It’s been said that “If you fail to plan, then you should plan to fail.”
Sadly, most brands and companies lack best practices in crisis communications and lack the know-how to write a crisis communication plan. Hence, generally, organizations are reactive, rather than pro-active.
This FREE 5-part video series is a perfect way to put you on the road to strategic crisis communication planning. Plus, you’ll get a chance to schedule a free, private 15-minute phone call to discuss your challenges.
Whether you are in emergency management, business continuity planning (BCP), disaster recovery, HSE, or public relations, this 5-part strategy for effective crisis communications will help protect lives, protect reputation, and protect revenue.
Watch the video for more details on this series and then sign up today!
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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Prepare for your crisis on a clear sunny day. Your darkest day is the worst day to deal with a crisis.
So, how do you do that? With a Crisis Communications Drill.
A Crisis Communications Drill can simulate realistic emotions and pressures in a controlled environment, where you can mess up in private, rather than messing up during a real crisis.
Your goal in every Crisis Communications Drill should be to test multiple aspects of the organization. These are the seven most important things I test in the drills for my clients:
1) Is there a properly written Crisis Communications Plan that is so thorough that it can be read during the drill, word-for-word, in real time? Does it ultimately result in flawless performance by the Crisis Communications Team?
2) Did that Crisis Communications Plan allow the organization to begin issuing news releases, postings to the web, texts, and e-mails to employees within one hour or less of the onset of the crisis?
3) Did executives within the organization slow down the communications process by excessively word-smithing news releases?
4) Did the Crisis Communications Plan have pre-written news releases that were pre-approved on a clear sunny day by the executive team, so they could be released quickly without re-writes?
5) Are their multiple spokespeople who are qualified to stand before my mock media and survive their questioning?
6) Did misguided egotists step out of their assigned roles and try to take over other people’s jobs? Did they withhold information that kept others from properly doing their jobs, thereby compromising the organization in its crisis response?
7) Did the drill create enough realistic drama and anxiety, to add a level of fear into all participating teams? Did it help them realize drills and media training must be treated like an athlete treats their sport? Did it help them understand that regular practice on a clear sunny day makes you your best on your worst day?
If your drill covers all of these bases, you are on your way towards effective crisis communications. You are not done, however, because crisis drills must be practiced multiple times throughout the year.
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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Many crisis communication experts have one goal – they want YOU to have a crisis so that you call THEM to repair your reputation so that THEY make a lot of money.
With that said, let me DARE YOU. I dare you, within the next week… or even within the next 30 days, to take one step to examine your crisis communications strategy.
2) I want YOU to have the best crisis communication plan possible, so that you can recognize a potential crisis early, and either eliminate the crisis or prepare to respond to the crisis.
3) I want YOU to have your own toolkit that allows you to communicate quickly, so that you control the narrative, rather than having the narrative defined by rumors on social media.
Each video is only eight to ten minutes long, so you can quickly steal time each day to watch them five days in a row. I dare you to commit to watch all five. That means you will get 50 to 60 minutes of the content I share when I’m delivering keynote presentations to various associations around the world.
And the choice is yours – after each lesson you can ask me questions or you can watch all five and then schedule a call to ask questions.
And the choice is yours – you can take all five steps or you can take my dare to do just one.
And the choice is yours – you can be a do-it-yourselfer DIY style and use my lessons as your outline for success, or you can ask me about some of my turnkey options that will have you up and running in one to two days.
The choice is yours. I dare you to get started.
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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…”
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Variety magazine is writing about the CBS public relations crisis surrounding the sexual misconduct allegations against CEO Les Moonves. Many of you reading this blog could be faced with similar allegations against one of your executives and wondering what you should do and how you should handle such a potential crisis. This requires both expert crisis management and expert crisis communication.
Variety asked for my thoughts as a crisis communication expert. My quote to Variety is identical to expert crisis management and crisis communication advice I would share with all of my clients. It begins with deciding a proper course of action and then sharing a sincere statement that explains what you are doing and why. CBS has said they will leave Moonves in his position while they investigate. I would have gone one step further and asked Moonves to take a leave of absence during the investigation. Trust me, he won’t really be doing his job well with the weight of the accusations and the negative publicity of the crisis. This is the crisis management phase.
