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Centennial college lecture crisis comm
- 1. HOW TO RESPOND WHEN A CRISIS HITS
- 4. An event that threatens or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt business, damage reputation, and/or negatively impact share value.
- 7. 5 PRINICIPALS OF CRISIS COMMUNICATION Sincere Prompt Informative Communicative Empathetic
- 8. BE SINCERE Don’t lie! Be honest in your response to the crisis.
- 9. BE PROMPT If you don’t respond quickly rumour and speculation will fill the void. Sitting silent says: I’m clueless I don’t care I got caught I’m hiding something
- 10. BE INFORMATIVE People want answers. How are you going to solve the problem.
- 11. BE COMMUNICATIVE Allow for two-way communication. Give your audience an outlet to provide feedback, ask questions, vent. This helps win loyalty and cooperation from stakeholders.
- 12. BE EMPATHETIC Show people that you actually care. Have a heart and communicate that.
- 14. Be Sincere Michael McCain wasted no time getting out in front of the media and telling the company’s side of the story.
- 15. Be Prompt • Publicly apologized • Recalled all 220 packaged meats produced at the affected plant.
- 16. Be Informative • "We believe it is important to take these broader preventative actions to respond to this situation promptly, comprehensively, and in the best interests of our consumers” (August 20th news release) • "We know this has shaken consumer confidence in us. Our actions will continue to be guided by putting their interest first" (August 23rd news release)
- 17. • "Our actions are guided by putting public health first." (August 24th news release) • "We remain steadfast in our belief that our actions must continue to be guided by what is in the best interests of public health" (August 25th news release)
- 18. Be Communicative
- 19. Be Empathetic "Going through the crisis there are two advisers I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the lawyers, and the second are the accountants. It’s not about money or legal liability, this is about our being accountable for providing consumers with safe food."
- 20. “This is a terrible tragedy. To those people who have become ill, and to the families who have lost loved ones, I want to express my deepest and most sincere sympathies. Words cannot begin to express our sadness for your pain."
- 22. Discussion
- 24. Took responsibility Placed public safety above profit
- 25. • Completely open about what happened (Be sincere and Be informative) • Acted quickly and immediately recalled 31 million bottles (Be prompt) • Sought measures to ensure this would never happen again (Be empathetic and Be informative) • They took on a short-term cost in the name of consumer safety (Be empathetic)
Editor's Notes
- Good morning! How’s everyone doing this morning?My name is Alanna Banks and I’m going to be talking to you guys today about crisis communications management; more specifically how to respond when a crisis hits.
- Here are a few ways you can get in touch with me. Feel free to tweet at me if you have any questions and I’ll get back to you after class or you can always email me. As with all my lectures this one is uploaded onto slideshare for you to have on file. So let’s into it shall we?
- Put your hand up if you know who these two are? Put your hand up if you know what’s going on with them right now?Claims that their marriage was a complete fraud, claims that Tom wouldn’t let Katie pursue her own career, claims that Suri is not even Tom’s, claims that Scientology is the reason they divorced….the list goes on and on. With all these claims and accusations being swung about I would say Tom Cruise’s reputation is in jeopardy and the scrutiny that the Church of Scientology is under for it’s unusual practices and it’s unfounded claims of alien beings living on earth. This might seem like a silly example but I’m using this to illustrate that crises are totally relevant and something that we as PR people have to plan and prepare for. And we’re not just dealing with crisis for companies or brands sometimes it’s about people’s reputations too.When your brand is faced with a public attack you can expect that all eyes will be on you and watching your every move. How you publicly respond to the crisis and the speed by which you do so, will be the determining factors in how effectively your brand recovers from the situation. So that’s enough about Tom and Katie lets dig a little deeper. What is a crisis anyway? Who thinks a crisis is a negative review of your product or company?Who thinks a crisis is someone swearing on your brand’s Facebook page?Well a crisis is (flip to next slide)…
- So what do you do when a crisis strikes?
