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IABC Calgary Conference Podcast: Top Takeaway Crisis Communications Lessons

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Delivering the closing keynote for IABC Calgary. Taking off my pants to prove a point about the LuLu Lemon crisis of yoga pants wearing thin on the inner thighs.

Delivering the closing keynote for IABC Calgary. Taking off my pants to prove a point about the LuLu Lemon crisis of yoga pants wearing thin on the inner thighs.

As a keynote speaker at the IABC Canada-West Region Conference, I was asked to do a podcast discussing crisis communications lessons for public relations and communications professionals.  Vice President of IABC Calgary, Will Tigley interviews me to talk about crucial communications issues in today’s industry.

Here were a few of the major crisis communications planning aspects to consider that were discussed in the podcast:

First, the need for speed is one of the greatest issues in the industry.  With the speed of Twitter and all social media, there is no longer time to wait multiple hours discussing semantics of a press release.  The key to speed is pre-written news releases. Put the systems in place on a clear sunny day so that when your darkest day comes, you are prepared.

Will Tigley asked, “How do you go from being good at crisis communications to great at crisis communications?” You must have a robust crisis communications plan with pre-written news releases. You must practice in private, media train your spokespeople at least once a year, and act out realistic, high-chaos, yearly crisis communications drills. 

Another aspect to consider in crisis communications planning includes conducting vulnerability assessments. This means walking throughout your organization, interviewing employees, and conducting meetings to determine everything that could ever possibly go wrong.  Categories range from white-collar crimes, to hurricanes, to violence, explosions and even social media crises. Again, these crises are remedied with a simple, yet thorough crisis communications plan, as well as pre-written news releases for each scenario.

If there is one thing to walk away with when leaving the IABC Calgary Conference, or any conference in the future, do not file away your stack of notes. A dream without a deadline is still just a dream. Narrow your list, prioritize it, and set a date to follow through with these crucial crisis communications strategies.

Listen to the podcast here.

BraudCast Answer: How quickly do you need to issue a public statement when a crisis happens?

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Companies, schools, and various organizations often spend hours writing press releases from scratch and reviewing them with their public relations managers and legal teams before they are ever presented to the media or to their employees. This slow process causes the media to become impatient and begin interviewing speculating eyewitnesses on the street, who may only make your crisis appear worse than it really is.  For effective crisis management and internal communications, how fast should a company release a public statement in a crisis?

Braudcast public statement

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This question is one of a series of debates in the media relations, crisis communications, public relations, and social media industries where you and your colleagues can share observations with each other. Yes, YOU are invited to share your bite size bits of best practices. Here is how:

Step 1: Subscribe to The BraudCast on YouTube

Step 2: You will see a short video that poses a new question every Monday. You then post your best practices and observations on The BraudCast YouTube channel.

3: Once your opinion is shared, you can follow the discussion online so you can compare your best practices to those of your professional colleagues.

Step 4: Watch the Follow up Friday Video where you will see a short YouTube video outlining some of the most interesting observations. Yes…your comments may actually show up on our BraudCast video, bringing you world-wide fame, fortune, a big raise, glory, street parades, and more.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge. Please take 2 seconds now to subscribe to The BraudCast.

BraudCast Answer: Who should be your spokesperson in a crisis?

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Some experts say a media trained public relations professional should take the lead as the spokesperson in a crisis, while others suggest a sympathetic statement from a senior executive or CEO. From a crisis management standpoint, this topic is crucial considering a bad media interview can only worsen your crisis, damage your reputation and harm your revenue. Watch the video to hear what communications professionals had to say this week about the topic.

Braudcast Answer- Who should be your spokesperson

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Today’s video is just one of a series of answers to pressing questions in the media relations, crisis communications, public relations, and social media industries where you and your colleagues can share observations with each other. Yes, YOU are invited to share your bite size bits of best practices. Here is how:

Step 1: Subscribe to The BraudCast on YouTube

Step 2: You will see a short video that poses a new question every Monday. You then post your best practices and observations on The BraudCast YouTube channel.

3: Once your opinion is shared, you can follow the discussion online so you can compare your best practices to those of your professional colleagues.

