Eric Yaverbaum, Robert Bly, Ilise Benun. Public Relations for Dummies, 2nd Edition

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Figure 20-1:

Progressive

Boat

Insurance

“Keys

Please”

press

release.

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Getting Messages Noticed Quickly

Lots of mid-size and large PR firms tell their clients that public relations is a

strategic process and that they should be patient for results. And doing the

strategic planning, as outlined in Chapter 2, takes time.

But almost no client is patient for results. If I don’t get lots of press for my

clients — and fast! — they’ll be unhappy and restless. So how do you get the

campaign off to a quick start after the strategy is approved?

The surest and quickest way to get PR is to go where the press already is and

grab your share of the existing media spotlight. Doing so is a lot easier and

more effective than trying to get them to haul out that spotlight and bring it

just for you.

Seasonal or holiday tie-ins are perennial favorites. Linking your message to

current events requires faster thinking and action, but it can work wonders

when you pull it off. When there is a hot news story and you come up with an

idea to piggyback on it, your window of opportunity is extremely short —

typically a week and rarely more than two weeks (O.J. Simpson and Monica

Lewinsky had unusual longevity). After that, it’s old news and the campaign

won’t work.

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Chapter 21

Knowing What to Do in a PR Crisis

In This Chapter

! Knowing what really is a crisis

! Reciting the rules for crisis management

! Transforming a threat into an opportunity

! Being proactive about crisis planning

! Breaking the glass: When emergency strikes

he more prepared you are, the better the chances that you can survive a

crisis — however long the odds of its occurrence are — if it comes. If

you’re skeptical of the need for crisis planning, keep this fact in mind: Many

companies never have more than one crisis, because the first crisis they have

puts them out of business. I wrote this chapter so this doesn’t happen to you.

Defining a PR Crisis

I define a crisis as an event, rumor, or story that has the potential to affect

your reputation, image, or credibility in a negative way. Examples include

everything from product tampering (remember Tylenol?) and contamination

to alleged discrimination or lawsuits (Wal-Mart is a recent example of the

latter). The stock market once dipped on a false rumor that former Federal

Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, had been killed in a car accident.

Most small businesses think that “crisis PR” is the concern of only Fortune

500 companies. But a crisis can strike any organization at any time. For your

business, potential crisis situations may include the following:

" Public health issues (for example, a toxic spill or a cancer-causing

product)

" Safety and security issues

" Financial and business issues

" Environmental issues

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! Disasters (product tampering, service outages)

! Business practices and ethics

! Worker misconduct

! Legal issues

! Accidents and disasters (driver accidents, crashes, fires, building

collapses)

! False advertising

! Customer complaints

! Out-of-stock products

If you think that your tiny business, out of the public eye, is invulnerable to a

crisis, you’re wrong. Smaller businesses, which often rely on one or two key

customers, can lose that business at the drop of a hat. For this reason, I advo-

cate planning for any possible crisis that could occur.

Developing a Crisis Management Plan

Having a crisis plan is like buying insurance. Nobody wants to spend the

money or invest the time until a crisis happens, and then everyone panics

because they don’t know what to do. This can kill a company or destroy a

brand.

Making sure a plan (that outlines exactly what you’re going to do) is in place

before something happens is a very worthwhile use of your time and money.

The moment the crisis happens is the wrong time to come up with a plan.

You need to know simple things like answers to the following questions:

! Who makes the decisions?

! How do you get in touch with the CEO at home?

! Who’s available? What if the crisis occurs at 3 a.m. in the Far East? Three

key people — the head of PR, the head of legal, and the CEO — might

need to talk in the middle of the night. If you have no plan in place, try to

find them all at that hour and then try crafting a response. It’s not easy.

In this section, I provide you with an outline of crisis response procedures

and responsibilities for employees most likely to be involved in handling a

crisis situation. A crisis alert may come from different levels such as cus-

tomer service, sales, e-commerce, international, and so on.

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Identifying a crisis

If a crisis is identified, the senior employee is responsible for:

! Collecting information and preparing the crisis fact sheet.

! Requesting assistance from the crisis communications team via the

crisis administrator. When a crisis occurs, you won’t have time to find

the lawyer’s phone number or locate the CEO on the weekend. That’s

why the Crisis Communication Team is established in advance. This

team includes any and all resources you may have to call in the event of

a crisis: the top decision-maker, your legal expert (in house counsel),

your top communications person (that could be you), and all division

heads. Basically, it includes anyone with expertise on a potentially rele-

vant subject and in a position to make a decision and/or the people with

the most expertise on issues that could be raised.

