Marketers: Here's Your Plan for Surviving Any PR Disaster

I wrote a piece a few years ago, focused on the fuel emissions scandal at Volkswagen. In the end, I predicted that 18 months from publication date Volkswagen’s scandal would be forgotten partly because so many other PR disasters would come and go. Subsequently, United Airlines, Uber, Pepsi and even Fox News have done their best to prove me right.

No matter how good you are or how trusted your brand is today, no one’s immune from a PR crisis forever. However, with the right stewardship, you can navigate through to the other side, without sustaining too much damage to your brand. Here’s my recommended action plan:

1. ACKNOWLEDGE THE ISSUE

It’s important to recognize the problem right away. Being silent or slow to communicate with the outside world can do more harm to the brand than good. Cop to the problem frankly and you may avoid secondary scandals like BP CEO’s comment “I’d like my life back” or United CEO’s apology for having to “re-accommodate these customers“.

2. CUT THE RESPONSE TIME

Setting up an independent investigation as well as a task force–of a maximum of four people–with a full mandate to act on behalf of the brand while the crisis unfolds can speed up your response to the unfolding situation.

The task force should be able to act without internal bureaucracy and, most importantly, quickly enough to keep up with the press and social media. Begin analyzing the search keywords, articles, and social media discussions in order to gain an hour-by-hour understanding of what the public really thinks of you. Without it, your company won’t know which messages to focus on and which to stay away from.

3. IDENTIFY YOUR FRIENDS

The 1:9:90 rule exists on social media: One person (the seeder) influences another nine individuals (the incubators), who in turn influence the next 90 individuals (the public). Your goal is to initiate a dialogue with the nine.

Drum up an army of ambassadors. Arm them with the tools, talking points, and outreach ability so they can start a dialogue with the local community. Get ahold of your friends, fans, and business contacts (including, in this case, the car dealerships), find out who’s running with the news, and then contact them all, one by one, to share your own perspective. In short, drum up an army of ambassadors. Arm them with the tools, talking points, and outreach ability so they can start a dialogue with the local community.

4. CREATE EMPATHY

Forget about advertising–it’s a complete waste of money because no one will trust you anyway. Instead, overreact in favor of the consumer. The cost of doing so might be extraordinarily high, but you, simply can’t afford to think of the short-term now.

Ask yourself what the brand should offer each and every consumer–as compensation so generous that even rivals and detractors (especially the thousands of people writing heated posts online) will be compelled to say, “Admittedly, they made a mistake, but they’re doing even more than they need to in order to make it right.”

If you go on the cheap, like Lufthansa’s initial compensation of 50,000 euros for each victim of the Germanwings flight 9525 crash, you’ll burn a negative impression into everyone’s mind right from the start. This approach even has roots in neuroscience: You want to establish a “somatic marker“–an emotional bookmark so dramatic that it won’t be forgotten.

5. TURN THE TABLES 180 DEGREES

What would you do if you were the competition? Needless to say, you’d see this as an opportunity. (In fact, when a brand crisis comes to light, it’s often because a competitor has taken steps to reveal it.) At this stage, your industry rivals will be poised to acquire your customers. If you don’t act fast, that can completely undermine your future revenue. So start a second task force with the sole purpose of stopping the bleeding. Think as the competition thinks, then act to counter those moves.

6. REBUILD YOUR REPUTATION 

While the short-term machine is in action to manage the outrage, go back to the drawing board and ask yourself what’s needed in order to recover your long-term reputation. Remember you’ve just lost your most essential brand value–trust–so anything and everything you say in the future will be questioned.

Who can you team up with in order to recover trust when you release your next product line? What features can you include that scream “trust”? What will your competitors do to fuel even more distrust among your customers? Things are no longer business as usual–every single product, advertisement, and strategic decision in your pipeline needs to be reevaluated in the light of “no trust.”

7. BECOME H2H

Part of this rebuilding should also focus on turning your company from B2B or B2C to Human to Human (H2H). Remember that your customers are people first, and want to be treated as such. But an H2H focus can’t exist only in the sales department, bring it to every sector of the business by empowering your employees to choose people over protocol.

As gloomy as the days ahead, here’s some good news for the company: It will survive, just like the vast majority of companies over the past decade that witnessed a similar a crisis with their brands.

Martin Lindstrom, one of the world’s foremost branding experts, is the author of Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends.

His previous books have been translated into 47 languages and have sold well over one million copies. He was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. In 2016, Thinkers50 named him one of the top 20 business thinkers in the world, and he has been ranked the world’s #1 branding expert for three consecutive years. His articles appear in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company. He advises startups and a Who’s Who of Fortune 100 companies on branding, communication, consumer psychology, retail, innovation, and transformation.