Step 4: Watch the Follow up Friday Video where you will see a short YouTube video outlining some of the most interesting observations. Yes…your comments may actually show up on our BraudCast video, bringing you world-wide fame, fortune, a big raise, glory, street parades, and more.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge. Please take 2 seconds now to subscribe to The BraudCast.

Please Share Your Public Relations Smarts: Here is How

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braudcast image

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Because you are so darn smart, it is time to share YOUR smarts. Your bite size bits of best practices are valuable to others just like you. So — ta-dah, drum roll – behold, The BraudCast 2.0 where you are invited to share your best practices in public relations, media relations, social media, crisis communications and employee communications.

Step 1: Subscribe to The BraudCast on YouTube

Step 2: Each Monday we will pose a question and I’d love to know your opinion.

You can post comments on The BraudCast YouTube Channel, on LinkedIn at Gerard Braud, or on Twitter @gbraud.

Step 3: After you post your opinion, follow the discussion online to compare your approach to those of your professional colleagues.

Step 4: Watch the Friday follow-up video. We’ll share a short video with some of the most interesting observations. Yes…your comments may actually show up on our Friday BraudCast video. And of course, for you, that means fame, fortune, a big raise, glory, street parades, etc.

Thanks in advance for sharing your knowledge. Please take 2 seconds now to subscribe to The BraudCast. The first question begins Monday.

Tutorial #21 Great New Technology for Uploading Videos to the Web During Your Crisis

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Tutorial #21 by Gerard Braud—

In this series of tutorials I have reviewed the basics on getting great audio, perfecting your lighting, and how to hold your smart device. In this tutorial, I am taking it a step further to show you some of the latest pieces of equipment I purchased that make iReporting or uploading videos to the web even easier. These are especially useful if you want to be an expert at communicating effectively in a crisis.

Click image to watch video

Click image to watch video

Watch today’s video tutorial to see them in action. They include devices that allow you to attach your iPhone or iPad to a camera tripod. This can help to keep your shot steady, while still allowing you to move it some. I paid about $12 for the iPhone attachment and about $69 for the iPad attachment.

You’ll see a really cool LED video light that mounts to the top of the iPad bracket using what is known as a “hot shoe.” This helps to put light on your face and maintain flesh tones when your face might otherwise be too dark. I paid about $25 for it.

For good audio, I’ve purchased a lavaliere microphone that plugs into the headphone jack on my smart device. This gives me better sound for my on camera narrations. I paid about $25 for it.

Each can make your CNN iReport or web video a little better. Best of all, I bought all 4 item at a great price.

This link will take you to my tutorials on the CNN iReporter website. I hope you take the time to view, study, and share all 23 videos and articles.

This link will take you to the index for all of the articles and videos.

If you, like many others, think this information would be valuable as a workshop at a conference or corporate meeting, please call me at 985-624-9976. You can also download a PDF that outlines the program,Social Media iReports.pdf, so you can share it with your meeting planner or training manager.

 

Tutorial #2 Lessons from Game Changing Crisis Communications for Hurricane Season

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Tutorial #2 by Gerard Braud, iReporter Evangelist

With hurricane season upon us, and other violent weather such as floods, hail, and tornadoes hitting much of the United States this time of year, we are focusing on how to effectively use video to communicate in a crisis. Today’s lesson stems from what we learned eight years ago about the power of video, especially when it is uploaded directly to CNN as an iReport.

Tutorial #2 Still image Gerard Braud

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Think back to April 16, 2007, the day of the Virginia Tech massacre. Thirty-two people were murdered. The image that may stand out the most for you would have been a cell phone videos, shot by a student, capturing the sounds of gunshots.

The student shot the video, then uploaded it as a CNN iReport.

This was the moment, for me, that the world of news coverage and crisis communications changed.

You can watch today’s tutorial video to learn more.

I’ve worn and still do, wear many hats. My primary job is as a crisis communications expert, teaching organizations how to effectively communicate with the media, their employees and other key audiences during a crisis. I also worked for 15 years as a full-time journalist. And occasionally, I’m a citizen journalist, filing CNN iReports.