! Contacting the deputy crisis administrator (in the absence of the crisis

administrator).

! Sequentially calling all crisis communications team members if neither

the crisis administrator or his deputy can be found.

Assessing and reviewing the crisis

After the crisis administrator has been contacted, he is responsible for:

! Gathering and recording all pertinent facts on the crisis fact sheet

! Assessing the scope and nature of the crisis, including damage or poten-

tial damage

! Alerting the appropriate members of the crisis communications team

! Determining the timing and format of the crisis communications team

meeting (either in person or by conference call)

! Contacting additional parties (appropriate employees or external indi-

viduals) to secure their involvement

! Disseminating crisis fact sheets and other relevant information to crisis

communications team members

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The crisis communications team meeting

The crisis communications team meeting will involve

! The election of a crisis manager, based on the nature and scope of the

crisis

! A crisis debriefing, including new developments/updates, by the crisis

administrator

Planning a crisis response

After the crisis communications team is assembled, under the leadership of

the crisis manager, the team is responsible for immediately:

! Planning a crisis response and ensuring its execution

! Establishing communications strategies to address the crisis situation

(for example, selecting an appropriate spokesperson)

! Allocating responsibilities to the crisis communications team members

! Identifying crisis situation response tactics to be implemented by others

(employees or external individuals)

! Monitoring the media via the public relations team (see Chapter 12)

The crisis manager must ensure, at all times, that the crisis response is being

executed by the crisis communications team as well as additional employees

and external individuals.

Communicating with key publics

Throughout the crisis, it is imperative that the crisis communications team

communicates with the company’s key publics or stakeholders (that is, any

group that may have a heightened interest in what the crisis is). For instance,

if you’re a publicly held company, the shareholders fall into that category. If

it’s about a product distributed via retail, stakeholders include your retail

customers. And it always includes the press.

! Employees: When possible, employees should be informed about a

crisis situation before the media are informed. The crisis communica-

tions team must determine the most efficient way to communicate with

employees (for example, in staff meetings). Be sure to keep the “front-

line” employees — such as the switchboard/receptionist and customer

service call center reps — updated on where to direct customer ques-

tions and incoming calls regarding the crisis.

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! Affiliated parties: Be sure to keep affiliated parties (such as vendors) in

the loop on crisis situations they’re affected by or play a role in. The

crisis communications team must determine the method and scope of

communication.

! Consumers: In crisis situations, it may be necessary for the company to

communicate directly with consumers without the assistance of the

media. The crisis communications team must determine the best

method of communication (for example, e-mail, direct mail).

! Media: An extremely influential public. One thing all of your key publics

will have in common is that they read the morning newspaper. So the

press is the most important group to focus on. (See more about this in

Chapter 11.)

Remembering the Rules in a Crisis

The first rule in a crisis is this: Facilitate information in a quick, accurate, and

timely manner. How quickly you communicate the facts to the victims, press,

investors, shareholders, and other audiences determines, in large part, how

you emerge from the situation. The faster you move, the better the message

is received. The longer the public guesses, the worse off the company.

Here are some other critical rules for acting in a PR crisis:

! Always tell the truth. Do not be misleading or dishonest.

! Be prepared. Have a communications plan in place before disaster

strikes. Don’t wait until it happens to start thinking, “What do we do?”

! Act as though you care. Demonstrate compassion.

! Move quickly. Don’t stand there stunned.

! Make fast decisions and swift adjustments. If you’re faced with having

to spend money to clean up the situation, do it now (while it seems as

though it’s your choice) instead of later (when it seems as though you’re

acting only because of pressure).

! Never say, “No comment.” If you don’t have an answer, say so and then

get it.

! Return all calls from the press promptly. Every day you do not respond

to an accusation, the bad press the situation generates gets exponen-

tially worse.

! Don’t avoid the press. Actively seek opportunities to get in front of the

cameras and tell your story.

! Admit when you messed up, apologize, explain how you’re going to

fix it, and then do what you promised.

! Always carry a checklist of important contacts’ phone numbers (home

phone of CEO, cell phone of legal counsel, and so on).

