Insignia Talks

…about the power of communication to create, manage and protect reputations

It’s the final day of our 28 day review of organisations in crisis management mode, and it’s a quick post before the day is done.  But fear not, we’ll be analysing the month of crises and issues and posting our insights and recommendations early in November.

The final organisations under the media spotlight and engaged in crisis or issues management are:

The Royal Navy: military; security, safety and environmental concerns as submarine runs aground

Catholic Church: religious organisation; criminal act – former priest jailed for child abuse

Legal & General: financial services; management failure – financial figures released two weeks early in error

Kent Count Council: local government; cutbacks – 1,500 job cuts announced

These four organisations are among more than one hundred who found themselves in the media spotlight over the last 28 days.  As a consequence, they all had to take steps to protect their reputation: not all of the incidents involved nuclear submarines, but every organisation concerned was fighting to prevent their situation going ballistic.

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

Our 28 day review of crises and issues has shown that whilst some crises are triggered by physical events and are externally generated - fires, storms, accidents – many others are to do with people and are internally generated.  Examples include corruption, customer service and management bust ups. 

When constructing risk assessments, many organisations find it relatively easy to conceive the first type of crisis, but not the second.  But beware: the self-inflicetd crisis can be much more damaging.  So make sure that you are open in your reputational risk asssessment and countence internally as well as externally generated crises. Fail to do so and you are trying to protect your reputation with blinkers on.

Today’s crises and issues include examples of both internally and externally generated incidents:

France: petrol stations run dry as strikes take hold

Transport for London: transport; thousands of passengers trapped for two hours due to power failure

Reuters: media; financial columnist quits over trading breach

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

As we enter the final five days of our 28 day look at organisations in crisis and issues management mode, it’s clear that online and social media has made a huge difference to the escalation, spread and management of incidents.  So what do you need if you want to be geared up for successful reputation managment in an online world?  Here are five key elements:

1) Established online relationships and reputation

Just like conventional crisis communication, it’s a massive headstart to have built up relationships and reputation beforehand.  It emans that you’re not coming from a standing start in the event of an incident and you will be attuned to the way that social media works.

2) Pre-prepared platforms and channels

Make sure you have defined and created your online crisis communication hub (maybe your existing corporate blog or a darksite) ahead of time.  And ensure that other channels such as Twitter are set up and ready to go.

3) Online monitoring

When Dominos was hit by a YouTube crisis last year, one of its main problems was that it failed to identify that a crisis was playing out online until almost too late.  Make sure your own early warning systems are working effectively in the online space.

4) Pre-agreed approval processes

The beauty of social media is that it enables you to get messages out quickly to your stakeholders.  But only if you have agreed a clear and swift approval process beforehand.

5) Pre-identifed, pre-trained resource

Social media demands frequent and inter-active communication.  So make sure you’ve identifed and trained the people who will be responsible for manning these channels before the crisis breaks.

Social media presents both opportunity and threat in crisis management: make sure you’re geared up to minimise the downside and maximise the upside.

Organisations managing on and off line crises and issues today include:

Eurostar: transport; industrial action in Belgium

Dolce & Gabbana: fashion; tax investigation

Pingyu Coal & Electric Company: mining; underground accident

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

Sport, travel and oil – very different businesses, but linked today by the fact that an organisation in each is managing a crisis or issue.  It just goes to show that even on a Sunday businesses need to be ready to act quickly to protect their reputation whether from newspaper investigations, pressure group protests or simply poor customer service. 

FIFA: sport; corruption allegations

STA: travel/financial services; serious customer service issues

Petroplus: oil; blockade of oil refinery

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

This 28 day review of organisations in crisis management mode has laid bare the sheer number and diversity of incidents, issues and crises affecting businesses every day of the year.  Learning number one from this exercise is that organisations must prepare plans and people beforehand so that they can respond quickly and professionally to protect reputation.  

The sheer quantity of crises occurring every day highlights the fact that these are not unusual events.  But when the crisis affect you, it all becomes very personal, intense and pressurised.  Maintaining perspective, objectivity and calibrating your crisis communication response accordingly is essential to avoid over (as well as under) reacting.  Over-react and you can escalate the situation bringing it to the attention of stakeholders previously unaware of it.  Under-reaction though is even more dangerous, creating an impression of an oragnisation that doesn’t care , is hiding the facts or has simply failed to get its act together.

Organisations calibrating their crisis and issues management response this weekend include: 

Tesco: supermarket; fined after mouse droppings found in store

Severn Trent: utility; burst water main leaves 17,000 homes and businesses without water

LibDems: political party; website hacked

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

As we enter the final week of our 28  day review of organisations in crisis management mode, it’s a fraught Friday for the organisations in the spotlight today:

Reckitt Benckhiser: household products; £10.2 million fine from Office of Fair Trading for abuse of market position 

John Radcliffe Hospital; health; report recommends that heart surgery should stop at the hospital (recommendation follows previous safety concerns)

London Fire Service; emergency services; firefighters vote for strike action

Effective communication and issues management will be essential for all three if they are to avoid reputational damage.

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

As we start to look back on the rescue of the Chilean miners, comparisons are being drawn between the crisis management approach to this incident and that of BP.  The inference is  that if BP had applied the same crisis management principles as Chile then they would not have suffered such enormous reputational damage.  I absolutely endorse the view that Chile managed the rescue well, and BP managed its crisis badly.  But to think that it would have been possible to transpose the Chile approach to BP and arrive at a postive outcome is much too simplistic. 

Here are 5 reasons why:

1) BP’s crisis involved the deaths of eleven men: no one died in Chile.  Imagine that eleven miners had died in the original mining incident: all of a sudden, the story and the crisis management challenge would have been very different.

