Handling a Crisis Well Means ‘Having a Bad Day Instead of a Bad Month’

Communications professionals who have long relied on keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that details about mishaps and crises can be kept under a lid were warned last week that the nature of a crisis is that bad news eventually trickles out.

Workshop Advice to Live By A crisis management plan typically costs at least $25,000 -- Larry Kamer, president of Kamer-Singer & Associates. "Don't be in a hurry to get it wrong" -- Gregory A. Rixon, senior VP of Susan Davis International. Too many companies don't devote enough time to pre-crisis legwork so they end up spending countless hours on the recovery phase -- Ernest Del Bueno, director of business development, The Corporate Response Group. "The facts will [eventually] come out so you better be the first to tell them (the media)" -- Kent Hoover, editor of Washington Business Journal.

And with the increasing reliance on secondary sources such as the Internet, unnamed sources and disgruntled employees and customers, being a timely messenger is a must, now more than ever.

But having a crisis management plan that covers hypothetical situations companies might face has to be more than a rundown of phone numbers and internal alerts to keep news from leaking into the public domain. (Situations could include sudden stock drops and personnel incidents to accidents and explosions.) A crisis plan has to be a prototype that beyond pinpointing key spokespeople, also designates what routes will be taken to address stakeholder concerns.

"You need to get all the bad news out at once," said Barry McLoughlin, president of Barry McLoughlin Associates, Inc. "Have a bad news day - not a bad news month."

McLoughlin was one of more than a dozen speakers who presented tips, tactics and trends about the evolving PR discipline of crisis management at PR NEWS "Advanced Crisis Management Workshop" held Feb. 17 at the Sheraton Washington in Washington, D.C.

Ironically, even though it seems like a company would be playing with fire by not having a crisis plan in place, about 40 percent of those in the audience indicated they didn't have a crisis plan. Even companies as large as Jones Intercable rely on a template plan - versus regionally honed blueprints.

Several speakers, including Harland Warner, president and CEO of Warner Communication Counselors, Inc., Vienna, Va., pointed to the necessity of having a crisis management team (including executives from marketing, PR, legal and production operations) as part of readying a company for a crisis. And Warner added that should a crisis happen, doing what's in the public's best interest will help you determine the ethical ways to respond.

The Nitty-Gritty When It's Not So Pretty

Knowing how to handle a crisis has been one of the most cumbersome tasks in PR and one of the most analyzed since the Exxon Valdez oil spill became the litmus test in how not to handle a crisis. And since then, the lesson that has surfaced is that no matter how deep-pocketed, respected or all-American a company is, a crisis is always an inevitability.

Keys to Not Making the Same Mistake Once Step 1: Commitment Articulate your organization's values Recognize and assist affected audiences Communicate appropriately Dedicate resources for crisis planning for crisis response for fixing real problems Step 2: Audit and Assessment Risk development Scenario development Step 3: Planning Crisis team Crisis plan Developing "warp speed" communications capabilities Securing appropriate outside resources Step 4: Training and Testing Crisis plan training Media/message training Exercises Simulations and drills Step 5: Stopping the Crisis Before it Starts Mitigation programs Media policy and training Issues management Source: Larry Kamer of Kamer-Singer & Associates

Just look at Texaco, which had to answer a slew of questions after a tape recording of executives making derogatory racial remarks in November 1996 ended up being broadcast on television, according to Katharine Paine, founder and CEO of The Delahaye Group, Portsmouth, N.H.

Paine was the keynote speaker at the workshop and presented measurement statistics and crisis overviews her media analysis company has compiled while tracking publicly held companies who have endured the wrath of the media as well as questioning publics.

Juxtaposing companies that have handled crises well and those who haven't received high marks, Paine brought up some recent examples to drive home her point that controlling crises also means knowing what the lasting impressions of the crisis are. PR execs need to find out whether the perception exists that a company met a crisis head-on or whether it's thought that it used subterfuge.

She cited Intel as not reacting quickly enough when news of its flawed Pentium chip surfaced, as opposed to Intuit which acted swiftly during tax season in addressing problems of its Turbo Tax software.

Paine also pointed out that thousands of people log onto newsgroups every month to post messages and exchange information and that 30,000 of those newsgroups users eventually link to Web sites. Thus, the opportunity is ripe for companies to address online questions about controversies or emerging business issues to stay ahead of the game. "An ounce of monitoring is worth a pound of PR," she says.

This workshop comes next to San Francisco - June 4, 1998, Westin St. Francis.

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