Posts tagged ‘Crisis Management’
The Basics of Crisis Communications – Part Four, Top Ten List
Managing an issue or crisis effectively is key to managing your brand’s reputation. Many companies are ill-prepared for crises and manage them poorly when they arise, but by sticking to a few simple best practices, you can ensure you’re prepared to weather any storm and keep your brand’s reputation intact.
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Crisis Management Top 10 List
10. Have a crisis plan in place. The exercise of writing the plan is at least as important as the plan itself since it forces people to think about likely scenarios that could turn into crises.
9. Identify potential crisis scenarios and transform them into ‘issues’ that are managed over time.
8. Make long-term deposits into a “good will bank” so that, in the event of a crisis, you can make withdrawals and ideally never have a negative balance of good will.
7. During a bona fide crisis, stay in front of the story. Live by this mantra: “Tell it first and tell it fast.”
6. Remember that the Internet shortens timeframes and provides global reach. Use the Internet to your advantage to manage issues and crises.
5. Never forget that in a crisis, your employees are the most important audience.
- Establish excellent relations in advance of any crisis
- Inform them about the crisis—instill confidence in management
- Equip them with key messages to take to the community
- Ask for their support in a call to action
- Hold personal, regular, interactive meetings
4. Use third party experts to tell your story during a crisis.
3. Use the principles of Risk Communication.
2. Use media/presentation training during a crisis and rehearse before speaking with the media or any groups. Avoid hiding from the media.
And most importantly…
1. When communicating with your stakeholders:
- Show empathy (Be human)
- Tell the truth (Be factual – minimize speculation)
- Tell it fast (Be timely)
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
The Basics of Crisis Communications – Part Three, Social Media
Part Twoof this series outlined the steps for creating a standard crisis response plan, but what about handling social media? The internet is creating a whole new avenue for generating crises. Rumors spread faster online; like-minded opponents can be organized quickly by using social platforms; and reporters can base stories on any number of digital developments.
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You’ve likely heard of many internet-generated crises already:
- Domino’s Pizza employees posted a YouTube video of them ostensibly contaminating food.
- Whole Foods former CEO used a pseudonym to post on the Yahoo Finance message boards to decrease a competitor’s stock price.
- A CNN citizen reporter posted that Steve Jobs had a heart attack, causing Apple’s stock to dip.
- A blogger frustrated with trying to cancel his AOL service recorded his phone call with the rep, which spread like wildfire online.
But at what point do online discussions indicate an actual problem? Do a few negative tweets equal a crisis? To answer these questions, it’s important to consider developing “tipping points” for each social media platform. Each organization will have its own unique determination of what constitutes a tipping point. Examples include:
- Blogs: How much “authority” the blog has, rated by Technorati and others.
- Twitter: How many followers the user has or how many retweets a negative tweet receives.
- YouTube: How quickly a video is viewed, how many people have viewed the video, or how many comments a video has received.
- Facebook: How many comments a page or post receives, or how many members an opposition group recruits.
- Websites: How many unique visitors a website gets per month.
Once you’ve determined you have an issue on your hands, what next? Below are the six steps to consider:
1. Prepare beforehand
- Institute guidelines and a response team, and monitor social media diligently
- Establish a visible social media presence so you’re engaging regularly and are prepared to launch responses when necessary
2. Respond quickly and personally
- The sooner you respond, the sooner you can regain control of the conversation
- Respond with tailored, thoughtful replies as an individual, not a faceless corporation
3. Isolate comments
- Contain negative comments in one place, whether a separate tab or microsite, to maintain a positive image elsewhere
4. Provide facts in a calm manner and apologize as needed
- Offer detailed information and direct users to facts and resources
- Change the tone of conversation from responding to negative attacks to a two-way dialogue
5. Take advantage of multimedia
- Photos and videos allow you to enhance content and build engagement
6. Follow through with promises
- Continue addressing concerns and turning the negative attention into positive momentum
Internet discussions progress quickly and can be volatile, but following these guidelines will help you gain control of the situation and redirect it.
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
The Basics of Crisis Communications – Part Two
As noted in Part One of this series, developing a crisis response plan and testing it regularly is crucial for nearly all businesses and organizations. In fact, the process of developing the plan is as valuable as the plan itself. The reason is that the process forces managers to identify company vulnerabilities that could lead to crises, and very often these vulnerabilities can be mitigated or eliminated as the plan is being developed. There are a number of factors to consider when developing the plan, such as:
1. Including the proper steps:
- 1: Empower employees to detect crises and potential crises and notify their managers
- 2: Train managers to determine the nature of the incident with a process to report, if warranted, the incident to Crisis Team Liaison
- 3: Assemble Crisis Response and Communications Team
- 4: Crisis Response and Comms. Team categorizes the seriousness of the incident so response is commensurate the degree of seriousness
- 5: Crisis Response and Comms. Team takes appropriate operational and communications actions, tracks progress and makes continual adjustments
2. Identifying your audiences:
- Customers – existing and potential
- Partners
- Policy/Elected Officials/Regulators
- Affiliate Organizations
- Media – traditional and new
- Environmental Community
- Vendors/Suppliers
- Investors
- Employees
3. Understanding and using the principles of Risk Communication – identifying factors for each scenario that may increase outrage among your audiences, such as**:
- Perceived effects are not observable
- Extent of effects is unknown to victims
- Delayed effect
- New or less studied risk
- Risk controlled by others
- Risk unfairly distributed (not equitable)
- Risk impossible for an individual to mitigate
- Risk capable of creating multiple victims in single place
4. Incorporating tactics to reduce outrage:
- Listen – people are calmer when they’re listened to
- Cede some control, perhaps through community advisory panels or a hotline
- Use the right words and comparisons to communicate risk
- Find common ground and focus on the valid complaints
- Educate through trusted third parties
- Be human – empathize
Crisis preparedness also includes making regular deposits into the “good will bank.” If you regularly and visibly contribute to the communities where you operate and invest in your stakeholders – employees, customers, communities, media and government officials – they may be much more understanding if and when a crisis occurs.
