Crisis Communications: Good News Travels Fast. Bad News Travels even Faster.

She was the public relations manager for a multi-state technology company and had just settled into her seat on the airplane for a quiet flight back to home base. She had cleared all her voicemail messages before boarding and felt all was well.

When she landed four hours later and turned on her cell phone, her voicemail had blown up while in flight. The CEO’s secretary left three messages. There was a message from a federal agency media affairs staffer; a message from a client’s public relations manager on the opposite coast; a desperate plea from a PR colleague who often assisted with media matters; and five media calls, including one from an Associated Press bureau chief and one from a major U.S. daily newspaper.

By the time she triaged those calls from an airport phone booth during a 40-minute layover, the story of the company’s unfortunate event was being filed by the Associated Press and had traveled around the globe in less than an hour. For three solid months, she did nothing else but manage the crisis communications for this event. It took her company more than a year to get back to normal, and it cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars in man hours, legal fees and fines.

The Bad News: Regardless of size, no business is immune to a crisis.

A financial downturn can force you to restructure. Employees are injured and killed on the job. You can be sued for breach of contract. Your product can be blamed for harming a customer.

Those who have experienced the unwelcome glare of media attention and public scrutiny know that those are, believe it or not, the least troublesome aspects of a crisis situation—and those aspects are time-consuming and challenging enough. Your relationship with clients, vendors and employees can be jeopardized. You can be subjected to lawsuits. Your business revenues can decline. Your business can be shut down, or forced out of business.

The Good News: A business can survive a crisis.

You can manage media scrutiny and maintain the stability of your business—along with your sanity.

Success in a crisis situation can be measured by how quickly a company transitions from being reactive to being proactive. While a good crisis plan is a constantly evolving document, having a basic plan—and practicing it—will make the time between reacting and being proactive much shorter.

We know there are tried and true steps to managing a crisis and minimizing the damage to your business:

The Team: A successful crisis communications plan begins with assembling a team of individuals selected for the purpose of responding to the crisis. This team should consist of your company’s CEO, upper level managers and department heads and key employees throughout the company.

Assessment: The crisis communication plan should include an assessment process and a crisis protocol for a variety of emergency scenarios. This information should be documented and updated on a regular basis. Team members should understand their roles in the event of an emergency and recognize their actions will affect the company’s reputation and future.

Training: Training should occur on a quarterly basis and involve a variety of realistic crisis scenarios. Just as the elementary school fire drill, the more you practice the procedure, the better prepared you will be in an actual crisis. These drills should not be predictable or occur at the same time. At least once a year, a crisis communication drill should be held during non-working hours. For instance, a late-night drill when employees are asleep or a weekend drill on a football Saturday can provide a more accurate picture of the quality of your crisis communication plan.

Little Time to Think: Once an emergency occurs, you will have very little time to think. The news media always reacts in rapid fashion to an emergency story, so expect to see them at your door. Every move you make will be scrutinized and analyzed. The first few hours are the most crucial in a crisis situation, and in that short period of time, your team must be prepared to convince the media, the public and your clients that you are in firm control. In these few critical hours you can enhance and solidify your company’s reputation or lose control and risk damage to your company’s reputation and bottom line.

A solid crisis communication is almost like buying insurance for your business. Hopefully, you will spend hours training for something that will never happen. However, if it does, you will be ready to act with efficiency and purpose.

Contact us today to help you prepare: 1-888-328-9334 or contact us.