This document discusses the importance of crisis communications preparedness. It notes that reputations can be destroyed quickly but take centuries to build. It highlights the importance of having a crisis communications plan and team in place to respond to potential risks and crises in order to preserve business value. The document provides examples of crises at companies like BP and Sony to demonstrate how a bad situation can be made worse by an unprepared or ineffective response. It emphasizes the need to identify risks, have guidelines, train spokespeople, and conduct simulation exercises to improve an organization's crisis preparedness.

1. When crisis hits! The importance
of being prepared.
Presented by Yeow Mei Ling
Managing Consultant and Crisis Communications Practice Lead
Text100 Global Communications
meiling.yeow@text100.com.my

2. “Good reputations can take
centuries to build, but just
seconds to destroy”

3. What is your reputation worth?
“Corporate reputation is a more important measure of
success than stock market performance, profitability
and return on investment. Only the quality of
products and services edged out reputation as the
leading measure of corporate success.”
World Economic Forum
“30% - 50% of a
company’s value is in
intangible assets.”
Ernst & Young, Measures that Matter

4. Crisis Communications Preparedness:
The Purpose
• Marketing builds business value
• Crisis and issues management seeks to preserve business value
• Poorly handled crises affect trust ― and the bottom line:
– Share price
– Loss of sales, contracts, goodwill, partnerships
– Price erosion
– Interrupted/damaged organizational performance
• Thoughtfully handled crises are an opportunity to:
– Present the true soul of the company
– Prove management’s integrity
– Build and preserve credibility and trust with major stakeholders

5. What can go wrong?
• Act of God, business catastrophe, terrorism
• Employee (mistake, miscommunication, litigation initiation, IP theft, criminal activity,
dissatisfaction)
• Product, service or technology (network outage, service failure, downtime)
• Management, leadership, company performance (resignations or shareholder/board
pressure to resign, fraud, corporate investigation, personal indiscretions, earnings miss,
financial malpractice)
• Consumer, community or pressure group action or legislation
• Accident or negligence (causing illness, injury, fatalities, damages, loss)

6. .. .Multiplied by unprecedented market
turmoil
Corporate
Restructuring Merger transparency
Shareholder Value Low Bankruptcy
Morale
Hostile
takeover Declining
revenue Unhappy employees
Disgruntled customers
Office closure
Product failure

7. ...Compounded by new worldwide
dynamics
Changes in Technology
EMPOWERMENT
TRUST More choice, more voice
Confidence in
each other,
FRAGMENTATION
not institutions Bigger cake, thinner slices
Changes in
Society Changes in Business

8. Can make a bad situation much, much
worse…
• Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
• Tony Hayward appeared
unsympathetic and
attempted to shift blame
• BP was too transparent in its
attempts to manage its
reputation
• People thought BP cared
more about fixing its image
than solving the problem

9. Can make a bad situation much, much
worse…
• Sony repeatedly hacked
• Customer details shared
• PSN knocked offline for
extended period
• Sony downplayed severity of
problem
• Official communication was
sparse and vague
• No details or timeline for
situation resolution

10. SONY

11. And can have a far reaching impact…
TAIWAN FOOD SCARE

12. What are your risks?
• What external and internal factors could represent a
crisis for your business?
• Define three major risks that you feel could affect
your business.
• Consider how prepared you are to deal with these
events from a communications perspective today.

13. Types of crisis
Sudden
Accident, death, bomb, fire, serious product
failure
Smoldering

Resignation, product faults, legal actions,
complaints, quality issue, unethical
corporate actions, accountancy malpractice,
poor financials

14. Dealing with a crisis
• The ultimate objective: issues
Pre-existing
don’t reach crisis proportions
relationships of trust
and goodwill • Very few crises are total
Strong values and
company culture
surprises
• A crisis is the latest possible
point at which a response can

Skilled crisis
prevention, take place
preparation,
handling and
communication
• Prior to this point, somewhere,
someone (usually senior
management) knows about the
probability of a crisis

15. Who owns the crisis?
Operational Communications
Operations Internal communications
Security
CEO communications
Manufacturing
Marketing/branding
Facilities
Physical recovery Investor relations
Crisis
Management
Team Management and leadership
The key is effective Overall responsibility
coordination of the Official positioning
management, operational
and communications Business leadership
response to the crisis Spokespeople

16. 10 guiding principles of managing a crisis
1. Have a clear process
2. Know how to analyze the situation
3. Develop clear objectives and strategies
4. Ensure smooth logistics
Action principles:
5. Speed
6. Consistency
7. Candour
8. Control
9. +1
Establish:
10.Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms

17. New Era Crisis Communications

18. Social media crises rising

19. Bad customer experiences

20. 31%
%6

21. What employees are doing

22. Social media can make a bad situation
much, much worse…

23. A case study
National Australia Bank

24. Another case study
DBS Bank Singapore

25. Building blocks
for crisis preparedness
Building Blocks, Holger Zscheyge, http://www.flickr.com/photos/zscheyge/49012397//

26. New era of crisis comms workflow
Map and monitor
social and
Revise crisis plan, traditional media
preparation and LISTEN channels
monitoring
REFINE PREPARE
Create a crisis
communications
plan and train
executives to
Conduct engage
immediate debrief
on resolution
REVIEW CRISIS
ENGAGE Manage dialogue
with Internal &
external
stakeholders and
communities

27. Buzz Analysis
What is the size of
the conversation
around your brand?
What topics are
generating buzz
LISTEN around your
company?
 Identifying Buzz: we identify which topics
are getting the most attention in online
discussions and why.
 Influencer Analysis: our experienced
analysts deliver in-depth qualitative analysis
of the online voices with the most influence
on your brand.
Influencer Topic Driver Analysis
What do influencers think are the key issues?
Influencer Lists
Who’s driving discussions
around your brand? Influencer Dashboard
What was the tone of
influential posts toward your
company? How often do
they discuss competitors?
Audience Segmentation and Community Mapping
What types of online communities are discussing
your company or products?

