Page 28 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

No Thrillers, but Hard Reality 9
9
There are no guarantees

These and other disasters and accidents have made both companies
and governments realize that they must be prepared for a crisis at all
times. No one is assured that he or she will be spared. A permanent
state of crisis awareness is therefore a fundamental requirement for
every company or organization; but that is not enough. In the event of
a crisis, effective and efficient communication can be a matter of life
and death: what has really happened and what measures have been
taken to deal with the crisis? If a company fails to follow the funda-
mental principles of crisis communication, the consequences can be
far-reaching and disastrous.
The dioxin crisis that struck in Belgium in April 1999 led directly to
the defeat of the Christian Democratic Party in the elections of 13 June
1999. Its defeat meant that it was not part of the governing coalition
for the first time since 1958. Companies, too, that do not follow the
essential principles, can find themselves in great difficulties. The ship-
ping company Townsend Thoresen, for example, felt that it had to
throw its name overboard after the sinking of the ferry the Herald of
Free Enterprise in 1987 because the name seemed to be cursed forever.
For corporate leaders, it may be a hard fact to face, but the chance
that they will be confronted with one major crisis or another has never
been as great as it is today. Why? What elements cause crises? Human
errors and mistakes, lapses in judgement, failure to react in time,
failure to anticipate, mechanical faults or simply the refusal to face the
fact that crises can strike anyone. With all of that, you would have to be
blind not to be aware that company management will sooner or later be
faced with a serious crisis. And let’s be honest: a crisis does not have to
be large in scope to be dangerous.
Why do crises strike more frequently today than in the past? We live
in a highly developed society with access to a vast arsenal of high-tech
resources. Computers lead and guide us on land, at sea and in the air.
Some say that we all learn from our mistakes; experience has shown,
however, that nothing could be further from the truth. The
omnipresent technology means that the chance of a crisis situation
arising is greater than it has ever been. The pharmaceutical company
B-Braun can speak from experience. The medicines it produces are
automatically packaged in sterile containers; there is no human inter-
vention. A computer error led to four doses of potassium chloride
being placed in ampoules that were intended for glucose. The
ampoules were given to two newborn babies on 13 and 15 January
1999 in the Gasthuisberg University Hospital in Louvaine. They died
within hours.