Think of your crisis management plan as a mortgage on your company's reputation - a debt that can be handled well or one that can get dangerously out of control, even accruing damaging late fees. In that vein, Swissair's response to its downed flight that killed 229 people Sept. 2 is supplying some crucial examples of how closely rooted timeliness is to image management.
Within 45 minutes of Swissair being notified that Flight 111 had plunged into the waters off the coast of Nova Scotia, Swissair made sure it had a spokesperson front and center: Walter Vollenweider, VP of Swissair, North and South America, stood at JKF Airport in New York to answer queries posed by a swarm of reporters in the U.S., miles from the crash site.
And days after the crash, the company is still manning a 24-hour center for media and family calls with the help of its outsourced PR agency, Hill & Knowlton. About five H&K employees are now based either in Halifax, where the command center is based; Zurich, Swissair's headquarters; or New York, where its U.S. operations are centered.
"Thus far, we've been impressed with Swissair's handling of this tragedy in both a professional and culturally sensitive way (releasing information in English, German and French)," says Gerry Smith, VP of crisis management firm, Corporate Reponse Group, Washington, D.C. "And their humanitarian take is the kind of thing we've been saying is needed, all along. Just look at how quickly they've assigned someone to be with the families; the initial offer of financial assistance; and the memorial services they're holding in Geneva, Zurich, Halifax, Peggy's Cove, Canada (near the crash site), and New York."
The Center of the Crowd
From acting as a barometer for what issues need to be explained to triaging questions, communicators must seek to affect what perceptions linger in the court of public opinion.
The Swissair case, on initial review, is being seen very differently from how TWA handled the crash of Flight 800 two years ago.
Though TWA has spent millions on the crisis, little of its humanitarian face has been unearthed. In sum, there has never been an overwhelming sense of how much the company anchors its image to the (adept) handling of this tragedy. Swissair, on the other hand, has been depicted as a much more empathetic organization and news accounts are peppered with references to it flying relatives of the victims to the crash site.
Indeed, PR is playing a key role in managing the process, says Jackie Pash, manager of corporate PR for Swissair North America. Pash is one of more than a dozen communicators (including H&K) who has acted as both middlemen and point people for releasing information. Swissair handled 750 calls (including the press and family members) the first night, and a total of 3,000 media calls as of Sept. 7.
Ready - 24, 7
A well-laid plan loses its impact if a company doesn't respond quickly regularly. For Swissair, the realization has already come that it will have a long-term link to the families of the victims. As part of the grieving process, the airline has assigned a caregiver to each family to maintain contact and help them in whatever way is required.
"These aren't paid consultants," says Pash. "These are our employees - for example, one is an account executive in Atlanta and another is someone who heads our employee training in New York. We have done everything from hold hands to getting diapers for babies."
The nature of crises is that your company can never be sure what roles it will be asked to fulfill, but acting quickly will win you half the battle.
Just consider what Patti Londre, president of marketing and PR boutique, The Londre Company, Inc., Los Angeles, has learned about crisis management. She is still knee deep in educating constituent audiences and chasing down media misnomers concerning a July 1995 New York Times story about its testing of packages of pre-cut vegetables.
The story, which was based on laboratory testing for bacteria, cast packaged salad companies Dole, Fresh Express and ReadyPac in a negative light. Despite incorrectly performed tests, Londre's firm was hired in September 1997 to represent Dole and has worked non-stop on quashing misinformation.
Success has come in spurts, but the task of education is never done, executives say. It has taken years for the companies to earn some of the validation they have so desperately sought and headway has just come. In March, a Tufts University "Health & Nutrition Letter" took on the salad-scare reports and set the record straight. Adding to that positive sign was when Dr. Dean Edell, a syndicated radio host, publicized those findings.
Londre says that third-party verification from sources like Edell was precisely what the company was seeking to help it publicize how erroneous the reports were. Suing the media outlets wouldn't have helped the company from a PR perspective, she adds.
"The lessons learned are that we just waited too long to be aggressive," says Nancy Magle, VP of Magle Resources. "It took us a while to move from reactive to proactive." Magle was on Dole's R&D team when the crisis erupted and began her own company June 30 to deal with such science-related misunderstandings. (Swissair, 516/844-4561, Jackie Pash and Steve Callahan; Patti Londre, 213/851-4427; Nancy Magle, 925/484-9788)
Swissair Timeline On Crisis Response for Crash
- 10:31 p.m. Sept. 2 - Plane loses contact
- 10:37 p.m. Sept. 2 - Plane crashes
- By 11:30 p.m. Sept. 2 - Swissair VP Walter Vollenweider arrives at JFK to field U.S. reporters' questions and act as liaison here
- 3:30 a.m. Sept. 3 - First company statement issued, put up simultaneously on Web site
- 10 p.m. Sept. 3 - Passenger list posted on Web site, http://www.swissair.com
- 6 p.m. Sept. 9 - A memorial service is held in Indian Harbour, Canada, at an elementary school. It is just one in a laundry list of gatherings planned.
From Handling Surprise To Sympathy: The Formula for Crisis Response
Generally, three elements greatly influence the crisis management process, according to the "Corporate Communication Handbook," published by Kogan Page Ltd., London.
They are:
1. Surprise - Keep this in mind when preparing your crisis plan: disasters may happen on the weekend or in the middle of the night.
2. Increased Noise - the clamor of rumors and the process of debunking myths and releasing and clarifying facts creates a heightened environment;
3. Lack of accurate information - Key decision makers must realize that some vital information will be unobtainable, so consider that in executing possible scenarios.