will fall victim to such a tragedy, although they may spend money for all sorts of security measures and text messaging systems. Ignorance means they simply think that having a text messaging system, a public address system and a plan for a fire drill are enough. You will forever be judged by your ability to communicate effectively.

• Do not summarily dismiss your responsibility to communicate and defer all communications to law enforcement.  Some law enforcement officials are effective communicators and some are shamefully bad. Furthermore, their comments should only be about the crime, crime scene and the investigation. Your job is to communicate on behalf of your institution. Your job is to be the face and voice of comfort to those you know so well and with whom you share a bond and grief.

• Leaders will quickly second guess every decision and every word during a crisis. That is why all communications decisions and all words that will be spoken should be determined on a clear sunny day. Most Crisis Communications Plans state only vague policy and procedures without definitive timetables or job assignments. Most Crisis Communications Plans fail to have a bountiful addendum of pre-written statements and news releases. By my standards, if I can identify 100 potential crisis scenarios, then on a clear sunny day, I can and will write 100 pre-written and pre-approved news release templates.

• Stay in close touch with members of your Crisis Management Team. Each team member is running their own team, be it emergency response and incident command or communications. Meeting in person is best, but you should never delay meeting because you are not all physically present. Opt to use conference call technology to hold virtual meetings when necessary.

• The perfect Crisis Communications Plan should outline in great detail every decision that must be made in order to effectively communicate. The plan must be written in chronological order so that in one hour or less you can successfully gather all of the facts known at that time, confer with fellow decision makers, then issue your first statement to the media and all other stakeholders. Your plan must be so perfect and thorough that no steps are left out, yet easy enough to execute that in the worse case scenario, it can be effectively executed even by an untrained communicator.

• Many leaders fail to communicate in a timely manner because they are waiting for all of the facts to be known before they say anything. This is a bad strategy. Speaking early helps eliminate rumors and helps to gain the public’s trust. It is better to communicate a little than to say nothing. You need two types of pre-written statements. The first statement gives only the most basic information and is void of many of the hard facts, which are usually not yet known in the first hour of a crisis. In my plans, this is known as the First Critical Statement. Some organizations call these holding statements.

Such a fill-in-the-blank statement should acknowledge to the world and the media that the event has happened and that you are gathering more information which you will share within the second hour of your crisis.

The second hour statement is a more detailed statement that fills in the blanks to many of the facts that were not given in your First Critical Statement. This statement should be written on a clear sunny day, when you are not under emotional distress. This is the type of statement I referenced above. To achieve this you must successfully use three types of sentences in such a pre-written statement, which would include 1) fill in the blank statements, 2) multiple choice statements, and 3) declarative statements that are true today and will still be true on the day of the crisis.

• Communicate quickly, especially in a college or high school situation where an active shooter is present. During the Virginia Tech shooting, the university had a woefully inadequate Crisis Communications Plan, which is sadly still used by an enormous number of universities. Furthermore, when the first two students were killed, school officials were slow to communicate. Two hours after the initial shooting, the gunman shot 30 more people. The university, meanwhile, had still not communicated the events and dangers from the initial event. In addition to the sad deaths of 32 people, extensive fines and court damages have been levied against Virginia Tech for their failure to adequately issue communications that could have saved lives.

• Never get frustrated because you think reporters are asking stupid questions during a news conference. The questions get dumber when you fail to communicate quickly. On a clear sunny day you can actually make a list of all of the questions you think you might get asked by reporters in any given crisis event. Once you have written all of these potential questions, you can effectively write news release templates that will sequentially answer each anticipated question, beginning with who, what, when, where, why and how. You can also successfully write answers that deflect speculative questions, which are the specific questions that so many spokespeople and law enforcement officers consider to be stupid. I can promise you are going to be asked, “why do you think this happened.” You also know that in the early stages of the crisis you will not know the answer. But don’t get frustrated and angry.  On a clear sunny day write a benign answer and have it ready in your news release templates. All of my pre-written statements contain this phrase: “One cannot speculate on why a violent individual would commit such an act. We will have to wait for our investigation to tell us that.”

• When you have your emergency drills, enhance those drills by including mock media and mock news conferences, complete with video cameras. Never use real media for these drills. During your drill you can test your skills, your Crisis Communications Plan and your pre-written statements all on the same day.

• Social media in such a crisis may do more harm than good. As a communications vehicle, social media is a tool and it should never be substituted for talking to the media, talking to employees, posting to the web and communicating to stakeholders via e-mail. All of these tried and true techniques should be used before Facebook and Twitter. YouTube should be your first social media option, followed by links on Facebook and Twitter to your primary website and your YouTube videos. My experience and research shows that Twitter is especially problematic, because well meaning, yet ill informed people, will re-tweet old tweets as though the shooting is still under way, causing undue panic. Once a shooting is over you must tweet an all clear message repeatedly for several hours, complete with links to your primary website where you must post the latest information.

• Do not delay in writing your Crisis Communications Plan. Twice this year I was contacted by organizations that wanted to write their Crisis Communications Plan “within the next 6 months.” Both had shooting fatalities in the workplace before they “ever got around” to writing their plan. One experienced a triple shooting with a double murder and suicide within 12 hours of calling me.

Please realize that the question should not be if you should have a Crisis Communications Plan, but how soon can you have one. Every organization must be prepared to effectively communicate in critical times.

About the author: Gerard Braud is known as the guy to call “When ‘It’ Hits the Fan.” He is an expert in writing Crisis Communications Plan and Media Training, and has practiced his craft on five continents. He has developed a unique workshop that allows multiple organizations to write and complete an entire Crisis Communications Plan in just 2 days, using his proprietary message writing system. You can reach him at gerard@braudcommunications.com  www.braudcommunications.com  www.crisiscommunicationsplans.com
Amid the heartbreak of every tragic shooting we always hear, “No one every thought it would happen here.” The “never happen here” attitude creates huge problems, leaving schools, businesses and communities unprepared – whether it is a tragic shooting at a school, a theater, a mall or your workplace.

It is heart breaking to have to address these concerns during this holiday season, but such is the reality of our world today.

CommPro.Biz has asked global crisis communication expert Gerard Braud to offer a free conference call and conversation to guide us through the steps every school, community and business should be prepared to take when the unthinkable happens.

REGISTRATION IS FREE TO ALL

http://www.commpro.biz/green-room/the-sandy-hook-tragedy-effective-communications-in-critical-times/

Please share via Twitter, Facebook and e-mail with your child’s school leadership, with community leaders and with leaders in your organization.


In this conversation we will discuss:

• Why this tragedy will lead so many institutions to do absolutely nothing

• Tragic flaws in the conventional wisdom about crisis communications

• Social Media’s upside and downside in a crisis

• Tried and true techniques that everyone must be prepared to undertake

• How leaders fail to lead while throwing up roadblocks