
Accuracy, Timeliness, Sincerity, Follow-Through = Keys to Effective Crisis Response
When an organization faces a crisis situation, it’s more important to focus on preserving its reputation than speaking in its brand voice. Crisis response is not marketing PR.
Exploiting a brand voice for newsjacking can work well. But trying to force a brand voice into a crisis response is fodder for an unforced communication error.
Can you imagine M&M’s round, colorful cartoon mascots as “spokescandies” in a crisis? You don’t have to imagine it. They tried it, and it was a PR disaster.
Crisis response doesn’t benefit from repeating brand taglines, using brand symbols or tapping brand personalities, which are more likely to irritate than impress people impacted by a crisis.
Guideposts for effective crisis response are accuracy, timeliness, sincerity and follow-through.
Accuracy
Nothing can turn a crisis into a bigger crisis faster than circulating inaccurate or misleading information, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Information sent to the news media, employees and impacted parties should be checked and double-checked for accuracy, even when being accurate can be uncomfortable or embarrassing.
Timeliness
Time is your enemy in crisis response. People with smartphones, digital media and internal communications have erased any chance of taking your time to prepare a thoughtful, thorough response. Posting a bland “holding statement” doesn’t buy time or patience. The reason for crisis planning is to get a head start on rapid crisis response when every second counts.
Sincerity
In an increasingly skeptical world, infusing crisis response with a sincere apology and meaningful action is essential to earn respect and get on a path to maintain or even enhance a corporate reputation. Sincerity is the truest way to turn a crisis into a respect-earning opportunity.
Follow-Through
An accurate, timely and sincere crisis response can go sour without genuine follow-through on promises. Effective crisis response requires more than talking a good game; it demands an all-out effort to make good on a promised response.
Online Crisis Response Advice
If you Google crisis response, you will get a welter of advice, often denoted in clever alphabetical alliteration. A good example used by Door Communication is the 5C’s of crisis – Comprehension, Clarity, Consistency, Credibility and Contingency.
The 5R’s are an often-cited crisis response framework – Responsibility, Rapid Response, Reassurance, Resolution and Reputation Rebuilding.
One crisis management checklist includes five principles – Know your assets; identify and monitor risks; notify, communicate and collaborate; develop crisis response; and audit and learn.
The cleverness of checklists doesn’t always equate to advice you can use or crisis response execution that salvages your reputation.
Crisis Advice Based on Personal Experience
After years of assisting a wide range of clients prepare for and deal with crisis, my advice is to keep it simple. There is nothing magic about responding to a crisis. Diligence is the best rule of thumb.
Diligence begins by preparing for a crisis. Start with a candid, comprehensive issue audit that identifies potential vulnerabilities and risks and estimates the likelihood and consequences of each potential crisis. Use information from the issue audit to build individualized crisis scenarios, recognizing different intensities and responses that each crisis would require.
In addition to anticipating different types of crises an organization could face, a crisis plan identifies risks that can be mitigated or eliminated by administrative actions. The best crisis response is the crisis that is avoided.
A crisis plan should identify go-to resources, key phone numbers and materials that can be prepared in advance for quick release in the event of a crisis. A good example are an organization’s safety procedures and protocols. We call these materials-in-waiting ghost content. However, sometimes these materials are informative enough to use on websites or in targeted outreach.
A well-constructed crisis plan will point to how to prosecute a crisis response. Dealing with embezzlement may involve interacting with regulators or law enforcement. Coping with a major fire or a campus riot will likely require a crisis war room and dealing with emergency responders. Anticipating how to respond to a particular crisis should include identifying what internal departments and resources that should be involved.
The Pointless Holding Statement
Too much time in crisis planning is devoted to devising nothing-burger holding statements. This is largely a waste of time. It’s impossible to divine how, where or when a crisis will occur, which makes it equally impossible to guess what to say when it occurs. Inanity isn’t useful in crisis response.
A better use of time is doing everything possible to prepare for any kind of reasonably probable type of crisis. That includes baking into a crisis plan the four cornerstones of effective crisis response – accuracy, timeliness, sincerity and follow-through. This isn’t a formula. It’s a set of standards to inform and guide responding to a crisis.
Training to that standard, including crisis response test exercises and aggressive media training for spokespersons, offer the best promise for retaining a reputation – and the value of its brand voice