28. New era crisis communications
workflow
LISTEN
REFINE PREPARE Outputs
• Crisis communications plan and
spokesperson / community owner training
program including:
• Comprehensive DARE-based crisis
communications plan including social
and traditional media, influencer and
REVIEW CRISIS channel engagement strategy (includes
internal influencers)
• Established ownership and coordination
policies
ENGAGE
• Executive and spokesperson training
• Social media policy creation
• Pre-engagement with influencers
• Pre-established presence in key
communities

29. New era crisis communications
workflow
LISTEN
REFINE PREPARE
Outputs
• Manage dialogue with Internal &
external stakeholders and
communities including:
• Social and traditional media outreach
and response to all stakeholders
• Real time conversation and media
monitoring
REVIEW CRISIS
• Management of social and traditional
media newsrooms
• Creation and management of crisis
ENGAGE micro sites
• Strategic communications counsel
• Senior consultant joins crisis
management team

30. The new era of crisis comms
Monitor multiple channels through social media
Vigilant dashboards and RSS
Internal is as critical as external – ensure all
Internal vs. external
audiences are engaged appropriately
Crises don’t wait for news cycles – monitor and
Real time
respond 24x7
All channels feed into each other – ensure your
360 degree
message is consistent
Not all channels and influencers are created
Amplified
equal – find those that amplify
Speak with a human voice – that’s what your
Authentic
communities use

31. In short, be prepared...
• Identify your crisis communications team
• Have clear guidelines for internal and external comms
• Identify spokespeople
• Train spokespeople
• Establish crisis notification systems
• Identify and know your stakeholders
• Anticipate crises (scenario planning)

32. How do you improve your
organisation’s preparedness
quotient?

33. First..
• Conduct a crisis communications audit
– Hot spots (vulnerability audit)
– Existing structures and processes
– Readiness and gaps

34. Second..
• Develop clear guidelines, best practices and
policies
– Crisis communications manual
– Crisis reference kit
– Roll-out to core team(s)

35. Third…
• Conduct crisis simulation workshops
– With comms team or with wider crisis
management teams and committee

36. What is crisis simulation training?
• A real live simulation exercise to experience the pace and passion of a crisis with
particular focus on internal and external communications
• A great opportunity for individual brand communications teams to work side by
side with each other and develop a regional/ global team mentality
• The chance for communications staff who may not always deal with the media
directly to get a taste for press office life
A boost to any public relations professional’s ability to manage the media in a situation
that could happen!
3

37. Workshop series #1: Semiconductor
company
• ‘As live’ crisis management simulation (part of internal
team building programme).
• Text 100 developed a crisis around a fictional fire at the
company’s largest fab facility: Large fire spreading! Toxic
cloud and missing, presumed dead, staff members.
• In London, Paris and Munich, the communications teams
were given imaginary roles to play facilitated by Text100
consultants .
• Pressure from concerned relatives and industry bloggers to
broadcast, print and online media.
• Workshop objective – To create a life-like crisis situation
and see how each team reacted, learning from any
shortcomings in the Company’s infrastructure.

38. Workshop series #2: Regional Bank
• Simulation workshop followed completion of crisis audit and
development of group CC Guidelines
• Conducted over separate full-day workshops in TH, Indonesia,
SG and MY.
• Scenario: Banking platform failure with no ATM & online
transactions, no payroll transfers, no access to online
information, eve of a long weekend, long cues, irate customers.
• Simulation collaterals included mock news and social media
monitoring alerts, mock TV coverage, blog posts.
• Designed to provide a test bed and pressure cooker
environment with breaking news, ambush interviews, trending
twitter conversations, blogs and queries from authorities.
• CMT involvement (with Chairman/CEO) for decisions, approvals
and media engagements.
• Actual best practices from ‘as live’ scenarios used to fine tune
guidelines and drive home best actions.

39. Fourth
• Review, refine, refresh regularly
– Review with new crisis scenarios and industry
developments
– Refine policies, processes and guidelines
– Refresh with existing and new team members

40. Summary
• Social media has changed the nature of crisis management
communications forever
• However, the principles of crisis management communications remain
fundamentally the same
• It is more critical than ever to understand your company’s channels of
influence, especially your employees
• You can’t rely on news media as the sole channel for crisis
communications
• Constant monitoring is vital
• Authenticity is currency
Being prepared is a weapon in the comms arsenal!

41. There’s an up-side
Thoughtfully handled crises are an
opportunity to:
• Present the true soul of the company
• Prove management’s integrity
• Build and preserve credibility and trust
with major stakeholders

42. Thank You
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