2) BP’s crisis caused significant and very visible damage to the environment and wildlife: Chile’s caused none.  After harm to people, damage to  the environment is the second most emotive topic in a crisis.  The only damage to the physical environment in Chile was underground.

3) BP’s crisis affected jobs and the economy: Chile’s did not.  Whilst 33 Chilean miners have lost their jobs, it seems that there will be many alternative ways for them to make money in future. In the US thousands of ordinary people had their livelihoods threatened by the oil spill.

4) BP’s crisis got worse over time: Chile’s got better.  As more and more oil leaked out and the impact became clearer, so BP’s crisis grew.  The worst day for Chile was the day of the accident itself: once the miners were known to be safe and well, the news naturally began to get better.

5) The people factor: as any PR or media person will tell you, news is all about people.  In BP’s case, the story was of the enormous harm that BP had done to many thousands of people in many different ways.  It was by its very nature a negative story about the big company doing bad things to “small people”.  In Chile, the people factor was, of course, the 33 miners and the heroic efforts of the rescuers to bring them up alive: it was a good news story of hope and the human spirit.  The dynamic of the story was completely different and so the perception of the effectiveness of Chile’s crisis management is very different.

The  rescue of the Chilean miners has been one of human endeavour and resilience.  The global feelgood factor has relegated issues such as the safety record of the mine, its financial problems and the role of the government in failing to enforce better working conditions to a footnote. 

Chile has indeed managed its crisis well.  But let’s not pretend that it would have found it quite so easy to turn BP’s crisis into a good news story.

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

When I embarked on this 28 day study of live crisis management, I wanted to explore the frequency and diversity of crises and issues facing organisations of all kinds every day of the year.  I did so in the knowledge that despite a rash of high profile incidents and issues over the last year, too many businesses still say that a crisis of the scale experienced by BP or Toyota simply couldn’t happen to them.  

The vast majority of the crises that have occurred over the first nineteen days of this study have indeed been much less dramatic than BP’s explosion.  All of them have left the media spotlight more quickly.  And none have inflicted such severe reputational damage.  But whether incident, issue or full-blown crisis, they all require effective management and professional communication.  That means processes, planning and a well-trained team.  Put these in place and minor incidents can be dealt with quickly and effectively.  And you can sleep easily at night in the knowledge that if tomorrow “the big one” should affect your organisation, you have the crisis communication infrastructure to effectively protect your reputation.

Today’s organisations under the media spotlight are:

Gap: clothes retailer; new logo withdrawn following consumer backlash (could this be a case of no publicity is bad publicity?)

Liverpool Football Club: sport; High Court hearing as financial issues and fight for ownership rumble on

Hewlett Packard: technology: accused of “butchery” as more job cuts are revealed

Mercedes Benz: automotive; product recall

Asda: supermarket; criticism over sale of padded bras for children

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com

As rescuers reach the Chilean miners who have been trapped underground for two months, it’s timely to reflect that crisis communication is a 24/7/365 activity.  Dealing with a life and death crisis requires this total commitment.  But it’s relevant to communication too: assuming and retaining control of the communication agenda is one of the golden rules in a crisis, so taking a weekend break in the middle of an incident is simply impossible.

But in a prolonged crisis, it is essential that team members get time to re-charge their batteries.  People run on adrenaline for long periods of time during a crisis, but will eventually hit a wall.  It’s important to insist they take time out to eat, sleep and refresh themselves before this happens (you may need to implement a shift system to achieve this during the life of an extended crisis).

So, I send my best wishes to the communication teams in crisis management mode this weekend, especially those in Chile.  

As this crisis nears its end, UK communication teams are dealing with their latest  issues:

Morrisons: supermarket; wrong fuel leaves drivers stranded

Mobile phone manufacturers: renewed attention on health issues

Jonathan Hemus 

www.insigniacomms.com

BP and Toyota suffered 2010’s most damaging crises, and it’s tempting to think that these were very modern crises played out online in the Twitterverse.  But there was a common problem that afflicted both organisations which shows that 21^st century crisis management is not just about online communication: ineffective media spokespeople make bad situations worse

“I’d like my life back” will live on as a crisis media blunder for many years and was the defining gaffe of Tony Hayward’s period in the media spotlight.  But he was not alone.  Scott Brownlee, Toyota’s UK PR chief, talking about his UK MD Miguel Fonseca, revealed to PR Week that “we received letters from people saying they had lost confidence after seeing him on TV”.  President Akio Toyoda fared little better.

Actions for communicators to avoid this:

Review, select and train – you need a trusted team of spokespeople to safeguard your reputation in a crisis.  Regular and intensive media training will identify and enhance the skills of these people.  Have tough conversations with those that don’t fit the bill.

Recognise the demands of the role – choose your spokesperson knowing that this will be their main role in the crisis: it’s a big enough job on its own. Assign them a PR minder to brief and coach them as they undertake their media encounters.

The irony is that a very traditional requirement of crisis communication – an effective media spokesperson – has become even more important in an online age.  No longer is an ill-judged press comment tomorrow’s fish and chip paper: a permanent record via Google has put paid to that convenient get out clause.  And an inept TV performance is seen not just by the thousands of viewers who see it at the time, but also by the millions of others who view it on YouTube or BBC iPlayer, made aware of its existence by a torrent of Tweets.

Communication is not a silver bullet in a crisis, but it can have an enormous influence over how the organisation is seen both during the event and afterwards.  Understanding the key learnings from BP and Toyota, and acting on them will help to ensure that other reputations can be better protected.

Jonathan Hemus

www.insigniacomms.com