Tank News and Blog

STORM IN A TEACUP

Trevor Palmer – Director, Tank PR

Crisis: In FMCG markets it’s glass in a baby’s nappy on the shelves; for a construction company it’s a serious accident on site and for a manufacturer it’s redundancies. Multiply this crisis by ten if the media are involved – or at least that’s the commonly held belief.

A different way of looking at this would be to say that accidents happen and that some things are unavoidable and really aren’t the fault of businesses. Add to this the fact that 90% of the UK news media is looking to disseminate news responsibly and accurately – then there is little to be afraid of when helping the media to report a ‘crisis’.

So, if a business is not knowingly breaking the law, ignoring professional working practices or leaving itself wantonly exposed to security risks, in my opinion it’s ready to deal with the media openly.

The most important thing to do in a crisis is plan for it before hand. Take a pessimistic view of every possible scenario that could go wrong for your business and work out what your positioning would be for the possible outcomes.

Get your PR agency involved in this and make time to devise a strategy which includes key spokespeople and template response formats (such as press statements and sound bites) ready in the event of a crisis. This may appear to be ‘overdoing it’, but how ready would you be to draft the press response at 3:00am on Sunday morning when someone’s just burnt your factory down?

You should know who your spokespeople are – and let them know. Ensure that you have more than one to counter holidays. And, if these are the people destined to speak to the media in a crisis, make sure that they’re media trained by media professionals. They take prospective spokespeople through the toughest interview scenarios across the media channels of press and broadcast and prepare them by exposing them to the mediums they are likely to encounter in a crisis. This kind of training is key, helping spokespeople to appear cogent and in control when interviewed.

Once prepared, arm the spokespeople with BlackBerry, iphones or other PDAs so that they can be responsive and if there’s a possibility that your business could find itself in a risk scenario, make sure that your PR agency (if you have one) has similar devices – as they may well be the first point of call.

You also need to consider who may be interested in your crisis media-wise. Get to know this media as they may be crucial to your business. The local, regional and trade media like to know what a business is doing and if they already have an understanding and relationship with you, they will be more likely to empathise and support you if anything goes wrong.

If you have this list, keep the contact details updated as you or your PR company may be able to get a response to them before they come to you – if the circumstances deem this sensible to do.

Never ignore a media inquiry as it makes you appear dispassionate and ‘guilty’ by your absence and ignorance, which is not good equity for your brand.

My team has managed a lot of crisis for clients, but you won’t have heard of the best of them, as the best managed crises are the ones you don’t hear much about, but that’s another story, or not.