From a crisis communications standpoint, Virginia Tech failed to effectively communicate with the media, their students, their faculty, and many other audiences on the day of their massacre.

Furthermore, had they communicated properly and evacuated the campus in a timely manner, that student would have not been on campus with his cellphone, and therefore would not have captured that video, and therefore would not have been able to sent it to CNN, and therefore the media would never have had the video.

At the same time, had the university’s own public relations team been aware of the power of a CNN iReport, they could have actually provided their own statement directly to CNN by filing an iReport.

This entire sequence of events was a game changer. It signified to all public relations people, to all spokespeople, and to all Public Information Officers, that someone is going to tell your story. It can either be you, as a professional with official and accurate information, or the story will be told by an eyewitness with a smart phone.

Yet here we are in 2013, six years later, and I’d be willing to be the vast majority of public relations people and Public Information Officers (PIO) have never given it a second thought. I’d bet most people do not have an idea how to do this? I know this to be true because when I suggest it in the workshops I teach, a portion of the class is amazed that they’ve never thought of it. Another portion can only make up reasons as to why they think their boss will reject the idea, admitting that they do not have the tenacity to stand up to the boss and make a strong, legitimate case for why web videos need to be an important part of their crisis communication and media relations plan.

Who do you want telling your story during your crisis?

This link will take you to my tutorials on the CNN iReporter website. I hope you take the time to view, study, and share all 23 videos and articles.

This link will take you to the index for all of the articles and videos.

If you, like many others, think this information would be valuable as a workshop at a conference or corporate meeting, please call me at 985-624-9976. You can also download a PDF of the program description: Social Media iReports.pdf, so you can share it with your meeting planner or training manager.

6 PR Questions: Are You a Rug or a Flying Carpet?

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Gerard Braud * 15By Gerard Braud –

In your public relations and communications role, which are you? Are you a rug or a flying carpet?

My dream is for you to soar as a PR expert, being both a thought leader and a brilliant, innovative, practitioner of your craft. My fear is that you let the so-called leaders in your company walk all over you, dictating what you can and can’t do.

Here are 6 questions to help you determine the answer, if you don’t know it already:

#1 Do your corporate leaders comprehend the monetary benefit of what you do OR do they see you as a financial burden?

#2 Do you hear “no” so often that you are feeling defeated and underappreciated? OR do you get summoned on a regular basis to serve as strategic council?

#3 Is it hard to focus on your tasks and know what your goals are because your leaders spontaneously throw new tasks at you? OR Do your leaders give you room to develop a communications plan with strategic goals and editorial calendars?

#4 Are you in constant reactive mode to emerging issues and crisis communications? OR do your leaders encourage preparation by having a crisis communications plan tested with crisis communications drills?

#5 When it is time to do a media interview, do you hold your breath fearing what your leaders may blurt out to a reporter? OR do your leaders willingly participate in media training and actively prepare for an interview?

#6 Do your leaders lump together tasks such as marketing, graphic design, internal communications, public relations and social media? OR do they recognize that unique talents and skills are needed to properly master each task?

If you are agreeing with the negative premises above, then you are a rug. You allow your employer to walk all over you. You are in a low place. You probably hate your job. Chances are you need to hire a headhunter and find a new job.

If you are agreeing with the positive premises above, then you are a flying carpet who can soar in your career. The sky is the limit. Life is good and rewards will follow.

Life is too short to be unhappy. The decision to control your happiness should be in your hands and not the hands of someone else.

3 Key Human Resources Considerations & 5 Strategies for Employee Communications in a Crisis

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Gerard Braud Crisis Plan VideoBy Gerard Braud –

You’ve heard HR leaders and executives say it many times, “Our employees are our number one asset.” If this is true, should those same employees also become your most important audience when a crisis strikes?

An increasing number of HR departments are taking the lead in crisis communications planning to make sure employee engagement is maintained in crisis communications plans.

Public relations teams traditionally wrote and executed a corporate crisis communication plan. In most plans, communications were targeted toward the media.

But the time has come for human resource professionals to forge a stronger partnership with each public relations team. Corporate crisis communications plans must ensure proper and equal communications to the media, employees and social media audiences.