- Panic and freak out right? Don’t do this. As PR professionals we have to be the calm, cool and collected ones.
- We will have a plan in place so that the company we’re working for can act quickly and proactively with a goal of surviving the onslaught and minimizing the damage.There are general principles upon which you should build your crisis response – both your actions and your messages. I call it putting some SPICE into your crisis communication response. These are the 5 prinicpalsand it’s been proven over and over again that they must be the mainstays of your crisis response. For the simple reason that they work.So let’s get going…Number 1 (flip to next slide)
- There are general principles upon which you should build your crisis response – both your actions and your messages. I call it putting some SPICE into your crisis communication response. These are the 5 prinicpalsand it’s been proven over and over again that they must be the mainstays of your crisis response. For the simple reason that they work.So let’s get going…
- We all know that liars never prosper, cheaters never win. If you lie when you’re responding in a crisis situation it will come back to bite you. It’s not only the media these days that could blow your cover anybody with a phone, blog, twitter account or facebook could start an uproar and uncover truths while you’re attempting to set the record straight. #2 (flip to next slide)
- When a sudden crisis breaks that threatens or could threaten to harm people or property or impact your revenueyour response must be prompt.You need to respond immediately, within hours, 24 hours later is too late. If you don’t answer right away people are going to get angry and start to speculate. It sends a message that you’re clueless, don’t care, you got caught with your pants down or you’re hiding something.
- Obviously you don’t want to tell everything or say anything that’s going to compromise your legal position but in a time of crisis you need to be as informative as possible. They are scared or concerned. They want answers. They want to know how this crisis affects them. If you don’t tell them, somebody else will, and often they’ll get it completely wrong. be forthright with information and tell them how you’re going to solve the problem.
- In a time of crisis people want an opportunity to express themselves. So give your customers an outlets to provide feedback, ask questions and vent. This could be a comments section on your blog, opening up a phone line or email address, receiving comments on your facebook page. If you’re willing to listen this will help win loyalty and cooperation from your stakeholdersand you never know what you might learn that you could use in the future to improve your brand.
- Ever wonder how news anchors report horrible news with no emotion? You don’t want to take cues from them when you’re making your response. It important to get the facts out, but it’s equally important to show that you have a heart and you actually care. BP got a lot of flack for this during the oil spill when the CEO Tony Hayward said on camera that “he’d like his life back” despite the lives and livelihoods his company destroyed. By saying this he clearly wasn’t thinking or getting good advice from his PR rep.
- Toronto’s Maple Leaf Foods was front andcentre August 2008 when their processing plant was linked to a strain of listeria that had sickened 26 and killed 17 people.Despite taking a hit worth $20million in product recalls Maple Leaf Foods rep is in tact.
- Maple Leaf took the high road as soon as the crisis erupted.The company didn’t deny anything, took responsibility by commiting to investigate the problem, and issued full page apology ads in the papers.
- Michael McCain wasted no time getting out in front of the media and telling the company’s side of the story.Michael McCain personally apologized for the tragic incidents in a video that played on mainstream tv and was posted to YouTube
- Provide updates to the media and the public on an ongoing basis.
- The company acknowledging the seriousness of the problem. The homepage of the Maple Leaf Foods website features a full-page update with information from the company along with links to information on the recall.
- Michael McCain personally apologized for the tragic incidents in a video that played on mainstream tv and was posted to YouTube
- These principals have been around for a long time and can be applied to any crisis situation. The channels by which the story is told have changed but the way in which we respond remain the same. In 1982 7 people died after taking Tylenol capsules which had been tampered with and contaminated with cyanide.Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million bottles of Tylenol across the country and stopped all advertising immediately.When the story broke it was the top news story on all broadcast outlets across the US. More than 100,000 news stories appeared in the paper.
- Reintroduced product with tamper resistant packaging, created a discounted pricing program, new ad campaing and gave 2500 presentations to the medical community.