How do you prepare your company to face a Public Relations Crisis?

Public Relations

Carlos Maya

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Do you know how vulnerable your organization is to a PR crisis? Nowadays, nobody is safe. But there is something worse before the crisis: the silence.

The evolution of media outlets, digital platforms and social media have made almost impossible to stay in silence during a crisis situation. Different audiences will not understand - neither they should have - why there’s no information from the organization and it may be possible that something that was under control, becomes a critical situation due to the communication underestimating with internal and external audiences.

Cases like Volkswagen, Chipotle, and FIFA are clear cases where the management and resolution strategies were not aligned; by not saying in time and form how, what and when it’s being done and by the correct person in the precise moment.

How could those problems be solved without major consequences?

Having a PR crisis manual and other management and resolution protocols may help the organization to survive a crisis situation, but if the whole process lacks a parallel communication strategy, focused on keeping all internal and external audiences and key stakeholders informed, there’s risk of:

Slowing down operational response.
Keeping key audiences (partners, suppliers, clients, government) in the dark.
The organization would be perceived as clumsy, not being able to inform about the measures and actions that were taken.
Extend the resolution period.
Reputational and Finance aspects impact may be irrecoverable.

There are basic elements to consider while planning and implementing an effective communication in crisis strategy, aligned to the management and resolution strategies:

Prevention y anticipation

We have already said it: everyone is vulnerable. So the ideal thing is to take advantage of the quiet times to prepare the organization to face an eventual crisis.

The first thing is to design a Crisis Communications Team which will take care of implementing the strategy. Having a communications and PR firm will allow having expert, external eyes that make an assessment of the capacities of members of the organization and seize them in the communication strategy. With this team formed, the next step is to identify the spokespersons that will deliver the messages to key audiences and stakeholders.

Training

Then, it’s imperative that the public relations consultants give them a media training to be sure that the spokespersons have the correct tools to implement their role.

It’s important to highlight that the spokesperson of the organization during a PR crisis situation, mustn't necessarily have to be the highest ranking executive and there are factors to consider in its selection, such as communication abilities, how he/she handles under pressure, public image and the proper training.

Follow up and notifications

Also, it’s crucial to establish communication processes that help to follow up and notify the Crisis and Communications Teams at any given moment a crisis situation could happen.

Here is also vital the support and consultancy of the public relations firm, because there will be occasions when the organization is not even aware of the situation and may be in need of external support to following up and notifying this information. Different channels and sources should be identified, preferably each one with next steps and/or recommendations to follow.

Do you know who your key audiences are?

Another very important element is to have our audiences and key stakeholders detected. They can be internal (members of the organization) and external (suppliers, partners, clients, family members, government) and for each one there should be messages to keep them informed and, above all, in the loop of the actions that are being implemented to manage the crisis.

Correct communication with key audiences will make easier to normalize the operations at the end of the crisis. There may be occasions where different publics haven’t been completely identified and for that, the public relations firm consultancy may be of crucial support in the building and creation of a stakeholders map.