Page 44 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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Proactive Crisis Communication Planning 25
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If you think the bad publicity will stop because it might cause your
organization embarrassment, financial loss or damage your reputation
then think again. You need to take control of the situation. You need to
protect your image. You need a proactive crisis communication plan.

Need for a plan

Why have a proactive crisis communication plan? Because it can lead
to crisis control and control is the name of the game.
The crisis communication mantra is simple – concern, relief and
reassurance. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let us first look at
how we can set up a proactive crisis communication plan.

What is a crisis?

We’re not necessarily talking aircraft falling out of the sky or ocean
liners hitting icebergs. These are certainly disasters that call for crisis
communication, but people’s lives do not need to be in danger for
there to be a crisis. For the rest of us who have an interest in protecting
a professional business reputation, far lesser events can become crises.
For example, in a period of three weeks, three clients at Nick
Leighton’s agency, NettResults, have each had a crisis:

A new business in the area of media: their very visible general
manager quit after one month in the job.
A real estate developer about to launch: their CEO left and
defrauded the company of millions of dollars.
A technology company: its CEO was questioned by police after the
death of an employee, whose remains were found washed up on
the local beach.

In none of these three instances had the company or its employees
done anything wrong. They had been neither negligent nor unethical.
Yet they found their businesses to be at risk if they could not control
the message. It wouldn’t take anyone working against them (the senior
managers who were no longer with our clients were not turning the
cogs of the media against our clients) for the situation to get nasty:

The media business was concerned that employees might leave (as
had happened en masse to a competitor only a couple of weeks