You’re the head of PR at a large UK manufacturing business. You wake up at 8.30 on a Saturday morning to seven missed calls on your work mobile phone. You quickly have a browse through and see that at least five are from journalists.
Despite being half-asleep, it doesn’t take long for your brain to start putting two and two together. For weeks now, covert talks have been ongoing about large-scale redundancies in the wake of plummeting sales. Local papers have been full of speculation but so far that is all, as management have been keen to give the impression of business as usual. On hearing your first voicemail message, however, it becomes clear that the cat is out of the bag. The local business editor wants your reaction to news that 600 staff will be losing their jobs.
Our PR man is only human. And like most humans, his first thought is to pull the covers over his head and go back to sleep. It would seem that many businesses, metaphorically speaking, make the same mistake when confronted with crisis.
Peter Anthonissen, founder of PR business Anthonissen & Associates, has advised hundreds of organisations through a crisis and is an expert in the field of reputation management. When asked why the bury-your-head-in-the-sand approach is so popular among businesses when it comes to dealing with a crisis, he says, Denial. The human reaction when confronted with any crisis is to think ‘let this not be true’ or ‘this can’t be happening to me’. Even when they finally see the crisis hitting their brand some managers continue to remain in denial.
Understanding this psychology and how it applies to a crisis is important. It explains why, for some businesses, crisis is a dirty word. Many managers are afraid of crisis communication, adds Anthonissen. Some think that simply speaking about crisis communication can cause problems. Often, the manager of a company will say to us, ‘but suppose I have to tell our employees we need to work out a preventative crisis communication plan? Their first reaction will be panic and fear.’ Which is, of course, complete nonsense. So how should you respond in a crisis? To help answer this question, B2B Marketing spoke to four authorities in the field of crisis PR management to provide a step-by-step plan to handling a major PR crisis.
Crises happen fast. They often occur on a weekend and they quickly snowball. Witness the Northern Rock story. On Friday it was business as usual. By Monday the firm was on the verge of being nationalised. From a PR perspective, what this means is that if you’re not prepared, you’ll always be one step behind the news agenda.
Richard Houghton, CEO of Carrot Communications, says, In a crisis there is a vacuum of information and if you don’t fill that with comment or at least a statement outlining the situation, you end up with a lot of speculation, which is more damaging than not communicating at all.
Those who aren’t prepared find themselves learning on the job. As Houghton points out, Where you don’t want to be learning your crisis management skills is right in the middle of a crisis.
Let’s go back to our fictional PR manager. He tries to get hold of his MD but his work mobile is switched off and he doesn’t have his home number. The same goes for his marketing manager and finance director. His mobile continues to ring and already the crisis is spiralling out of control. Should our man be speaking to the media and filling the vacuum Houghton mentioned, or should he leave that to his boss? And what will the local trade union rep think when he reads about redundancies in the papers?
Preparation is crucial in such a scenario. Peter Anthonissen argues, The media surrounds us 24 hours a day. Any company is extremely vulnerable and should have a preventative crisis communication plan.
The two benefits of being prepared are firstly, it means you’ve been thinking about a crisis and the issues involved. The second reason is time. When a crisis hits your company, time is your biggest enemy. You only have a few hours to respond and the better prepared you are the better use your company will be able to make of this time.
Our fictional PR man can’t be expected to handle the crisis on his own. A good plan will involve the creation of a crisis team. But who do we include in this team? Basically, key decision-makers in the business. A good quality crisis team is vital because it means that when a crisis hits you can get into full swing quickly, says Graham Robb, a partner with Recognition PR. Robb recommends team members practice their role in reconstructed scenarios. For instance, if you have a chemical factory or a road haulage business, you should prepare for a crisis, such as a chemical leak or a road accident, for instance, so you have a good bit of crisis planning rehearsal, he says.
Our experts were unanimous about the need to be transparent and keep people in the picture about the issues your company is facing. Going into denial helps nobody in an age where news any news spreads like wildfire.
Elizabeth Lewis-Jones is president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and a director of Liquid PR. She says, Redundancies are a topical news item right now and, for those businesses that might have an issue in this area, it is extremely important to keep lines of communication open with stakeholders.
Stakeholders, says Anthonissen, could be clients, personnel, trade unions, consumer organisations, the media, politicians or competition. These stakeholders are always in touch with the media, they have access to TV and radio and they may have an interest in your company whether you like it or not, he says. That is why it is important to be the one who communicates first, to be in charge of the message.
By taking charge of the message and communicating with stakeholders in a clear and transparent manner, businesses can, according to Lewis-Jones, ensure there is no shock element should bad news such as redundancies materialise.
And this is key. By slowly drip feeding what is happening at his factory over a lengthy period, our fictional PR man could effectively have begun to dilute the ‘story’, thereby stealing the thunder of the media.
How you communicate with your stakeholders and what you say to them can make or break your business in a crisis situation. The multi-media age we live in provides a double-edged sword for businesses. Both good and bad news travels fast. On the one hand, online communications enables social media sites to spread negative rumours about businesses; on the other, it also enables a clear, well-constructed message to be sent to your customers at the touch of a button.
Which is why, as Robb points out, a business must consider all the communications means possible in a crisis situation. In the case of our fictional PR man, online media avenues ensure that, even without planning, he isn’t necessarily facing a completely lost cause. Robb continues, Very often you can go above the heads of the media directly to your clients and customers by using the Internet.
He suggests that a video, with a message from the managing director, can be emailed directly to clients or other stakeholders. I’ve used this method with great results, he says.
Finally, then, to the marketing function. What, if any, part can marketers play during a crisis? Houghton suggests a business should halt any current communications, including marketing campaigns, during a crisis situation. If you have a communications programme from a different part of the organisation, around a new product launch for example, then clearly they are going to be finding themselves on the receiving end of questions around the crisis, he says.
Lewis-Jones argues that a member of the marketing department may well work as part of the crisis team. It is after the dust has settled, however, when the marketer’s role becomes most important. At this point, marketing may look at carrying out some advertising, putting out a series of positive messages to counter-balance any negative press that has gone before, she says.
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