How to Manage Media Relations - An Analysis (part 11)

Crisis Planning (part A)

by

Charles Lamson

Creating a Plan for Any Occasion

In a workshop on crisis communication, PR consultant Raymond C. Jones listed as the most important prerequisite for an effective crisis plan is a CEO who understands:

• the serious damage that can be done by a poor public relations effort;
• the importance of trusting in and delegating to professionals;
• that an organization can actually emerge from a crisis with its reputation enhanced, if it responds well; and,
• that honesty is the best policy and that if you engage in gamesmanship with the media, you will lose every time.

While that above list is timeless, there are important elements of a crisis plan that need continual updating and rethinking. Previous plans never took into account the crisis of an entire computer system going up in shreds from a bomb blast. Previous plans never looked at how you would communicate if the entire communication system were destroyed. Previous plans never thought about having to set up an entire business . . . from scratch . . . with no location, no furniture, no computers or telephones, no paper files, no staff.

So, perhaps the next most important prerequisite for an effective plan is the detailed list of probable and possible events that could become anything from a bad news day day to a catastrophe. If your business location is near water, natural disasters such as a hurricane or a tsunami, or human disasters such as an oil spill, should be on your list. If your business is in a tower, fire, terrorism, power outages should all be on your list. If you have a manufacturing operation, anything from chemical spills to sabotage to environmental issues should be listed. If you have operations in third-world countries, possible civil unrest and terrorism should be on your list. Also on that list should be the product recall probabilities, class-action lawsuits over a defective product, financial malfeasance, a charge of pedophilia against a volunteer, a federal investigation, an insensitive remark by a not-thinking-smart executive. Anything that can create a crisis.

The next step is to develop individualized plans for every eventuality. That may seem like a lot of work, but it is essential as no one plan will work for all situations. Crises do not happen the way you want them to or on your schedule. That carefully constructed scene in your head of having the media meet at a nearby location is also in flames or under water and destroyed in the gas line explosion.

Another step is to work in concert with all the other departments who are looking at crises from their points of view. The information technology people are busy building/storing/saving backup systems across town or across the country. Human resources are looking at their databases to make sure they can have access to employee names, next of kin information, payroll data and benefits information. Corporate safety officers are working with myriad local, state and federal officials on the best evacuation plans and recovery efforts.

From your media relations viewpoint, you need backup files on media contacts, standby statements and executive contact information. You may need to run the postcrisis media operations from your home or another city or a different company location, so your plans have to account for that and for notifying the media how to find you.

Perhaps most important, you will need to adjust your thinking about crises: how they start, how they are perceived and how they could change your organization.

Carreen Winters of the MWW group counsels that "to provide cogent communications counsel in crisis or otherwise it is incumbent upon communications professionals to serve as a resource for real-time intelligence on the rapidly changing attitudes among the public and particularly the media, which play a key role in shaping and influencing public perception and reaction." Consultant Fraser Seitel expresses it this way: "Public perception of 'who's winning, who's losing, who's at fault' is molded in the initial several hours." Martin A. Kramer asserts that "fully half the battle in an adversarial television story is for the representative of the institution under attack to come across as caring and empathetic. And viewers form their verdict on that in the first 30 seconds of an interview."

One thing all advisers agree on: You never get a second chance to make a good first impression. That adage is essential to remember as you set about making your crisis plans.

Also in order to have a successful plan, your plans must be tested, tried and simulated in order to be the best they can be. "Regular training sessions and crisis simulations are critical to help sensitize your team to the various pressures that will be present during a real situation," says Jeff Braun of The Ammerman Experience. As you develop a written crisis communication plan, a key point you will want to make clear to the top decision makers of your company or client is that the definition of a crisis is a relative thing. A few people speaking out to the media over a dress code can be big television news even though you feel the issue is trivial in light of broader, more pressing issues. Your prompt, matter-of-fact management of smaller issues will go a long way toward containing them so they do not develop into major media events.

Strategic Questions to Test Your Crisis Plan The following strategic questions were developed by Canadian publishing executive and adjunct professor Ralph Hancox to help boards of directors formulate clear, unambiguous and precise answers as they develop mission statements and strategic plans. They can serve as equally valuable guidelines for media relations professionals and your colleagues as you develop a crisis plan for your organization. What are we going to do? How are we going to do it? How are we going to pay for it? Who's going to do the work? How will we treat them? Who's going to consume what we do? How will we reach them? How will we treat our various publics? (customers, clients, employees, industry associates, suppliers, regulators, etc.)? What other people do we need to reach? How will we organize and control all this? What returns do we expect for our activities? "From the Chair of the Board to the Shipping Room Clerk," paper presented by Ralph Hancox, Adjunct Professor and Professional Fellow. The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, to the 3rd McMaster World Congress on Corporate Governance, January 23-27, 2006.

*SOURCE: ON DEADLINE: MANAGING MEDIA RELATIONS 4TH ED., 2006, CAROLE M. HOWARD AND WILMA K. MATHEWS, PGS. 185-187*

END

Strategic Questions to Test Your Crisis Plan

The following strategic questions were developed by Canadian publishing executive and adjunct professor Ralph Hancox to help boards of directors formulate clear, unambiguous and precise answers as they develop mission statements and strategic plans. They can serve as equally valuable guidelines for media relations professionals and your colleagues as you develop a crisis plan for your organization.

1. What are we going to do?
2. How are we going to do it?
3. How are we going to pay for it?
4. Who's going to do the work?
5. How will we treat them?
6. Who's going to consume what we do?
7. How will we reach them?
8. How will we treat our various publics? (customers, clients, employees, industry associates, suppliers, regulators, etc.)?
9. What other people do we need to reach?
10. How will we organize and control all this?
11. What returns do we expect for our activities?

"From the Chair of the Board to the Shipping Room Clerk," paper presented by Ralph Hancox, Adjunct Professor and Professional Fellow. The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, to the 3rd McMaster World Congress on Corporate Governance, January 23-27, 2006.