Not all media attention is wanted.
And we can’t promise to help you stay out of the news when something goes wrong.
But our latest webinar aimed to ensure you are in the best position to respond quickly and communicate with clarity and confidence when the worst happens.
Our CEO, James White, was joined by Elisa Colton and Adam Fisher from our training team to cover all things crisis comms.
Here’s what happened.
The team began by exploring the fears they hear people raise when delivering crisis communication training.
“People worry about the timescale,” Elisa, who has reported for BBC News, BBC 5 Live and Al Jazeera, said.
“There used to be a golden hour where you could get things in place and prepare your spokespeople, but social media has cut that down to about 15 minutes.
“It takes off when something happens and can quickly become full of rumour, speculation and other voices if you are not communicating quickly.”
Adam, a former journalist and comms manager, agreed adding: “It can feel daunting having to respond that quickly, and it is a big challenge.
“But if you don’t do it, you lose control of the narrative.”
The crises that caused Adam the most concern during his comms career were the ones that happened outside of normal work hours.
“The ones that kept me awake at night were the crises where you are woken up in the middle of the night because something has gone badly wrong,” he said.
“In that situation, you can easily be on the back foot, you’ve got to try to get your brain in gear quickly, and the people you might need to contact for information may not be around.”
14 types of crises
A crisis can take many different shapes and forms.
Each has the potential to generate social media storms, around-the-clock TV coverage and put brand reputations at risk.
Can we narrow that down?
Well, our panel identified 14 types of crises they think your organisation could face:
- Accident with fatalities
- Product flaws
- Work conditions
- Senior leader behaviour
- Financial performance
- Tax affairs
- Fraud/Corruption allegations
- Supply chain issues
- Cover-ups exposed
- Data breach/online service failure
- Natural disaster
- Social media/marketing fails
- Political
And they picked four of these to explore in more detail, starting with a financial crisis.
Elisa said: “A couple of years ago, P&O Ferries was in financial difficulty.
“And then they said there would be an announcement, which caused speculation about whether it was going into administration.
“But what emerged was that the company was firing loads of staff and hiring cheaper freelancers.
“And they announced this to staff through a pre-recorded video that lacked any compassion – and you 100 per cent need compassion when dealing with a crisis.”
James added: “The camera set up and how the video has been framed looks terrible.”
Data breaches and online service failures
This is a type of crisis we are seeing an increasing amount of in the media, with recent high-profile examples including Ticketmaster, Santander and NHS England,
And it is worth knowing that cyber-crime cost UK business more than £30.5 billion in 2023.
Another recent example, that highlights the potential impact of this type of crisis, was provided by London Drugs.
The company is a Canadian store rather than a dubious weekend pastime, and it closed more than 80 stores across Canada for what it initially described as an “operational issue” and later confirmed was a “cyber security incident”.
The company sells pharmaceuticals, groceries and electronics, and it was more than a week before it could “gradually” reopen stores.
“It was fascinating how the company handled the crisis,” Adam said.
“It responded quickly on social media, provided regular updates and ensured pharmacists were available to help and reassure those dependent on medication.
“But, on the less impressive side, every statement said, ‘We are not doing media interviews’.
“And that is a flawed move. I can’t think of a crisis where that is the right thing to do. You are surrendering control of the story and allowing others to come in and share their thoughts, speculation and rumour about what has happened to your business.
“Cyber-crime is a complicated form of crisis, but you can still get out there, show you care and that you are taking the right steps to make it better.”
James added: “You don’t need to go into huge detail about what has happened. It is the compassion that needs to come through.”
Supply chain
Companies are reliant on their supply chains.
And how those in the supply chain behave – and whether they can supply - poses a risk to reputation.
One memorable example of this type of crisis happened when a change of ‘delivery partner’ meant KFC ran out of chicken, leading to the closure of 900 restaurants.
A chicken restaurant running out of chicken feels like a monumental cock up and a massive reputational threat. But it produced a clucking great response.
Adam said: “KFC couldn’t get the chicken out of the depot, let alone get it to cross the road.
“But there was great humour and a human element to how it handled the crisis.
“And amid the humour, it provided regular updates, made subtle references to its unwillingness to bend on quality, and highlighted how hard its people were working to fix the situation.
“It also created and updated a webpage showing which restaurants had reopened.”
The Colonel has an update…🐓🛣🚦
— KFC UK (@KFC_UKI) February 19, 2018
More info - https://t.co/mLELSs6TaY pic.twitter.com/WEOz6jExHC
James added: “Humour is not something we would necessarily recommend in a crisis scenario, but here, it worked extremely well.”
Natural disaster
When we think of a natural crisis, we typically think of disasters caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other severe weather.
We’ve probably all added ‘pandemic’ to that list in recent years.
What about flooding? It is something we seem to be experiencing more of as our climate changes.
At the start of the year, hundreds of flood warnings were in place across the country, people were evacuated from their homes, and others were left without power.
And Environment Agency employees did an excellent job of communicating about the flooding on their personal social media channels and regional corporate accounts.
Elisa said: “The Environment Agency was front and centre on this. It had people out before the floods hit, explaining what it was doing – they were standing in front of rising rivers saying, ‘We are putting sandbags here’, ‘Do not try and drive through here’, ‘These are the big challenges we face’.
“This included brilliant use of smartphone video to get the message across to people in those areas.
“And news outlets were able to pick that footage up and use it on their channels as well.”