First, you should consider the perspective of the crisis. People believe they were hurt and want justice, while someone has been accused. Without a confession, it becomes a situation that requires a third-party investigation. This is the personification of “she said; he said.”
Secondly, consider that this is a highly volatile topic and that the #MeToo movement evokes strong opinions. There will never be a 100% agreement on how to handle such matters.
Thirdly, in business, the decision makers must remember the saying, “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” Hence, when multiple accusers come forth with similar allegations, it is logical to assume the accused person is likely guilty. But lost in many sexual misconduct cases is the basic American principle that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. CBS, however, is following that principle.
My crisis management advice to any company facing allegations against an executive would be to ask the executive to take a leave of absence with pay while an investigation is conducted. My crisis communications advice would be that such a move must be accompanied by a thoughtful and sincere statement, such as:
“Because of the sensitivity of the allegations being made, we feel the best course of action is to conduct a thorough investigation. Because such investigations can prove disruptive to the day-to-day operations of the organization, we have asked the accused individual to take a leave of absence until the investigation is completed. Once the investigation is completed, we will share our findings with you.”
Of note in this modern age of frequent sexual misconduct allegations, employers would be well served to work out the logistics of such a leave agreement, during the hiring and contract phase of onboarding any new executive. Take your cue from police departments, who take an officer off of the street after a shooting, while an investigation is conducted. Some police officers are put on desk duty while others are put on paid leave. The police departments know that a distracted officer should not be on the street with a gun. Likewise, a distracted CEO should not be making decisions that affect the reputation and revenue of the company.
Finally, remember that the time to address your crisis management and crisis communication plan of action is to make these hard decisions on a clear, sunny day, when you have clarity of thought. The best time to deal with a crisis is before the crisis happens.
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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The title of this article may sound counter-intuitive, so let me explain further. Don’t talk to the media, but to the media’s audience.
Each time you are about to engage with the media, ask yourself, who is the audience and how smart are they? The general rule is that the average person who watches TV news has a 6th-grade education. And, the average person who reads a newspaper reads at an 8th-grade reading level. Those listening to radio news fall into those same ranges.
When you do a media interview, a podcast, send out a news release, or are asked for a quote, you need to be talking to those people and using words and language that those people understand.
Drop all the big words. You don’t win any prizes for being multi-syllabic.
Can the corporate jargon. “Synergistic win-win collaboration” means nothing to anyone but you.
Say goodbye to the government speak and ax the acronyms. Neither your audience nor the media should need to be a code talker to decipher what you are saying.
Imagine you are asked to speak at career day to a 6th-grade class at your local school, what will you say? In fact, my assignment for you is to call a local school and ask to speak at the next career day. It’s a great exercise.
OK, so the skeptics out there may disagree.
Here are the things I hear from the skeptics:
My audience is different.
Well I’ll just tell the media what I know. It’s their job to simplify it.
I don’t want to dumb it down.
What will my peers think?
My answer is bull, more bull, definitely bull and absolutely bull.
If your goal is for the media to get it right, then simplify the information for them. Do their job for them. Do the translation for your audience.
No one wants you to dumb it down and I’m not asking you to dumb it down. I want you to simplify it. There is a difference. I want you to be inclusive. I want you to respect what the audience may or may not already know. Be kind. Help them out.
If you are concerned about how smart you will look to your peers, seldom will your peers be your audience when you do a media interview. Chances are your potential customers are your audience. Doctors should not use technical medical information but should use bedside patient language. Corporate people should not use corporate speak but customer speak.
Research also shows that even people with college degrees and advanced degrees prefer to read at an 8th-grade level. Information overload means they really want to be able to skim and quickly digest everything they have to read, whether it is a newspaper, e-mail, website or memo.
