Brand Preservation: Five Critical Steps for Effective Crisis Communications

Contributed by Susan Stern, President, Stern + Associates

Few companies or organizations will never face a serious and immediate challenge at some point during their history. How effectively and quickly the organization deals with the threat and communicates with the media, customers, employees and other key publics often determines how its products, services and corporate leaders are viewed – positively or negatively – for many years to come.

What essential steps should executives and managers take to avoid damaging their brand and ensure a positive outcome when a crisis occurs?

Step 1. Create a Written Crisis Communications Plan

Effective crisis communication depends on implementing a thorough plan based on the ordinary challenges a company could face in the course of an ordinary day as well as extraordinary events such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and workplace violence. The plan must be designed to help your organization’s leaders quickly and effectively communicate important information and key messages to the media, customers, employees and other key publics. A crisis communications plan is an essential corporate tool in today’s world. With social media and text messaging rapidly spreading information – and potential misinformation – to a wide audience in minutes, it’s critical to be able to act swiftly and effectively before the damage begins. Delays caused when organizations need to start framing their response from scratch force them to play “catch up” with the media and other key audiences.

Your plan should be a framework for action, containing the information gathered during your initial organizational work as well as material you’ve developed based on specific scenarios your company could face. It should be flexible enough to be quickly edited and customized for a specific situation so it does not appear that you’re simply issuing off-the-shelf statements.

It is also important that individuals in your company who could potentially speak with the media be trained by a public relations practitioner with crisis experience to understand the preferred communications techniques and effectively deliver key messages on a regular basis and when it counts most.

Step 2. Assign a Crisis Team

Long before the phone rings with a report of a serious event, you should have an assigned crisis team whose members are knowledgeable of your crisis communications plan’s content and ready to respond.

Careful consideration should be given to identifying and appointing a corporate crisis management team that together will manage significant threats to a company. Being able to convene a senior crisis management team quickly ensures you have the right people working on the cause and resolution of the actual situation as well as high-level sources of information and approval authority to ensure accuracy and a swift response.

Your written crisis plan must contain contact information for the crisis team and key managers in every department. In all cases, contact information should be comprehensive, including mobile, home and office phones and company and personal
e-mail addresses. Keeping this information accurate and up-to-date is essential and helps ensure key people can be reached as easily on a summer Sunday as on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

The plan should also contain contact information – phone numbers and e-mail addresses for the newspapers, radio stations and television stations in your market and reporters and bloggers with whom you regularly communicate – so you can quickly reach out to journalists, issue statements or disseminate news.

Step 3. Open the Lines of Communication Quickly, but Carefully

Organizing and planning help equip companies with the tools to quickly launch a communications program in a time of crisis.

While there’s a lot to be said for a slow, cautious approach to communications in these situations, there’s also a great danger in not communicating quickly enough and being perceived as unresponsive or, worse, hiding something.

The more quickly and prudently you can begin to communicate, the more likely you are to gain control of the pace and content of all external communications, be able to state your key messages clearly and firmly and avoid any misperception that you’re trying to hide something with your silence.

Responses to reporters or any audiences, especially in the early going, must be careful and measured. Most experienced crisis communicators often qualify and quantify the information they have on hand very specifically, describing the situation as evolving and the information as still arriving. Use the opportunity to convey key messages and brand attributes such as your company’s commitment to safety, quality, service, complete cooperation with all authorities, if appropriate, and your intent to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.

Step 4. Communicate Directly with Managers at the Crisis Location

Whether a crisis occurs two floors, two states or two time zones away from corporate headquarters make sure you have a direct line to the most senior manager where the situation is actually occurring. A company grapevine often carries as much misinformation as accurate facts and text messages and cell phone cameras can carry information and images of a situation to the media and others. Before making any statement to the media or anyone else, make sure you have and understand the facts of the situation from the most senior person on location.

Step 5. Practice Makes Perfect

Once you’ve resolved a crisis situation and your company’s operations have returned to normal, schedule a critique of how you responded and communicated.

These review sessions sometimes identify gaps in organization and planning – from phone numbers that changed but weren’t updated to broader questions of operational readiness. Many companies have adopted an annual crisis plan review and tabletop exercise to practice their response using a specific scenario in the plan. Others find that the process of preparing for the worst possible event helps them identify processes that need to be improved or relationships that they need to establish or enhance, adding immediate value to their day-to-day operations and making them even better prepared for the challenges.

Planning and training have become even more important given the distance and speed that news now travels. Be proactive to ensure your organization doesn’t fall victim to poor crisis planning.

Susan Stern is president of Stern + Associates, a full-service public relations and marketing communications firm celebrating 25 years of success and creativity. With offices in Cranford, N.J. and Cambridge, Mass. the company’s growing roster of national and international clients covers a broad range of consumer, business-to-business, education, healthcare, technology, energy, and architecture and design accounts. In an industry known for high client turnover, Stern + Associates’ dedication to strategic counsel and creative ideas that work has resulted in strong client partnerships, many lasting for more than a decade. For additional information, visit www.sternassociates.com.