Here are three considerations:

Consideration #1: Employees use social media apps on their personal smart phones. This means they can quickly disseminate facts or rumors about your company’s crisis.

Consideration #2: Haters love to spread rumors on social media, which if read by your employees, can cause employees to doubt whether the corporation is communicating the truth to them.

Consideration #3: With each minute that you fail to communicate to your employees and the outside world, your corporate reputation and revenue are being damaged.

Years ago the media were the most important audience in a crisis communications plan.  They were the pathway to get your message to the masses, including your employees. But that has changed, beginning with the advent of e-mail, the web and Intranet sites. Each created a direct pathway for effective employee communications. HR and PR were able to share the responsibility for daily employee engagement.

These same tools should be your primary crisis communications tool.

HR and PR should want employees to get their news, especially about a crisis, from the company, rather than the mainstream media or social media.

Sadly, the norm seems to be that corporate executives make the mistake of thinking that when a crisis strikes they can gather critical executives in a room and hash out a strategy and write a statement. This doesn’t work and it is a recipe for disaster. When time is of the essence there is no time for impending disagreements, personality conflicts, and fights over commas and semantics in news releases. But that is exactly what happens when executives are arrogant enough to think they can “wing it” on the day of their crisis.

It is far wiser to spend a few dollars to prepare, than to watch large sums of money disappear because of falling stock prices and dropping sales, precipitated by a void in timely communications during a crisis.

While your company likely cannot communicate at the speed of Twitter, a reasonable goal is to issue your first statement to the media, employees and other stakeholders within one hour of any crisis going public.

What should you do if you are in HR?

1) Meet with your public relations team and make sure the company has written a crisis communications plan.

2) If there is no plan, partner with PR to write a plan that provides specific steps to communicate with the media, employees and key stakeholders.

3) Ensure that your plan is built for speed, by writing a library of pre-written news releases, constructed with a fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice format, in order to speed up your communications.

4) Establish a policy that states your employees and the media will get identical information at the same time. Never give employees information that is not provided to the media. Also, never give employees any information before giving it to the media.

Posting your official statement on your corporate website lets you provide links by e-mail to all employees and media with the click of a button. The same link can be posted to social media.

5) To perform flawlessly during your crisis you must practice when there is no crisis. Test your crisis communications plan at least once a year with a crisis communications drill.

Surprisingly, many companies do not see a need for a crisis communications plan until it is too late. Of the companies wise enough to have plans, many have failed to update their plans to emphasize the speed, urgency, and importance of communicating with employees.

If your employees are your greatest priority, you should provide them timely and honest information when a crisis strikes.

 

 

The Crisis Management Wake-up Call for Communities, Government, Law Enforcement and Business

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baltimore policeBy Gerard Braud —

Generally we talk about crisis communications. But sometimes, we need to talk about crisis management. If we manage a crisis to keep it from happening, then we don’t need to communicate about it. Often, crisis management can begin by looking at case studies.

The crisis in Ferguson, Missouri should have been a wake-up call that should have prevented the Baltimore riots from happening. The Baltimore crisis should be the wake-up call that prevents the next community crisis from happening. These are only two community crises that should warn us all that more will follow, if crisis management action isn’t taken.

Most amazing to me is how frequently police officers are caught on video these days doing something wrong. A law enforcement agency can have 1,000 perfect officers, but they only need one rogue police officer to bring an entire department and community to its knees. The number of unjustified shootings and arrests being captured on video is astounding. Each becomes a high profile example of a growing problem, regardless of all of the many justified arrests made by officers.

The margin for error is small. Wake up. Video cameras are everywhere. This is not a suggestion that officers need to learn how to avoid being recorded and caught. This is a suggestion that crisis management in communities must begin with self correction of bad behavior. Good cops need to weed out the bad cops. Police departments need to establish new integrity standards to weed out the bad officers before their behavior paralyzes another department and community.

Likewise, elected officials and police chiefs in every community need to enact crisis management techniques designed to aggressively weed out the rogue individuals who wear a badge. The high cost of human life and community destruction demand it.