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Demonstrating Care and Compassion

I say throughout this book that PR is an art of demonstration — showing

rather than stating your message — and crisis management is no exception.

When you just say that you care and are sorry, people are cynical. When you

demonstrate compassion and caring in a dramatic and distinctive way, people

not only believe your message but also pay attention to and remember it.

For example, years ago I was handling PR for an off-Broadway play. Well, the

play got a terrible review in the New York Times, which usually spells death

for such a production. We felt that the Times critic had made a mistake and

wanted to get this message across without sounding like sour grapes. We

sent out a press release saying, “Even The New York Times Makes Mistakes!”

The gimmick: If people found a typo in the New York Times, they could send it

in to us and we would mail them a free ticket to the show. The campaign gen-

erated a lot of press and demonstrated the point — that reviews do not have

the final word on a piece of art or entertainment, but are just one person’s

opinion — in a fresh, credible, and nondefensive manner.

Another client, a retailer of home furnishings and accessories, published the

wrong phone number in its catalog, and suddenly some poor guy was getting

hundreds of phone calls every day. Our solution? Not only did we pay for a

new phone number for him, but we also refurnished his home with our

client’s furniture absolutely free. He was delighted, and the press loved the

story.

Customer service surveys show that, if a customer has a problem but you

resolve it quickly and correctly, the customer actually becomes more loyal to

you than he was before the problem occurred. It’s the same with a PR crisis:

If you resolve the crisis quickly and get your story out to the media, the event

can actually strengthen your brand image — which is why I see most crisis

management as an opportunity rather than a threat. Properly handled,

response to crisis is a showcase for great leadership. It can increase corpo-

rate visibility in a positive way, highlighting character and competence.

For example, when a food-delivery client of mine was being widely viewed as

promoting unsafe driver safety on “rushed” deliveries, we had to demon-

strate a different example. My client was getting blamed because its advertis-

ing stressed fast delivery. The truth, however, was that the company could

deliver faster because it had a more efficient cooking operation than its

competitors.

To demonstrate this message — that our fast delivery was due to faster cook-

ing, not reckless driving — we held a contest among company employees

nationwide. The winning cook was the subject of a full-page profile in People

magazine and appeared as a guest on both the Late Show with David

Letterman and Good Morning America.

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Another client, a clothing company, called to tell me it would be several weeks

late in delivering initial shipments of a much-promoted new clothing line. We

immediately sent out a release on the theme “Caught with Our Pants Down,”

saying that we had screwed up and would be two weeks late. To dramatize the

message, we said that for the first 1,000 people to send their pants to us (actu-

ally, a pair of underwear), we would make a donation to the homeless in their

names and send each of those 1,000 people a free pair of our product.

Thinking of Every Crisis as a Red Alert

When the threat got really serious in the old Star Trek series — like when the

Romulans were about to attack — Captain Kirk invariably upgraded the

ship’s status from yellow alert to red alert. I advise my clients to treat any PR

crisis as a red alert. The keys to doing so are to

! Make the situation a management priority.

! Have plans in place before crises happen. If you wait until they happen

before creating a plan, you’re too late.

! Respond with same-day speed. “Tomorrow” isn’t good enough.

In crisis plans for large corporate clients, we say that every one of the top

management people is always “on call.” If a crisis occurs, every key decision-

maker must be available within two hours — by phone, if that’s the best they

can do, but preferably gathered in the same room. After they’re in the room

(or connected with the people in the room via speaker phone), no one leaves

until consensus is reached on what’s to be done. The person managing crisis

communications should have the home phone numbers of all executives in

the group and shouldn’t hesitate to call them at any time of the day or night.

Not having the team together slows decision-making, which can be devastat-

ing for PR purposes — the media’s job is to investigate and get at the truth,

and their deadline for doing so is tomorrow (for print), tonight (for broad-

cast), or even now (for the Web). For example, one American shoe manufac-

turer was faced with a rumor that a street gang wore its sneakers. They

responded like a snail rather than in a flash, and the brand was destroyed.

Managing a Crisis with Success

Remember Dorothy’s famous line to her dog in the film The Wizard of Oz —

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”? The next time you get that

queasy, “We have a problem” feeling in your business, and your concern has

to do with media exposure that threatens to damage corporate reputation,

take a deep breath, get calm, and put the following tactics into practice:

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