Page 47 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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2 28 Crisis Communication
What a crisis plan provides

When you find yourself in a crisis communication situation you have
one goal: to protect the reputation of the organization by:

communicating the right message;
at the right time;
to the right people.

Responding quickly and with confidence is the only way your organi-
zation can seize control of the crisis communication and turn it to your
advantage. Look on it as a wise investment.

Elements of a plan

What you’re developing is quite simple, really. To have a clear and
concise, proactive crisis communication plan you need guidelines for:

the right message;
to whom that message should be told;
who should tell it;
the right time to tell it.

As part of that plan, you also need to understand how you will com-
municate internally and agree on the above elements as quickly as pos-
sible, ensuring that everyone within your organization has the correct
authority and sign-off.

People

Selecting a team

Let’s get a crisis team together.
This is nothing like being the person in your department who gets
an extra bonus for being ‘first aid’ trained. Your crisis team needs to be
small, agile, alert and reachable. A team that needs to have absolute
authority and won’t be afraid to tell other board members what to do.
When an agency is called into a client to construct a proactive crisis
communication plan, the first meeting ideally should be at the next
company-wide board level meeting. The crisis professionals have to be