Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Developed by:

Crisis Communications
in a 24/7 Social Media World

Michael Shepherd President & CEO The Shepherd Group, Inc. PR Counsel to Brewer Direct, Inc.

Planning for the Unplanned

hen is a foot 11 inches? Thats the question Australian teenager Matt Corby effectively raised in January 2013, when he posted a photo on Facebook of a horizontally-challenged Subway sandwich that came up an inch short on his tape measure. Within a few days, more than 131,000 likes, negative worldwide publicity and a batch of copy-cat lawsuits followed, leaving the worlds largest sandwich maker with a fully baked crisis served piping hot. Welcome to crisis management in a 24/7, social media-connected world. The episode illustrates how how quickly a crisis can not only erupt, but spread; and, why every organization especially a resource-strapped nonprofit needs to be prepared. The question isnt whether or not one will experience a communications crisis. Its when.

This white paper was presented at the Brewer Direct February 2013 fundraising institute.

Brewer Direct Institute

2013

The Size Gap

n a 2006 study published in the academic journal Public Relations Review, Colorado professional researchers Reghan Cloudman and Kirk Hallahan surveyed 126 practitioners across the United States to gauge organizational preparendess. Performance was measured based on the presence of a crisis plan as well as indices related to tactics, training, the maintenance of contact lists and media monitoring. The good news: Approximately 75% of the employer organizations represented had a written crisis communications plan and organizations, as a whole, were reasonably prepared to engage in crisis communications. Preparedness was found to be positively correlated to organization size, the level of autonomy, delegation of authority within the organization and the process orientation of the organization. Conversely, the research found that of the 24 organizations without a plan, only one was in the large category, while 15 organizations without plans were concentrated in the small category. This is particularly relevant for nonprofits, the majority of which operate with minimal staff and budget.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Risk vs. Reward

he risks attendant to operating without a crisis plan remain high, as noted by University of Tennessee-Knoxville researcher Whitney Holmes. A peer-reviewed 2000 paper by J.M Penrose, published in the Public Relations Review, found that while large entities with ample financial resources may have a chance of survival following a crisis without a crisis plan, 80% of smaller, lesser-known organizations without a comprehensive crisis plan vanish within two years of suffering a major disaster. As a 33-year public relations practitioner, I have witnessed the sanguine posture that executive management in many organizations adopts when it comes to crisis communications planning. Often, if such a document even exists, its not current and reflective of changing technologies, issues or stakeholder dynamics. In far too many instances the plan takes the form of a simple policy memo that merely covers contact protocols. Much of this stems from the deceptively fundamental nature of good communications. In its comprehensive 2010 Resource Guide: Risk and Crisis Communications Best Practices for Government Agencies and Non-Profit Organizations, published in 2010, consulting firm Booz Allen highlights a comment from a veteran educator that helps explain this laissez faire attitude:

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Risk vs. Reward

Effective risk and crisis communication relies on strategies, or best practices, that at first glance appear to be common-sense recommendations. Actually, these best practices are often counterintuitive. When pressure to present accurate, timely information is high, the tendencies to guard information, over-reassure the public, and deny responsibility often increase. When spokespersons rely on their intuition for constructing and delivering messages, they are bound to make these same type of mistakes. Steven Venette, associate director of the Risk+Crisis Communication Project at the North Dakota State University, in Special Section Introduction: Best Practices in Risk and Crisis Communication, Journal of Applied Communications Research, 34:3 (2006), pgs. 229-23

A Team-based Model

necdotal evidence overwhelmingly shows that effective crisis communications management requires a small, but highly nimble SWAT team that views things through at least three key organizational lenses: operational, financial and legal. In many organizations this order is reversed. While attorneys are essential members of a response team, they are not necessarily best positioned to drive the train. Winning in the court of law and the court of public opinion very often entail very different strategies and tactics.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

A Team-based Model
The justice system, by its nature, is adverserial. There are clearly identified winners and losers. Plaintiffs and defendants argue their cases with fervor in hopes of prevailing with a judge or jury. There is little regard for the oppositions well being and in fact considerable effort is spent on discrediting those on the other side of the issue aisle. Effective public relations on the other hand works best when an organization operates from a win-win paradigm. There is an interconnectedness between stakeholders that exists before, during and, most importantlyafter a crisis. Even when circumstances are such that both public opinion and the law are on your side, many publics demand an appropriate amount of empathy for stakeholder groups who may be disenfranchised by developments necessary to achieve a greater public good. Encouragingly, in the Cloudman Hallahan study only 6 organizations reported that public relations practitioners do not participate on the team. About 54% of respondents said their crisis team had at least one PR representative, while 24% had two, and 13% had three.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Social Media Impact

hile the Subway example points to the vulnerability organizations face in todays digitally connected communications environment, examples abound as to how technology helps organizations more effectively respond. Tech-savvy volunteer groups, for example, developed Google mashups in the raging 2007 Southern California wildfires that provided specific locations of evacuated, burned and destroyed homes often before firefighters were dispatched. Simple text messaging, or SMS, helped millions of Chinese outflank government officials a decade ago during the virulent SARS outbreak that spread through the worlds most populous country. In her university research paper, Ms. Holmes writes Citizens knew more about the virus than the World Health Organization and thus filled the information void using their own method mobile technology (Gordon, 2007). Similar evidence of social media being a force for good can also be found in the Mumbai, India hostage crisis in 2008. The world stood up and took notice when hostages and witnesses used a combination of texts, tweets and Flickr images of terrorist-engineered killings to raise awareness across the social media universe.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Segmented Response: The Stakeholder Matrix

