Crisis Management

“Not every incident needs a response, but incidents that are ignored can lead to a bigger crisis.” This crisis management advice comes directly from Ernest DelBuono, senior strategist for strategic communications firm Levick. At its… Continued

In today’s rapid-fire world of communications, brand reputations can be torn down in a moment by a single tweet or Facebook post. One of the major facets of being prepared for such a crisis is having a staff that’s ready to respond and rebuild at a moment’s notice. To investigate the process behind preparing staff for a calamity, PR News opened its Crisis Management Boot Camp on Feb. 23 with a session on building a flameproof crisis team.

It’s too early to say with a lot of certainty, but it appears Uber has absorbed several PR lessons concerning crisis management. It’s had a fair amount of practice. The most recent incident for the SF-based company has Susan Fowler, a former employee, penning a widely circulated blog post about sexual harassment at Uber. It’s hard to fault the response of the company’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, this time. He’s taken several of the basic steps of crisis management and done so promptly.

When social media channels started to emerge in the early 2000s, many of us thought these platforms would improve business understanding and help break down barriers between companies and their critics. More than a decade later, it hasn’t exactly turned out that way. These days the chatter in business sanctums is more about the weaponization of social media. Twitter, Facebook and others are being used to denigrate, belittle and demonize brands as well as the people who run them.

In times of stress, one’s judgment is impaired, no matter how cool the head might seem. This holds true for both individuals and organizations in crisis mode, and the temptation to act out on social media can be too great for some. The best defense is a smart, succinct crisis plan that can be shared throughout an organization.

As the Super Bowl went into overtime and the Patriots took the lead and won the Vince Lombardi Trophy, my husband looked over at me and did not say “Wow, that was amazing!” Nor did… Continued

Uncertainty could be one of the handmaidens of crisis. So you can imagine the mood in Washington, D.C., as a new administration transitions into the White House. Presidential transitions often are bumpy, even when the new administration is from the incumbent’s party (think the balky path from the Reagan White House to the Bush team in 1989). The phones of brand communicators and PR firms alike are ringing a lot at the moment. Many of the calls are about crisis or potential crisis. As such, we asked communicators who will be speaking at PR News’ Crisis Management Boot Camp in Huntington Beach later this month for best practices to prepare for and react to crisis.

This still-young year has felt like a midtown traffic scrum of competing, colliding crises, stoked by the overheated engine of a new presidential administration. Brands are nervously checking Twitter, seeing if the president has mentioned… Continued

In crisis communication, more than any other facet of PR, planning is crucial; allowances must be made for various possibilities, and responses need to be deployed with utmost speed. It may seem a daunting task to develop such plans, but if you have a set of underlying principles, you may find that your plans flow out of that foundation in a very natural way.

Have the efforts of Wells Fargo’s PR, communications and marketing teams shifted the conversation about the brand away from the bogus credit card scandal of early September? We asked TrendKite to crunch the numbers.