As part of a crisis management strategy, elected officials need to start managing the crisis of poverty, under-performing schools, unemployment, and other community problems. No small task, but again, the high cost of human life and community destruction demand it. Aggressive policing in a high crime area doesn’t correct the problem, it only treats the symptom.

Preventing a crisis is economically more affective that dealing with the crisis and the aftermath.

Those of you in business, likewise, need to exercise your own crisis management by meeting with elected officials and law enforcement to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they are taking action. Their failings hurt you financially.

Businesses and business groups can also take direct action in communities to improve the quality of life, without waiting for government to lift the heavy load alone. Business groups can circumvent government to establish community centers, youth mentorship programs, and job training programs.

As we’ve seen in Baltimore, Ferguson and other communities, businesses are incapacitated and often destroyed when the crisis gets out of hand. Business pays a heavy price.

As it stands now, Ferguson and Baltimore have ignited the fires of frustration. Each serves as a model for the next community to follow. Now that the die is cast, you can expect each sequential crisis to be bigger than those before it.

The task of proactively changing a community is difficult. Failure to tackle the difficult task is costly.

What will you do?

Crisis Communications Through Technology and Social Media: The Earthquake Video

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nepalearthquake2By Gerard Braud –

The day is coming when you will need to be an expert in crisis communication using smart phone technology and social media. Actually, you should already be an expert and it is just a matter of time before we discover if you are prepared.

Saturday morning I turned on the Today Show and learned of the devastating earthquake in Nepal. As I flipped through the channels to CNN, Fox, Good Morning America, and to CBS, I was disappointed to once again watch a global crisis covered by reporters stationed in places such as London. Trust me when I tell you the reporter in London knows as much about the crisis as the reporter in New Orleans or New York. Only a person on the ground in that location can provide us with real details.

Eventually, one of the networks showed a smart phone video report filed by Arjun Vajpal, from a base camp on Mt. Everest, where we learned that there were avalanches on the mountain and climbers killed in base camps one and two. The selfie style video nepal earthquakewas posted to social media, where the mainstream media found it and began using it.

How well are you prepared to do what that climber did? Are you able to pick up your phone and in one take, record a narration with video that takes television viewers directly to the scene of your crisis? My experience while teaching workshops to public relations professionals is that most are shocked to learn just how hard it is to produce an effective video. My 15 years as a television reporter doing live shots daily have prepared me to use this technology. But people without live shot experience struggle to find the words to tell a story in one minute, without messing up the narration and defaulting to 10 to 20 tries to get one good take, if they can ever get one.

Tropical Storm Lee iReportMy fascination with smart phone and social media news coverage began with my reporting for CNN and The Weather Channel during Tropical Storm Lee in 2011. I took it to a whole new level during Hurricane Isaac in 2012. I reported for both networks for five days, while living without electricity and being surrounded by seven feet of flood waters, four ten foot alligators, thousands of snakes, and more than 50 dead animals killed in the storm.

Often video of a crisis is provided by an eyewitness, who usually provides poor quality video that is often laced with f-bombs or crazy comments. Imagine how much better it would be when a crisis happens at your company if quality video and a quality narration were provided in expert fashion? Imagine if that video was narrated by a well trained spokesperson with real facts, rather than the crazy speculating eyewitness?

The report from atop Mt. Everest was better and more accurate than the on-camera narration from the reporter in London. Likewise, my reports in Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Isaac were more visual and informative than the reports being provided by network correspondents. Those reporters were much farther from the storm than I was, leading the networks to lead each newscast with my reports.

If you don’t know how to do a great video, please take time to view a free tutorial I built on the CNN iReport website. If you’d like to take your skills up a notch and do the same for your colleagues, please contact me about setting up in-person training at a future conference or workshop.

Effective communications is in your hands. The reality is that you can be the expert who provides effective crisis communication or you can take your chances by relegating your responsibility to the reporter in London or the random eyewitness with a smart phone.

Experience tells us that trying to perfect this skill in the midst of your crisis is the wrong time. The best time to prepare for your effective crisis communications is on a clear, sunny day when you have all the time in the world to practice. Practice until you can call yourself a crisis communication expert who can effectively use a smart phone to file stories to social media and with the mainstream media.