But Elisa warned other organisations not to experiment with video during a crisis response. “A crisis is not the time to skill up your people on this – you’ll end up with some strange footage. If you think it is something you could use, prepare now.”
Can you express compassion during a crisis without leaving yourself open to blame and claims?
It can be a tricky issue.
And there is often a disconnect between what comms and legal teams think about it.
But compassion is essential.
Adam said: “I would always lead with compassion and when you do that, you are not saying you have done something wrong or admitting liability.
“You are showing people you care.
“There was a recent example involving Surrey Police where footage showed one of its police cars ramming an escaped cow.
“Its first statement was cold, factual and distant, and the story continued to grow.
“It then had to put out a second statement where it led with compassion and tried to show it takes the welfare of animals seriously. And that helped it regain control of the story.”
Is saying sorry an admission of guilt?
“We’ve said many times that ‘sorry’ is often the hardest word for organisations to say,” Adam said.
“But I would say it. It does not admit liability. But it does tell people you care.
“How you make people feel through your crisis responses is critical.
“If you don’t say sorry or say it in a way that doesn’t feel meaningful, people will feel you are cold and uncaring.
“Saying ‘We are sorry this happened’ is not the same as saying ‘We did it. We are responsible’.”
Take CARE
In fact, showing compassion is so crucial that it leads an acronym we use during our crisis communication training to show delegates how to shape their responses.
Aptly, it is called CARE, and it stands for Compassion, Action, Reassurance and Examples.
And Elisa talked webinar viewers through it:
Compassion: You need to show compassion for the victims or anyone who might have been involved. Even if it is a data breach - and it feels like just an IT issue - people will worry about what is happening to their information. Put people first and foremost in your statements.
Action: Show people what action you are taking. It could be that you have set up a helpline or launching an investigation, for example.
Reassurance: And that action leads into reassurance. Look like you are in control of the crisis, even if things are difficult behind the scenes. You must provide reassurance during a crisis.
Examples: Provide examples of the action and reassurance. It is all very well telling me you are taking action, but you need to show me what action you are taking.
Holding statements and the need for speed
Our webinar began by discussing how vital it is to respond quickly to a crisis.
Holding statements are crucial to meeting the tight timeframe and gaining some control of the narrative.
“Holding statements are your crisis friend,” Adam said. “You can prepare them now. Think about your vulnerabilities, what might be on the horizon, and what could expose you to scrutiny and put together basic statements that fit our CARE model.
“Then, when a crisis strikes, you only need to fill in the blanks about where and when it happened.
“You could take those 14 types of crises we identified, create a holding statement for each one and get them signed off now.
“In the initial stages of a crisis, people do not expect you to have all the answers and details. But they want to know you are aware, you care, and you are doing something about it.
“That holding statement will only hold for so long, but it gives you time to better understand what has happened, create more detailed statements and get your spokespeople briefed.”
What else can comms teams do now to help ensure they respond quickly during a crisis?
Ensuring you know who your crisis spokespeople are is vital.
Adam said: “Is your crisis spokesperson always going to be your CEO or will you go for subject matter specialists?
“We’ve spoken a lot today about IT breaches and online services – would your IT director be better to talk about a crisis like that?
“The CEO is often the default option. But it is not without risk. If the crisis deepens, where will you go, and how will you escalate your response?
“They may also not be a great spokesperson. They might struggle to build the connections with your audience that others can.
“You also need more than one spokesperson. If the crisis runs and runs, one spokesperson will not be able to meet the media demand.”
Elisa also says it is crucial to consider the best times to deploy your spokespeople.
“Try to make sure you are hitting the morning, lunchtime and drivetime programmes because they will have more listeners,” she said. “You will then have more chance of the clip running throughout the day in news packages.
“And with holding statements, you need to imagine how it will sound in a broadcast because we will take it and voice it. So, it needs to have an easy style and language.”
The importance of triaging
We have delivered countless crisis management testing exercises, and one of the issues James says he repeatedly sees is organisations struggling to prioritise enquiries and responses.
James said: “You should know who your target journalists are – the ones you think will come to you and those you want to communicate with.
“Having that sort of matrix set out for that can be helpful.
“And think about how you will manage the press office phones during a crisis because it goes crazy.
“It is easy for us to run a crisis test with two or three journalists and overwhelm a comms team of 10 to 12 people by banging the phones and firing off emails.
“Think now about who you could pull in from other departments to help you manage that situation.”
One more thing…
There’s one thing above all else you need to ensure your crisis comms does not fail.
“You need to make friends with journalists now,” Elisa said.
“Proactively go out and get those good stories in the media. Be the organisation the media wants to turn to.
“If you have that good relationship with journalists, we will give you leeway. We won’t be on the phone to you constantly. We won’t be saying, ‘Did you say this?’ and ‘Did you mean that?’. We will give you a little benefit of the doubt.
Adam added: “I think the reverse is also true. If you don’t handle a crisis well by not responding promptly or not putting spokespeople forward, when you have something positive to share, are journalists going to be rushing to cover it?
“Handling a crisis well is crucial for gaining proactive media coverage further down the line?”
There were many crisis communication questions asked during the interactive session - more than our panel could answer in the time. But they will be answered soon in a blog.
Media First are media and communications training specialists with more than 35 years of experience.
We have a team of trainers, each with decades of experience working as journalists, presenters, communications coaches and media trainers.
Click here to find out more about our crisis communication training courses.
