Last summer, Arthur Wiese was in the middle of a personal crisis - he was en route to Columbus, OH, for the funeral of his wife's sister - when he received a call about the
unprecedented crisis facing the Gulf Region from Hurricane Katrina. The interruption of Wiese's plans, while unfortunate, was clearly understandable - he is the vice president of
corporate communications for Entergy Corporation, the electric utility for Louisiana and upper Texas.
Unlike the federal, state and local governments, Entergy was not caught off-guard by Katrina's approaching wrath. "We learned from past storms not to wait for government
agencies," Wiese remarks. "We decided to evacuate the corporate headquarters on Saturday morning, two full days before the storm hit."
Wiese left the funeral procession and caught a flight to Jackson, MS, where Entergy maintains an emergency crisis command center. "We have elaborate communications plans for
all types of crises, including storms. In fact, we drilled for reacting to the damage from a Category 5 storm hitting New Orleans in April."
Elsewhere in the Gulf, the energy giant ConocoPhillips was prepared for the worst of the hurricane season and the crisis communications challenges it would provide. "We have a
very, very detailed crisis planning group," explains Sam Falcona, vice president of communications and public affairs. "We're pretty well equipped to deal with just about
everything."
ConocoPhillips operates oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, thus making its operations the first target in the hurricane's path. But as with Entergy, the company went beyond
government assurances in the face of the coming storm (remember that Katrina was originally not expected to directly hit New Orleans). "We don't just rely on government weather
reports," Falcona explains. "We have a bunch of vendors who track where the storms might go."
The advanced planning by Entergy and ConocoPhillips equipped both organizations for dealing with a crisis communications situation before the damage was done. Eric Cravey,
president of Cravey Communications, an agency based in Jackson Park, FL, commends this approach and rues that it is not more prevalent.
"The challenge in eradicating the 'it can't happen to me' way of thinking has to start at the COO and CEO level if not mid-level management," he says. "We, as an industry,
need to be more aware of the 'what ifs,' the 'gotchas' and the 'oops' that may arise. Great planning can avert a real disaster or PR faux pas. So, a note to every CEO, give your
communications director a 'seat at the table' so he/she can help you prepare better from the outset."
Driving the Story, Not Being Run Over By It
As the situation in New Orleans and the Gulf grew worse once the hurricane abated and scope of the damage became clear, Wiese aggressively kept the media abreast of how Entergy
was addressing the problems it faced. "We opened our command center to journalists," he recalls. "We took journalists into the field to visit our work camps, where our crew was
living in large tent cities."
Wiese also conducted helicopter tours of the affected areas, bringing all journalists (and even a camera crew from the Discovery Channel) to the areas where Entergy was at
work. "We were exercising transparency, making everything visible and open," he adds.
ConocoPhillips also maintained a busy media center, and Falcona ensured there would be no disruptions (for either PCs or Blackberries) by having all of the company's Gulf-area
servers transferred out of the region. The company maintained automatic e-mail updates and Web site news reports as developments arose during the crisis. Considering Katrina's
disruption to the region's energy industry, Falcona made sure all concerns and questions were answered.
At no time did either Wiese or Falcona evade the media or decline to respond to specific inquiries. By maintaining full transparency, both organizations kept media trust
throughout the crisis and gave the correct image of being in control of the situation. Neither man gave a "No comment" answer during this period.
Maintaining a State of Grace
Both Wiese and Falcona literally weathered the Katrina storm, and unlike entities such as FEMA or the Red Cross, they came out of the crisis without negative commentary on how
they handled the situation.
In dealing with a crisis, PR professionals who offer a calm poise in the face of intensive or frequently hostile media inquiries will not be on the defensive. Eric Cravey
recalls an incident earlier in his career where keeping one's cool helped to calm a growing crisis.
"I represented a town council candidate one time who had been slapped with a sexual harassment lawsuit three weeks prior to the election," he says. "The biggest challenge for
me was trying to remain poised while the TV cameras rolled. Keep in mind, message development was a problem because the candidate's attorney and his political consultant disagreed
on what path to take in the matter. The attorney wanted to take the typical 'no comment' stance, while I said we needed to address the charges for the first time in public. At the
press conference, I stood there with the candidate by my side with his supporters acting as onlookers. After I laid the ground rules, and I read our prepared statement, then the
floodgates opened up. Each TV station was seeking that perfect unscripted comment and remarkably, I made it work. The attorney was still chapped, but the candidate and the
political consultant were pleased with the outcome. In short, I did not go down the 'no comment' path. I recall saying something like, 'He's still the same XXX you elected and the
fact that so many people turned out today is proof that he has great community support' or something to that effect."
Contacts: Arthur Wiese, 202.530.7325; Sam Falcona, 281.293.6413; Eric Carvey, 904.298.3030.