Hey, I'm crisis, so manage me!

Crisis won't announce, "I'm at the door, come open up." It'll hit you when you less expected it. You can go to bed with a smile on your face, heart full of pride of accomplishment(s) and wake up the next morning with your brand trending and packed full of negative sentiments; then the hard-work begins: seeking for the facts, sieving it and deciding what to feed the public, winning back the trust you lost, etc.

Now trying to rebuild the brand and reselling it to a public you hurt is not as easy as distributing a welcome pack. You need to address the questions of why (raised to power 2), who did it, what were you doing, what were you thinking, where were you looking, how did this escape you, who will pay... and so on. Relationship reconstruction will have its drain on the management, staff and the profession the hurting brand represents.

Good governance is not fire-fighting or crisis-management. Instead of opting for ad-hoc solutions the need of the hour is to tackle the root cause of the problems. - Narendra Modi

Yes its easy to say we have a department that's responsible for crisis management and allude all the process to the department; THAT'S A GRAVE ERROR. Crisis was never at the door, it was right with us, resumed every morning, present at our boardrooms and meetings, in our data trend, looping with our IT and always at high alert to spring on any loophole we fail to cover (our people, infrastructures, tools and processes). It is everyone's responsibility to save the brand!

The crux is are we prepared to host a crisis? Not the type that was taught in the walls of a classroom. More than ever before, crisis management demands a new set of interdepartmental cooperation, not the fire-fighting approach we currently adopt. As communicators, especially if you manage a pan-African brand, be aware and ahead of your public. The Nigerian public perception is not the same as that of the South African public; likewise Rwandan public might not assimilate trends like the Egyptian counterparts. Unfortunately (well, fortunately, 'cause that's what we're paid to do), that's the headache of core corporate communicators to manage.

The public is not stupid, they see things, they hear things, they know things; in fact, your employees are a percentage of the public and no matter how small that percentage is, they have the power to influence/sow a seed in the larger public that'll germinate and metamorphose into a viral and trendy crisis (or otherwise).- Femi Oke

From my experience as a Corporate Communicator, the key value and legal tender here is TRUST; whether it's a data breach, or integrity crisis, the currency you trade with, amass or get deprived of is trust. Now who do you trade with? On whose platform? Who do you open up to? If you've never been in a crisis, you may never have asked these questions (but you need to start asking now, while there seems to be no crisis).

In conclusion, never ever believe a brand is too big to fail. Get prepared for crisis like it's going to hit today, have dry runs, conduct staff samples and assessment, enlighten them on what to say and what not to say; and most importantly, ensure you have a good relationship with the media, believe me, they can determine if your brand will survive.