BUYER S GUIDE CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

Transcription

1 BUYER S GUIDE CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS At Curzon we know that a reputation is hard to build and easy to lose.

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This document is designed to provide prospective clients with a short guide to the acquisition of a crisis communications strategy what it is, the types of crises that can occur, how effective crisis communications can provide vital protection for your brand, how Curzon PR can support you, what the process involves, as well as timelines and deliverables. WHAT IS CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS? Crisis communications is the mitigation of damage to your brand s image by third party sources. It aims to protect the reputation of a brand by maintaining its public image. There are two principal types of crisis: Sudden crisis This is a situation that arises out of the blue at very short notice. There are few, if any, warning signs. These kinds of crises are, by this stage, most often beyond anyone s capacity to prevent. Smouldering crisis Often when minor issues are ignored, they can lead to a smouldering crisis a low-lying problem or series of problems that are, metaphorically speaking, waiting to erupt into flame due to action not being taken from the onset of the issue. There are numerous types of crisis that can tarnish the image of a brand, including: 1. Natural disaster crisis: Environmental or natural events that can precipitate a crisis leading to injury or loss of life resulting in negative impact on the brand. 2. Technological crisis: A technology failure leading to a systemic crisis a software glitch, for example, that might prevent a bank s customers gaining access to their accounts. 3. Confrontation crisis: This might include boycotts by customers and/or employees or strikes and/or internal disputes. These may be triggered by ineffective communications and/or a lack of coordination in the early stages of the dispute. 4. Crisis of malevolence: Occasionally, employees may resort to criminal activities, acts of sabotage and/or extreme measures to exert demands any one of these can lead to what we term a malevolence crisis. 5. Crisis of organisational misdeeds: This may arise when management takes certain decisions knowing that they may result in harm to stakeholders.

3 6. Crisis due to workplace violence: When an employee or employees perpetrate violent acts in the workplace, thereby threatening brand image. 7. Crisis by rumour: Falsehoods spread by the competition - or sometimes employees. 8. Financial crisis: If a brand owner fails to pay creditors and/or other third parties, this can lead to a full-blown crisis played out through the media unless effective measures are taken quickly. In these cases and others, Curzon PR s crisis communications team can help protect the reputation and image of your brand before damage resulting from the crisis becomes irreparable.

4 HOW DOES CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS BENEFIT YOUR BRAND? A crisis can have a highly negative impact on brand image. Our crisis communications team can help save your brand s reputation and image against threats and challenges that may otherwise conspire to damage or destroy it. Your brand s identity is one of your most valuable assets. Crisis communications, deployed promptly and with the correct approach, is able to protect your brand and maintain its good image amongst its stakeholders and your industry. It is important to remember: 1. Not to ignore the problem: Burying the crisis will not make it go away; nor can the media be ignored. Questions from journalists need to be answered via a well thought-through public statement and in conjunction with experienced crisis communications professionals. 2. Not to criticise individuals: Do not play a blame game with your employees. This is vital in ensuring your brand maintains a united front when confronted with a crisis. 3. Not to delay: In a crisis, it is essential you take prompt and effective action to minimise damage to the reputation of your brand. Hiring our crisis communications team ensures you will have the correct advice to help you overcome the crisis. Curzon PR can support you through: 1. Our expertise and knowledge: We will audit and analyse the nature of the damage to your brand with speed and precision. More often than not in a crisis stakeholders fill in knowledge gaps with their own assumptions, many of which may be false or misleading. It is vital to deal only in fact. Our team has great experience in helping you navigate the crisis by dealing with what is real, not imagined. 2. Our efficient, timely communication: Our aim at all times is to put out the fire quickly. The steps we will take during a crisis communications situation: 1. Focused approach: Our team of experts will work quickly with you to find out where things went wrong before launching effective strategies to overcome the crisis. 2. External stakeholder management: We will work alongside your team to ensure the information placed by you in the public domain is correct and in accordance with a strategy designed to mitigate and ultimately defuse the crisis.

5 3. Internal stakeholder management: During a crisis, it is vital for information to flow across departments. Employees, first and foremost, need to be aware of what is happening. Superiors need to address employees confidently. Working with personal presentation professionals, we can help guide an organisation s leadership on how this should be done. 4. Crisis communications plan: Our team will create a strategic crisis communications plan for your brand. Having this plan in place will allow you to be able to take prompt and effective action. The first step is quick and decisive decision-making what a crisis needs above all else to help restore the status quo.

6 THE PROCESS-STAGES AND TIMELINES PRE-CRISIS: Month one: We will conduct an initial strategy session with you to evaluate your brand. We will then carry out a vulnerability audit, identifying any likely crisis situations. This will allow us to identify pressure points and/or vulnerabilities. Month two: We will produce a crisis response document focused on the internal and external communications components of the potential crises identified and required remedial action/s. We will then help you create an internal crisis communications team, providing training on how to best to address the media in the event a/the crisis breaks. We will provide spokesperson training, too, if needed, to prepare you in the event that a/the crisis breaks at short notice. Month three: We will create holding statements for you. It is essential to communicate with your stakeholders promptly and effectively in a crisis. Having pre-prepared holding statements means you are able to reassure your stakeholders quickly in the event of a crisis - until you have assessed the situation and made key decisions on how you to handle the issues. We will also help you establish the following: Notification systems: It is important you have notification systems to allow you to reach internal and external stakeholders quickly and efficiently. and social media are the best ways to reach stakeholders. We ensure you have the right communications channels in place to allow you to do this. Monitoring systems: It is vital to have intelligence tools that can help you (a) prevent and (b) respond to a crisis. It is essential, too, that you know what is being said by the media about your brand, your employees, your clients and other stakeholders. Again, we can ensure you have the right tools in place to allow you to achieve effective monitoring before, during and after any crisis. DURING A CRISIS: In the event of a crisis, our expert team can be drafted in quickly to guide you through the various stages of communicating with stakeholders. We will help you assess the situation and determine the appropriate response following deployment of the holding statements. We will then work with your team to develop the crisis-specific messages that will be needed to manage and defuse the crisis.

7 POST-CRISIS: We will conduct a post-crisis analysis looking at the lessons learned from the crisis and improvements needed to prevent this or similar situations arising again. It is important to remember: 1. Not to have an it-can-never-happen-to-us attitude. 2. To be open and honest with our team, as this will help us provide you with the best communications advice. 3. In today s communications age, messages can be sent in a matter of seconds. News spreads quickly. It is vital, therefore, to get your message to all stakeholders as soon as possible. The faster you act, the more likely you will be able to contain and repair damage.

8 HOW DO WE MEASURE SUCCESS? There are three elements we use to measure the effectiveness of our crisis communications: 1. Outputs and effectiveness: We do this is by monitoring the media to see if your messages have been communicated effectively. 2. Impact: This determines whether the messages communicated during the crisis had the desired effect. 3. Outcomes: In the long run, did our crisis communications action positively impact your brand s reputation and maintain your customers continued intent to purchase. Did it have an impact on employee retention, shareholder confidence etc. DELIVERABLES Our expert team will work with you to create/provide: A crisis communications response document. Holding statements for possible crisis situations. Communications team and spokesperson training. Continuous advisory throughout a crisis situation

9 FURTHER READING You can read more about crisis communications in our PR Insider blogs: Reputation Management: The Best Methods for Managing Negative Press: Managing a PR Crisis: Online Reputation Management: Important Skills in Crisis Communications: Crisis Comms 101: How to handle a PR crisis: WHAT IS THE COST? All our projects are bespoke and priced accordingly. You can get further information on prices by contacting Neha Desai, neha@curzonpr.com or on (+44)