Up next – how the Internet and social media are creating a whole new avenue for generating (and managing) crises.
** See Peter Sandman’s work on outrage factors: http://www.psandman.com/index-OM.htm
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
The Basics of Crisis Communications – A Four Part Series
Business crises are all over the news, and commentary is abundant on how they’re being handled – even years later. Take the coverage of the recent News Corp. crisis or the Air France crash in 2009, for example. Unfortunately m
any businesses are not adequately prepared when a crisis hits and are criticized for the way they manage it. By preparing for potential crises well in advance, however, you can ensure that your business stays on track if one occurs.
Implementing a crisis response plan – and testing it regularly through simulation exercises – is key to being prepared. Effective crisis plans:
- Are simple – a basic checklist is helpful.
- Include a crisis team and spokesperson(s) from both operational and communications sides with up-to-date contact info and backups for each.
- Identify plausible crisis scenarios and plan for them, with defined objectives, pre-written documents and messaging for each.
- Have pre-approved “boilerplate” documents.
- Have third-party supporters that can be relied on to help carry messages.
- Are tested often (once or twice a year).
Up next, all the components to consider when developing the crisis plan.
- David Kalson, CEO, specializes in energy, environment and crisis/issues management.
Influencing the Influencers: The importance of third party advocacy
Strategic communications are most effective when the message is delivered by someone else. This system of causal influence is the driving force behind partnering with third party advocacy groups to build awareness around an important issue.
Developing messages and media training your spokespersons to deliver them is certainly effective, but when a third party advocacy group corroborates your company’s stance on an issue and disseminates your messages to target stakeholder groups, it lends invaluable credibility to your organization.
For example, one of our clients recently partnered with CancerCare, a nonprofit organization that provides support services for anyone affected by cancer, to raise awareness about advances in the treatment of rare cancers. By partnering with a respected third party advocacy group on this issue, the client was able to gain credibility among the physician and patient communities, provide educational materials without infringing on regulatory issues, and deliver information that may not otherwise have resonated. With this model, we were able to leverage CancerCare’s resources and reputation to build awareness about a disease that was of major significance to our client. In turn, CancerCare obtained valuable resources to provide educational sessions and materials to their members, in fulfillment of their mission.
There are several steps to consider when developing advocacy partnerships:
- Recognize the issue – Select one or more issues that are significant to your organization.
- Identify possible partners – Based on the scope of the issues you seek to address, identify a third party with relevant background and experience.
- Research! – Once you’ve developed a list of possible partners, conduct an extensive investigation to learn of any existing or past partnerships the organization may have which may be a conflict of interest or may overshadow a partnership with your company. Also consider any negative elements that may affect the organization’s media presence.
- Reach out – Contact the third parties to determine interest and feasibility of partnerships. Remember that building partnerships takes time, so develop them early. For example, third party relationships can be of critical importance during a crisis, but establishing them beforehand allows the third party expert to speak on your company’s behalf without the perceived biases associated with company-issued statements.
There are lots of examples of successful – and perhaps not so successful – third party partnerships out there. Can you think of any? What made them a success or failure?
By Mia Scott and Melissa Hurley, Ricochet Healthcare Team
Ricochet Public Relations Launches D.C. Public Affairs Practice
This week has been an especially exciting one for all of us at Ricochet. On Monday we named Valerie Carter
as Vice President of our Washington, D.C., public affairs practice. Valerie is a 20-year veteran of the public affairs and government relations fields. In the nation’s capital, she will provide a variety of public affairs services to our clients, which include but are not limited to: grassroots and grasstops organizing, coalition building, third party advocacy and congressional outreach.
Valerie began her career at the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co., where she held positions in both public affairs and government relations for 15 years. She managed Merck’s grassroots programs, the Merck PAC as well as Merck’s congressional education and outreach initiatives. In 2005, Valerie managed the government affairs office for the Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading not-for-profit membership association for the project management profession, with more than half a million members. At the PMI Valerie was responsible for strategy and implementation of government advocacy and outreach initiatives with Congress and federal agencies.
Not only because of her extensive experience in Washington, D.C., is Valerie uniquely qualified to lead our public affairs practice. She also has unparalleled expertise across two of our core business units – healthcare and industry — and her insight and experience in D.C. will be a real asset to our clients by helping them to establish a strong presence in the Beltway and thought leadership on vital public issues.
All of us here at Ricochet are thrilled to have Valerie on our team. Her experience and skills will be an important and significant addition to our existing portfolio of expertise. We are certain her leadership will give us the opportunity to grow as a public affairs agency in the Beltway and beyond.
If you would like to learn more about Valerie Carter and the services we offer in D.C. as well as in our New York office, please visit our Web site. Should you have questions for Valerie or about our new practice in the Beltway, feel free to post them as comments to this article or send an email to the webmaster at info@ricochetpr.com.
Written by Patrick Bartosch
