Crisis communications: A step-by-step guide

It is the branch of PR that businesses hope they’ll never need.

However, crisis communications can very quickly prove to be the most valuable.

Whether you are a sole Etsy trader or a mega multinational, it is prudent to have a crisis comms strategy in place should a PR storm ever engulf your business.

And there are always storms brewing.

It could be a bad review that has gone viral or a misguided marketing campaign (looking at you, Bud Light). At the top end, it could be a front-page expose involving alleged criminality within the company.

Whatever the problem, you need a plan. As such, we’ve created a handy step-by-step guide on creating an A-grade crisis communications plan to help your business navigate through any choppy waters.

1. Get forecasting – and get auditing

Why are meteorologists so important? Because they have that rare ability of being able to confidently forecast the future.

You don’t quite have that luxury in PR, but a good crisis comms plan should be able to anticipate any potential hiccups on the horizon for your business.

Like in life, there are some things you just can’t anticipate. But a lot of the biggest PR crisis could have been avoided with greater forecasting and planning.

That’s where an audit of your business can help.

Start by checking the social and political climate – what are the ripples on the ocean that have the potential to become big waves which could crash into your business?

Next think about where the potential pinch points are within your business. Try and identify any PR issues internally, for example: are your staff well-behaved? Are all your products safe? Are they well-reviewed? Are you getting minor complaints – and are any of them blowing up into major ones?

Finally, is your complaints procedure doing enough to stop grumpy customers marching to the press – or perhaps even more damaging these days – venting on social media?

A bit of time spent identifying any pinch points can make a huge difference down the line.

2. Get your messaging straight, get your team ready – and don’t leave it too late

Hopefully, there won’t be an emergency – so you’ll never need to break that glass case.

But if you do, you want the fire extinguisher that is a crisis comms plan to be able to quickly douse those flames.

And one golden rule to ensure that does happen is to have clear, approved messaging that’s ready to go as soon as it does.

Big organisations, such as police forces, councils, and major private sector companies, have media statements lurking on-file, ready to be issued should anybody ask about those skeletons in the closet they’d rather not let out.

They’ll have identified them in the crisis comms planning stage and will have drafted a response to the issue ‘if asked’.

That’s a smart play, and businesses putting together their own crisis comms strategy should follow their lead.

The time to prepare is now. Assemble your crisis comms team and ensure the messaging and wording you want to issue should this issue ever become public is perfect.

You also want to ensure that you have a multi-pronged approach to getting that message out. Don’t just have a press statement ready – prep social posts, create videos and have emails and text messages templated ready to send to customers (if applicable) to help soften any blow.

What you absolutely don’t want to be doing is responding to this in a panicked rush. If you bury your head in the sand, there’s far more potential for pandemonium.

That means disjointed messaging and your team not singing from the same sheet.

3. Polish your mouthpiece

If the crisis is big enough that the media has become involved, there’s a good chance that they’ll want to get the company’s take.

That could mean interviews with journalists, radio and TV appearances – the whole shebang.

So make sure that whoever will be speaking to the media knows their lines. Work with them – or engage a PR agency to carry out some media training in advance - to ensure that they know the script word-for-word.

You need to ensure there’s no confusion with your messaging. Keep it painfully simple and succinct.

The question will also pop-up as to who is speaking with the press.

The temptation could be to put a media spokesperson in front of the camera. But my advice? Make it the top boss.

If you have a CEO or MD, work with them to ensure that they are capable of doing the job. In reality, their job makes them the face of the business so in a crisis, they should be the public face – even if you have a PR agency or in-house comms team.

Want an example to back up why? Look no further than the South West Water saga from May 2024.

About 16,000 people were left unable to drink tap water after a parasite outbreak. The scandal dominated the new agenda for days.

South West Water took a battering. But chief exec Susan Davy was nowhere to be seen on the news.

Instead, they put up Laura Flowerdew, the company’s chief customer officer. The optics weren’t great. As superb as Laura likely is at her job, her job title isn’t familiar with the public and the scale of the story needed Susan Davy to be the one to deliver the reassurance that the community needed.

It also just made it feel like, when a storm hit, the top boss was simply AWOL – and that exacerbated South West Water’s problems.

So ensure your management team are prepped, trained and up for the job.

4. Don’t be P&O – get some quality professional help

In PR, monitoring is one of the most important things we do.

We monitor the media and the current agenda to find opportunities to boost a client’s reputation.

Additionally, we also monitor for potential issues. And if a crisis does happen, you need to monitor everything from the public reaction to the own steps you are taking to limit damage.

In 2022, P&O announced 800 redundancies, a move which was never going to enhance the company’s reputation – especially when they were replaced with cheaper agency workers.

However, the story blew-up further than they could have ever dreaded.

The staff were sacked via video call. Everything about it stunk.

It created a tsunami of bad press for the ferry firm, and lead to direct Government criticism.

To this day, it is still an example of how staggeringly bad a company can get crisis comms wrong.

Had it not forecast that one of the 800 disgruntled staff might whip their phone out and record what was such a cold and sterile sacking, that it was lampooned in the TV show ‘Succession’?

Did they not consider fed-up passengers might go the press because their trips had been ruined – thus extending the backlash?

Given P&O admitted it was a “swift” decision, you sense a lot of the above advice – from prepping a strategy and spotting any potential pain points – simply wasn’t carried out.

The result? Two years on, the story is still sitting pretty high up on Google News when you search for the company.

Bad news doesn’t just vanish – but you can substantially mitigate.

At Harvey & Hugo, we’ve been helping clients with crisis comms for 15 years.

We have vast expertise and can help you create the perfect crisis comms plan – should you ever need it.

We hope that you don’t but be prepared – and throw us a bone to see how we can help your business.