ne may infer from these examples that social media should anchor future crisis response strategies. That would be a mistake. Instead, the UT-Knoxville researcher found that crisis communicators must be on alert for fragmented audiences, otherwise their messages may not reach intended audiences. Her work cites a study which states Companies need to evaluate whether different audiences are likely to turn to the internet for information during a crisis and make sure the organization responds accordingly...Not all audiences are equally familiar with social media and traditional channels of communications could be more adequate in some instances. This can be determined using surveys in the precrisis phase Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith (2008). Any executive that has endured a crisis can attest to the importance of not overlooking any defined constituency. Good communications planning typically addresses several primary groups, as indentified on the website, http://www.ready.gov Customers or clients Survivors impacted by the incident and their families Employees and their families News media Communityespecially neighbors living near the facility Organizational management, including board members and investors Government elected officials, regulators and other authorities Suppliers

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

The 3 Rs of Early Stage Crisis Response

ttributed quotes for a nonprofit spokesperson addressing emotionally charged issues such as a NIMBY conflict or a difficult leadership transition often sound benign. In most cases, its intentional. Those in the journalistic line of fire make a conscious effort to avoid conjecture and speculation despite numerous attempts by reporters to produce such commentary. The best way to describe an effective early-stage response strategy: Report. Restate. Repeat. Most professional nonprofit communicators engaged in emergency response (e.g. operators of homeless shelters, disaster relief agencies, public safety, etc.) follow that model. Critics may find the approach banal, but it dramatically cuts the risk of being inaccurate. That builds trust, which is the most valuable currency in any crisis. Optimal intervals for providing updates can be as varied as the crises themselves. Depending on the nature of the emergency, the risk/ threat and media scrutiny, it can range from minute to minute all the way to years (in the case of scientific updates on issues like global warming). If theres one fairly universal view among professional PR managers, its that ignoring or failing to address a situation which remains top-of-mind with stakeholders makes rebuilding trust levels more challenging.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Recovery and ROI

ollowing the logic of what gets measured, gets done, anecdotal evidence suggest that professional practitioners are making a concerted effort to capture baseline data on perceptions and attitudes immediately following a crisis. These findings serve as a benchmark against which follow-up research scheduled at designated intervals can be conducted. This enables organizations to gauge both near- and long-term impact on the brand and help shape not only communications strategies, but activities within operating divisions. How well an organizations survives a crisis is powerfully summarized in a highlighted quote in the aforementioned Booz Allen resource guide on best practices: People seem to be able to tolerate you being wrong if youre honest about why you were wrong and what you were wrong about and what youre doing to correct it. But if youre ever perceived as being a dishonest broker of information, I think its just about impossible to recover from it. Dr. Julie Gerderding, MD, former director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Quotation is from Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication: By Leaders for Leaders, published by the CDC. It is not uncommon for organizations or brands to misfire on their first attempt to calm the roiling waters or public opinion following a

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Recovery and ROI

crises often, because of attempts to explain away the problem. Here is the initial response issued by Subway following the wildire that erupted following Matt Corbys Facebook post: Hi, Matt. Thanks for writing. Looking at this photo, this bread is not baked to our standards, they posted. We have policies in place to ensure that our fresh baked bread is consistent and has the same great taste no matter which Subway restaurant around the world you visit. We value your feedback and want to thank you again for being a fan. That statement, posted on January 19, came up at least an inch short for thousands of people who vented their disapproval in the form of vocal protests and more pictures of shrunken sandwiches. Subway apparently got their message, issuing a statement less than a week later than made its way on to newswires and social media channels worldwide: In the companys own words: We regret any instance where we did not fully deliver on our promise to our customers. We freshly bake our bread throughout the day in our more than 38,000 restaurants in 100 countries worldwide, and we have redoubled our efforts to ensure consistency and correct length in every sandwich we serve.Our commitment remains steadfast to ensure that every Subway Footlong sandwich is 12 inches at each location worldwide.

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Brewer Direct Institute

2013

Resources: Best Practices

Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) CERC Framework CD-ROM www.orau.gov/cdcynergy/ Online CERC Course http://emergency.cdc.gov/cerc/CERConline/index2.html Media Preparedness: 77 Questions Commonly Asked by Journalists During a Crisis www.dshs.state.tx.us/riskcomm/documents/77_Questions.pdf

References
Cloudman, Hallahan (2006) Crisis communications preparedness among U.S. organizations: Activities and assessments by public relations practitioners. Public Relations Review. Gonzales-Herrero, A., & Smith, S. (2008). Crisis communications management on the web: How Internet-based technologies are changing the way public relations professionals handle business crises. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management Gordon, J. (2007). The mobile phone and the public sphere: Mobile phone usage in three critical situations. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Penrose, J. M. (2000). The role of perception in crisis planning. Public Relations Review

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