WASHINGTON, DC - The Federal Trade Commission identified 18,600 cases of potential Internet fraud last year, not to mention more than 5,000 rogue Web sites published by
disgruntled consumers, unhappy employees and activists. These were among the online dangers cited by Reid Walker, managing director of global marketing communications, GE Global
eXchange, at last week's PR NEWS Strategic Online Communications seminar.
No doubt the Web has brought to life a whole new genus of corporate nightmares, from stock tampering to online piracy to digital smear campaigns. But Walker and other speakers
stressed that communicators who view the Web as a tool to be deployed only in response to Web-hatched crises are missing the boat. The immediacy, flexibility and scope of the
Internet are benefits that should be leveraged in virtually all kinds of crisis scenarios - whether they're born online or off. A recap of some of our speakers' most
cogent recommendations on the use of the Web as a crisis management tool:
Establish online headquarters. The minute news hits alleging your company's involvement in a public health risk, discriminatory policy or violent crime, people will
immediately log onto your corporate Web site for more details. No dish there? Concerned individuals will start looking for updates elsewhere, and you'll lose the opportunity to
communicate with them. To speed up your response time, have a microsite (also known as a "dark site") template partially fleshed out and ready for full deployment in the event of
disaster, speakers advised.
For example, attorneys representing the parents of JonBenet Ramsey in the child's murder case posted a Web site to present their side of the case, noted Larry Smith, president
of the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville, Ky. CNN was among the news organizations to link to the Ramsey site.
Make your site indispensable. A crisis microsite may include elements such as FAQs, first-party statements, links to third-party experts (e.g., doctors, analysts,
engineers, government agencies and news organizations), issue papers, research, company backgrounders and Webcasts of press conferences. The advantage of the medium is that it
gives concerned stakeholders 24-hour access to information, serving as a "public record" of your position on the issue.
Depending on the nature of the crisis, you may or may not want your microsite to be connected directly to your standard corporate site. SwissAir directed concerned citizens to
information regarding the Flight 111 crash off Newfoundland by posting a link from its home page to its crisis site. Dow Corning, on the other hand, established a separate site -
ImplantClaims.com - to manage customer concerns about its silicon breast implants .
A good time to beta test your microsite response time: when making internal announcements, such as re-orgs, noted Barie Carmichael, VP and chief communications officer at Dow
Corning. The audience accessing the site in this case will be smaller (employees only) and should be kept informed about crisis policies and procedures anyway. Want to test the
security of your dark site? Hire a hacker, she advised.
House your crisis plan online
Take advantage of the networking powers of your corporate Intranet and use it as a storage place for your crisis plan, Smith suggested. This will allow corporate officers to
access the plan remotely, if needed, and will ensure that everyone is "on the same page" if disaster strikes. It'll also facilitate a faster response time by enabling those who
need to sign off on official statements to review drafts simultaneously. Archive worksheets, positioning statements, executive bios, home phone numbers and other critical info
online with the plan.
Co-opt rogue operatives. Online snipers complaining about your products in parody sites, chat rooms and message boards? Sometimes the best means of neutralizing the
conversation is to contact activists and disgruntled customers with an offer to host their complaints on your own site, said Michael Smith, founder of Upstart Vision, a high-tech
firm in northern Virginia. What the rogues crave most is a forum in which to speak out. Antagonize them and you'll only fuel their fire. Another way to neutralize would-be
jokers: register any and all URLs that might serve as platforms for pranksters. Let them lie dormant.
Fight fire with water
Sometimes the best strategy for defusing online rumors is to respond offline. Dan Salomon, CEO of mindshare Internet Campaigns, cited clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger's
handling of recent online allegations that he was a racist as exemplary. "He responded to the rumors in style magazines [in print] before the rumors escalated."
Make lemonade. "Not every negative event has to be dealt with by a PR team in full crisis mode," urged Roberta Carlton, director of corporate PR for Parametric
Technology Corp. in Waltham, Mass. As evidence, Carlton cited the software developer Cognos (her previous employer) which leveraged the Melissa virus to garner media attention
surrounding its artful dodging of the bug. Having shut down its external email access to prevent further spread of the virus to its customers and partners, Cognos averted the
disaster. Moreover, the company, being a global firm, played up the fact that it had received early notification about the virus from its European offices (thus emphasizing its
crisis preparedness). The result: front page coverage in more than a dozen computer trade pubs, plugs on all the local TV evening news programs and three interviews on local
radio. "You can get positive coverage out of some of the most negative moments," Carlton said.
(Carlton, 781/398-5479; Carmichael, 517/496-6470; Larry Smith, 812/284-8351; Michael Smith, 703/742-6482; Salomon, 202/238-9600; Walker, 301/340-5985)
Are You
Prepared?
Larry Smith, title, offers this checklist for crisis managers:
1. What kind of management notification system do we have in place for responding
to emergencies during non-business hours?
2. What's our corporate emergency response plan like and how sure are we that
it'll work in a crisis? Has it ever been used or tested? Updated?
3. Who would be our spokespersons and how good would they be in responding to
a mob of reporters and TV cameras?
4. How much information would we be willing to disclose? Who would decide what
would be said?
5. How would we inform our employees, customers and other key audiences and
how long would it take? Is our Intranet available to employees?
6. What crises have our competitors experienced and how well would we have done
if it had been our business instead of theirs?
7. How well did we handle our most negative news event that went "public"? What
would we do differently if we could do it over again?