‘Crisis comms’ isn’t scary – it’s just planning, practice and lots of prep

Lately I’ve been really enjoying the When It Hits The Fan podcast. It’s my weeknight guilty pleasure (when there’s no Bridgerton available). There’s something about the vicarious analysis of other PR professionals’ challenges that really sets my brain alight.

It’s not about indulging in schadenfreude (although, who of us in PR isn’t guilty of that from time to time), but rather the hindsight-driven exploration of who did what, why they used that messaging, why they may have chosen that particular medium and, sometimes, how they utterly failed to avoid something akin to most of our worst nightmare.

‘Crisis communications’ is a phrase that sometimes scared me in the early stage of my career. Perhaps rightly. I recently saw someone on LinkedIn suggest that if you don’t feel at least a little nauseous as you hit send on a press release distribution or company-wide announcement that you’ve already triple-checked, you may want to start thinking about a new career path. 

But as I came to grasp the importance of building evidence-based messaging frameworks that are drawn from an organisation’s values and objectives, I also began to recognise that crises tend to happen when that messaging and those values diverge. Because a crisis is often only a challenge until your response (or lack thereof) turns it into one. 

Since I recognised that, crisis management became a real area of interest. So when the opportunity came up recently to attend the PRCA’s virtual half-day Crisis Comms Conference, I made sure my Tuesday afternoon was free.

The speakers were fascinating and the discussion points ranged from deepfakes and misinformation to how to prepare for when (not if) your organisation finds itself on the wrong side of this new breed of crisis. 

The approaches discussed got me thinking about a phrase I heard time and again from an agency director I worked with at a formative point in my career - ‘comms on the board’. I always agreed with her from a reputation management point of view, but I think I now truly understand the essence of what she was really talking about. Communication considerations belong in every function of an organisation, not just some subset of marketing or a dotted line into HR. 

Because for all the noise out there about AI, we are still human. Every organisation’s stakeholders are too, whether they are internal, external, or a distant doomscroller clicking on your bad news moment. When you strip thoughts about communication out of business decisions, you open yourself up to significant reputational damage. 

Have you explored all the angles? For someone who loves to play the devil’s advocate in almost every room, it was music to my ears to hear one of the speakers describe this as the first question to ask when building up your crisis preparedness. And what was clear from the discussions that unfolded during the conference was that if you’ve not had your communications team run an analysis of what the absolute worst that could happen is, you have not even begun to explore the angles.

So how do you prepare for the crisis that will (not may) one day come?

1. Make sure that you know what your organisation stands for and what its purpose is, but even more importantly, make sure that this is understood and reflected throughout your organisation as a whole. 

2. Conduct a SWOT (and/or PESTLE) analysis to make sure that you’ve at least anticipated where that crisis could be coming from. Make sure that this includes some honest reflection on your existing brand equity and that sentiment analysis and social listening aren’t just something you do when campaign planning. And, keep a weather eye on the horizon so that you can adjust your analysis as new factors arise.

3. Strive for transparency at every level. Many a crisis comes from someone trying to hide something, often something seemingly insignificant. But as the saying goes: "It's not the crime that kills you, it's the cover-up."

4. Plan for what you’d do in the event that your crisis results in a loss of communications channels, including a downed website or hacked social media accounts.

5. Be prepared to say sorry if you discover that you are the bad guy. Have a plan for who will do this in possible eventualities and back-up plans in case that one fails. 

6. Build a checklist so that, when fight or flight kicks in, you can rely on your earlier preparedness to make sure you don’t forget a step as simple as cancelling pre-scheduled social media posts.

That is by no means an exhaustive list, but they were the key points that I took away from the conference, along with one other - rehearse!

The crisis simulation run by Polpeo as part of the conference was eye-opening, pulse quickening and, dare I say it, a lot of fun. I’ve rehearsed broadcast interviews and media pitches before, and even role played crisis case studies, but nothing that moved so fast or that so quickly went to the very heart of communications strategy. What’s more, I think if I’d done a crisis simulation such as this very early in my career I’d have felt far less fear of the ‘what if’.

Preparation is key and if you’ll take the time to do several run-throughs of your pitch, you should jolly well be taking the time to run-through what you’ll do when a ‘fan hitter’ strikes. 

So thank you, once again, to the PRCA, to all of the speakers and to the amazing team from Polpeo for an afternoon that joined up a lot of dots for me and allowed me to indulge my inner devil’s advocate. 

Now, please excuse me, I have a date with a glass of pinot noir and the When It Hits The Fan back catalogue.