In this video, we're going to walk through a crisis communication plan and how to write one for your company or organization. When a crisis occurs and trust me, a crisis will occur. It's vital to the brand's future that PR practitioners are prepared. This crisis communication plan provides a roadmap, a checklist and overall guidance on navigating a crisis. This plan helps an organization gather and release information as quickly as possible during a crisis. Remember, we the PR practitioners are responsible for oversight of the brand's reputation, so we want to minimize the damage by controlling the narrative. I'm sure that's a term you've heard before. Don't let the media tell the story be ready and take control immediately. These crisis communication plans help an organization provide accurate and specific information on short notice to the public media and stakeholders who are demanding immediate answers for your reference. I'm including some free online resources that can help you think about and create a crisis communication plan for your company or organization helps spot offers templates to help get you started. I also listed johnson and johnson's Tylenol crisis from 1982 because this is a gold standard case study in the field of public relations and the sub field of crisis communication. There have been countless write ups and analysis of this crisis and I encourage you to read several of the accounts, think about the life cycle and the strategies used to respond to the crisis. I'm going to take us on a slight detour for a few seconds. This saying on the slide is from my high school science teacher, Mr Harris. As you can imagine, he'd take great pleasure in the same, forgot your homework proper prior planning prevents poor performance scored low on his exam, proper prior planning prevents poor performance. He'd use it at every opportunity. And so all these years later, this rings true to me and especially to the practice of public relations. We often forget that planning is a major step in the practice of public relations and we cannot be prepared or successful without planning. This is especially true in crisis situations. We've watched brands fall all around us, especially in the aftermath of covid. Most brands do not have a crisis plan. In fact, I guess if you even have given it a second thought, but this is the mistake that most brands make. The lack of planning and preparation will absolutely show during a crisis situation. So just as mr Harris warrant, if you don't properly prepare, you simply cannot be successful. Research notes that as many as two thirds of crises that occur should never have been crises. This underscores the critical need for issue management and this is a larger argument for the need of public relations employed as a management function safeguarding the brand's reputation. You also need a crisis response team who will lead during the crisis. Not all people are good under pressure. Some companies choose to hire agencies that specialize in crisis management and conflict resolution before crisis ever occurs. There should be a plan of action with an up to date checklist for practitioners to execute. Remember we are trying to convey information in a way that does the least amount of damage to our company or organization. We are trying to work through the conflict with various stakeholders and should have already thought through strategy to some regard. Let's revisit issue management for a minute. I know we've talked about this in previous videos, but issue management directly affects crisis communications. So it's worth reviewing. There are various software available to help an issue management, especially on social media platforms. You may want to look and to sprout social hoot suite or buzz sumo. If you are interested in this area of public relations issues management tries to manage issues or resolve them before they become crisis situations. We see brands dealing with issues all the time and that's pr at work. We want to manage the issue, resolve it if possible, so that the issue goes away and that stakeholders are content. Think about the zoo, think about the zoo as a brand. The zoo attracts thousands of people, everyday people from all walks of life and thinking about issue management. What are some potential triggering events that might occur? Issues that the zoo might deal with include an animal, birth or death? Maybe an animal escapes from the zoo or a patron gets inside an animal's cage. Or maybe animal rights groups are beginning to emerge as a potential crisis. These are just a few potential issues that the zoo might encounter. PR practitioners worked tirelessly to resolve the issue and to protect the zoo's brand reputation. Remember that a crisis moves beyond an issue and is defined by the Institute of Public Relations as a significant threat to operations that can have long term negative consequences to the company involved. Practitioner experience in academic research have combined to create a set of guidelines for how to respond once a crisis occurs. The guidelines focus on three points. Number one, be quick number to be accurate and number three be consistent. The rationale behind being quick is the need for the organization to tell its side of the story. In reality, the brand or organization side of the story are the key points management wants to convey about the crisis to stakeholders. When a crisis occurs, people want to know what happened. Don't let the news media lead the charge or fill in the information as appear practitioner. This is your brand or organization's reputation on the line and so it calls for a quick response. An early response may not have much new information, but the brand publicly positioned itself as a source and begins to present its side of the story. Researchers note that a quick response is active and shows an organization is in control, silences