Crisis communications

On 30 September 2015, I attended a training course on crisis communications at CIPR with Jonathan Boddy from Positive Impact as part of my CPD. Here's what I learned...

Not all publicity is good publicity, and the time that's most relevant is in crisis communications management. While you’re trying to deal with something that’s worthy of being called a crisis, suddenly your business is thrown into the spotlight for the wrong reasons. Getting communications right at this stage can go a long way to mitigating the problem, getting it wrong can make it even worse.

 I’ve covered crisis communications before, but this course was a great refresher on what we need to do for clients to protect them in the event of a crisis.

Planning for the worst and hoping for the best is a great strategy. Crises will be exacerbated by being unprepared. And in most cases, if not all, prior planning could leave you with only a small amount of detail to deal with during a crisis.

The best part of the CIPR training was the realisation that in times of crisis you don't want to be scrabbling round for what to do. Having a clear plan of who does what in different scenarios means everyone in the team knows what their role is. And let's face it, in the middle of a crisis, it's likely that the people you'll be expecting to represent the company will be dealing with whatever's gone wrong. The last thing they need is having to make decisions about communications which could have been made in calmer times.

 Being prepared means having a clear plan for communicating to all the relevant people. Internally to team members, people affected and their families and friends, local communities, shareholders, the press. There's no end of people that have to be taken into consideration. Choosing your preferred channels of communication in advance is important too.

I, like all of the delegates on the course, had never experienced being put under pressure by the press. The hands on training gave us an idea of what being doorstepped might feel like. And I have to say, that even during a training session, having a camera thrust in your face and being barraged by questions makes your heart race.

Social media can be both a help and a hindrance at these times. But switching off any pre-programmed communications should be part of the initial plan. There's nothing more insensitive than tweeting a competition, sales messages or cheeky #FF in the middle of a crisis.

So when I got back into the office, I looked at the type of crises that could affect our clients. Over the coming months a plan will be in place for each of them identifying what risks they could face and what our suggested response would be.

In our normal day-to-day work of communications management we look at consequences of putting information out in the public domain. For us it's just part of what we do. We believe in promote and protect, and it's a mantra at Balls2 Marketing.

I can honestly say that I don't ever want to put a serious crisis communications plan into action. But I see the importance of spending time looking at the risks, choosing spokespeople, and creating a comprehensive plan including pre-writing holding statements so we’re prepared if it ever happens.