Ten steps to crisis communication

Your company is about to be acquired and is being scrutinized by multiple potential acquirers when your company's offshore equipment has a fatal accident in "suspicious circumstances" and labor security officials Questions are raised about the company's compliance with environmental regulations, and a market analyst recommends that you sell your company's stock.

How to minimize the impact of the above crisis in marketing activities is a challenge for all companies. Unfortunately, not all companies have a clear idea of how a marketing plan differs between routine and critical situations.

Typically, the function of marketing is to create business value. In times of crisis, the information communication function of marketing is to maintain corporate value.

So, how likely is it that a crisis will strike your company? You know, there is no company without a crisis. Feelings are just as destructive as reality. Once people inside or outside your company think or may think something is wrong with your company, you must implement a communication plan to address their concerns.

You have only two choices: prepare to fight or react passively. The slower the response, the greater the potential for losses. In this world of instant messaging, media audiences relish bad news. It is most dangerous to let the company collapse without doing anything. In times of crisis, it's especially important to work on both marketing and public relations.

In order to avoid any losses that a crisis may cause, a crisis communication plan needs to be established. The following steps will show you how to do it.

Step 1: Form a crisis communication team. Companies should appoint senior managers to form crisis communication teams. The ideal combination would be led by the company's CEO, with a PR manager and legal counsel as assistants. If the in-house public relations manager does not have sufficient crisis communication expertise, he can find an agent or an independent consultant. The rest of the team should be the heads of key company departments, including finance, human resources, and operations.

Step 2: Select a speaker. On the crisis communications team, there should be someone dedicated to speaking on behalf of the company during times of crisis. The CEO can be one of the speakers, but not necessarily the main one. Some CEOs are great businessmen, but not very talkative. Visual communication is often as powerful as factual communication. Therefore, communication skills are one of the first criteria for selecting speakers.

Step 3: Train your speakers vigorously. The following two sentences can summarize why companies need to train their speakers on how to deal with the media. "I chatted with a nice reporter for over an hour, and he didn't report the most important information about my company." "I often speak in public, so I don't have any problems with the media."

No. In short, there are plenty of managers who think they know how to speak to the media. The second sentence shows that most managers do not know how to convey the "most important information" to the interviewer.

Also, analysts, institutional investors, individual stockholders, and other key investor groups, as audiences, are just as likely to misunderstand or misinterpret information from your company as the media. Therefore, avoiding misunderstandings as much as possible is the first priority. For example, there was once a perfectly functioning, well-managed company whose $2 billion stock fell nearly 25% in a single day because of reports that a prominent securities firm had recommended selling the stock, The securities firm later denied this. Of course, the loss is irreparable.

So, training your speakers will teach your company and staff how to respond to the media, maximizing the public's say or analyst's comment as you wish.

Step 4: Establish information communication rules. Crisis-related information may be the first to obtain information on any company employee. It may be the janitor, the salesperson, or the manager on a business trip who first notices the problem. So who should anyone who finds a problem notify? How to find them?

This entails creating and distributing to each staff member a "tree map" of incident communications that accurately illustrates what each person should do and who to contact in the face of a potential or existing crisis. In addition to having a suitable supervisor, at least one member and one alternate member of the crisis communication team should have their office and home telephone numbers on the emergency contact form.

Step 5: Identify and understand your company's audience. Which audiences are relevant to your company? Most companies care about the media, customers, and potential consumers. Individual investors may also be included. Listed companies must comply with stock trading information rules and be subject to inquiries from local or national legal institutions.

You will have their full contact details, such as mailing address, fax and telephone directory, so that they can be contacted quickly in times of crisis. Also, you need to know what information each person is looking for.

Step 6: Pre-rehearsal. If you want to be the first to act and plan ahead, bring together a crisis communication team to discuss up front how to respond to any potential crisis. This approach has two immediate benefits. First, you may realize that some crises can be avoided by making changes to existing operations. Second, you're able to think about responses, best and worst scenarios, and so on. It is always better to be prepared to fight than to be passive.

Of course, in some cases, you already know a crisis is coming because you are causing it -- for example, a company laying off staff or making a major acquisition. If so, you can take steps 7-10 below even before a crisis occurs.

Step 7: Assess the crisis. Responding hastily without fully understanding the situation is a typical "call first and then ask" situation, and such incidents should be avoided. But if you have completed the above six steps first, your crisis communication team can easily become the recipient of the information, and then can decide what to do in response.

Therefore, you cannot complete this step in advance. If you don't prepare in advance, your company will delay the time to respond until the company's employees or hastily recruited consultants have completed the above steps one to six. Furthermore, a hastily created crisis communication strategy and task force is far less effective than a pre-planned and rehearsed situation.

Step 8: Identify key messages. You already know what information your audience is looking for. Now, what do you want them to know about this crisis situation? Keep it simple and clear, with no more than three main messages for each listener, and perhaps a corresponding message for a professional listener. Assuming a death under suspicious circumstances, if something goes wrong with equipment intended for retirees, key messages you need to provide to your audience can include:

We deeply regret the tragic death and we are working with the police and the coroner to cooperate fully to determine the cause of death. Our company has an excellent safety record and meets all regulatory requirements to safeguard health and safety. We will provide the latest news to the media in a timely manner.

Step 9: Decide how to communicate information. There are many ways to communicate a crisis. You can brief your company's employees, customers, potential clients, and investors in person, or send messages to them by mail, newsletter, or fax.

For the media, provide them with press releases and explanation letters, or allow them to attend one-on-one company-held briefings or press conferences. Different choices have different effects. Therefore, there must be an expert in the company who knows the pros and cons of each approach.

Step 10: Get over it safely. No matter the nature of the crisis, whether the news is good or bad, and no matter how carefully you prepare and respond, there will always be some listeners who react contrary to your wishes. what can we do about it? It's simple:

Look at these audience responses objectively. Is it your fault? Or are they wishful thinking?

Determine if another communication will improve their impression of the company. Determine if another communication will worsen their impression of the company. Determine if it makes sense to have another communication.

Lack of planning can double or triple the time and cost of controlling losses. Delays can also cause irreparable damage. Conversely, establishing the model and operational basis for future crisis situations requires well-planned once-in-a-lifetime updates. In other words, a crisis communication plan is a relatively low-cost way to avoid higher costs and bigger headaches in the future.

Original text reproduced with permission from the Bernstein Communications, Inc. website at www.bernsteincom.com. The author registered copyright in 2003. Translated by Zhang Ping.