too passive, it lets others control the story and suggests the organization has yet to gain control of the situation. You want to identify a crisis response team. This team is tasked with being on the front lines during the crisis. The crisis response team is responsible for collecting information, creating and disseminating key messages and working with the media. The team also monitors response to the crisis and crisis communication. The first step in creating the crisis communication plan is together a group of representative employees from around the organization, for example, senior managers from operations, human resources, sales and marketing, research and development, security and so on. This group of employees should brainstorm the potential issues that could develop into crises for your brand or organization and then develop a response plan to address them. The crisis communication plan should be a detailed plan that outlines and explains how your brand or organization will communicate about the crisis. The plan should include the purpose of the plan, explain why the plan is needed. Activation criteria, identify who can activate the plan and under what circumstances procedures outlined. The steps that need to be taken in regard to internal and external communication include who is responsible for what and what tools like email, internet news, release, social media etcetera will be used to carry out the plan. Your plan should also include key messages. While you may not use the messages verbatim, they can serve as a jumping off point to help you pull together statements quickly during the crisis situation. You should also consider what possible questions will be asked by the media and draft responses to those. Your messages should include identify the cause of the crisis, provide a brief description of what happened, provide a timetable for future plans, communicate compassion for any victims of the crisis, provide suggestions for protection if appropriate. The next guideline is about accuracy. Obviously accuracy is important. Any time the organization communicates with publix, but during a crisis, especially often the time pressure and a crisis result in inaccurate information. If mistakes are made, they must be corrected. This crisis team needs to share information so that different people can still convey a consistent message. Just a quick reminder that there are templates out there to get you started, hubspot has crisis communication plan templates and whose suite offers some on social media planning. Lastly, if you are a member of the Public relations Society of America, there is a certificate program available just like with most things in life practice makes perfect and that is true of crisis communication. Your crisis communication plan should include all the elements needed to respond, contact information for employees including key executives, key media for outreach, a strong social media monitoring and outreach plan available trained spokespeople and experts and so on. I wish I could say that just the existence of a crisis communication plan guarantees a smooth and effective response but that's just not reality. However, a crisis communication plan can reduce the impact on your brand and the lasting impact on your brand's reputation. There is little time during a crisis for planning and so the more logistics you can have planned out and prepared the better recently. Crisis experts have recommended that concern or sympathy for any victims be expressed in an organization's initial crisis response, expressions of concern helped to lessen reputational damage and reduce financial losses. For many, there's a natural tendency to want to move away from the crisis situation as soon as possible. However, this could be a missed opportunity. You should always conduct a thorough analysis of what happened, what worked and what did not and revise your communication plan for the next crisis situation. So for the checklist, here's some things to consider. Have you identified the crisis response team and chosen the primary and secondary spokespeople? You will need articulate an expert managers to respond to media inquiries. You want to train your spokespersons in addition to the subject matter expertise required by the crisis managers must also be able to answer media questions without overreacting and with a sense of the impact of what they say or do not say social media needs monitoring is important always. But especially during a crisis, knowing how to respond when necessary is essential to this role. You want to make sure that all outward facing or customer facing employees are prepared to respond. Remember, employees are critical in crisis response, a public that is commonly overlooked, but employees can be leveraged and trained to help during a crisis situation. As mentioned on the previous slide, you'll want to set up monitoring and notification systems and you should do this prior to a crisis, including testing the notification system. Next you'll create a list of key audiences or stakeholders who are impacted or who play roles in responding to the situation and the company's performance and addressing it. Understanding who they are and what concerns or motivates them is an important part of crisis management. You'll create key messages and develop holding or standby statements for the media. You cannot predict all the specifics, so there's no way you can fully develop these messages. But given the scenario brainstorming you did with the crisis response team, you can prepare somewhat. The crisis management phase ends when the crisis is resolved or under control. The foundation for coping with the active crisis should be a crisis plan. Once the crisis is underway, the crisis response team must be flexible. Inevitably the crisis will move and shift in ways not imagined or covered by the crisis communication plan.