It is your responsibility to communicate in a way that the media’s audience will understand. You have a responsibility to communicate in a way that is easy for the media to understand, digest and repeat.
In the next media training lesson, we’ll talk about the connection between profit and a media interview.
For the full 29-day online course on media training and 29 secrets you need to know before you open your mouth to a reporter, visit here.
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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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.
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.
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?
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?
This 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…”
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.
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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.
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:
Designate multiple people who can serve as your spokesperson.
Hire a media trainer to properly train those spokespeople.
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.
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.
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Traditional crisis management and crisis communications are practiced almost the same way by every company and public relations firm. A company screws up and UN-sells their customer. Then the public relations team tries to clean up the mess. They essentially try to resell the customer.
Three television commercials have just hit the air with three high-profile companies attempting to repair their self-inflicted wounds and resell their customers.
Will it work?
Facebook lead the way with their television commercial, followed by Uber, and now followed by Wells Fargo.
As a cynic, I wonder if they would be running commercials if each crisis didn’t hurt their bottom line? That’s what happens when you un-sell. As a crisis communications expert, I question why their respective responses were so slow, which further damaged their bottom line.
Most so-called crisis communication experts want to repair reputation. My expert advice is to protect revenue by preventing the crisis from happening to begin with and by getting out ahead of the crisis if it reaches a flashpoint. I have three tips about this at the bottom of this post.
All three of these companies were initially silent and all three were much too slow to respond. Speed in crisis communications is critical. The sooner you address the crisis with one or more statements, the faster the crisis will go away.
Facebook was the first I saw on television. Imagine, the company with one of the largest advertising platforms in the world having to buy television commercials because so many of their customers were un-sold and the only way to reach them is through television.
As commercials go, it is sentimental and emotional and may cause some people to give them a second chance. It confesses the sins of the company, then boldly states, “That’s going to change.” I like that. But what is missing is the phrase, “We let you down, and for that, we are sorry.”
The second commercial I saw was from Uber. Uber portrays their new CEO as the crusader who will right the wrongs of the past and invites the customer “to move forward together,” and “to help write our next chapter.” Void again is the phrase, “In our growth we let some things fall through the cracks and for that we are sorry.”
What is also interesting about Uber, is their growth resulted from virtually every taxi driver in America un-selling people with open windows, dirty cabs, excessive speed and a lack of courtesy. Uber drivers were essentially the opposite until a handful of crises happened that were not addressed quickly enough.
Wells Fargo has the weakest of the three attempts to win customers back. Their commercials are frankly years too late, since their crisis was exposed in the Fall of 2016. The cynic in me says that a commercial this late in the game is likely the result of executive denial, portrayed by folks who thought this crisis would blow over. It didn’t. Human denial in a crisis is the thing that slows response. Regarding the commercial, the music is bad. The script is weak. The commercial is vague in alluding to the company’s actions in which reportedly two million fake accounts were opened, leading to 5,300 employees being fired and the company paying $185 million in fines. Added to the list of bad moves is the company paying almost that much in bonuses to the executives who lead the teams which led to the bad behavior. Oh, and never is there an apology.
Your crisis management and crisis communications lessons should be this:
1) When your company screws up, respond fast. If you want to know how, ask me about the 100 pre-written news releases I now provide to each of the clients who use my crisis communications plan.
2) You must apologize for something. Your lawyers don’t want you to say you are sorry as part of a confession of wrongdoing. I understand that. But I have written many phrases in the past that apologize to the offended party without confession to anything that would give ammunition to the plaintiff’s attorney. I’ve included some of those above, such as, “We are sorry for letting you down.” Remember, winning in court is a small consolation when you have lost in the court of public opinion and your customers have left you.
3) The best form of crisis management is to recognize a potential crisis before it goes public. I could have spotted all three of these crises long before they went public. My best case studies are always about potential crises that were caught in the early stages and made to go away before they ever went public.
When denial, bad behavior, and poor judgment exist in the C-suite, you will have a crisis. That crisis will un-sell your customers.
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By 
By 
Wells Fargo