Catastrophic oil spill? (or negligence and arrogance). Racism? (or a big ego). 40 million credit card records hacked? (ignored warning signs).
Each of these examples represents a business crisis that damaged reputations, hurt sales, and negatively impacted the bottom line. What do they have in common? The financial damage could have been minimized with an effective crisis communications plan. The key word here is “effective.”
Don’t have a plan? Where do you start?
At some point, nearly every organization will experience a crisis. For many, unfortunately, their crisis planning strategy is denial: “That will never happen to our company.” Except that it just might. When all hell breaks loose, and management is freaking out, remind yourself of these “truths” of a crisis.
1. There will be short-term pain, there can be long-term gain. Try to stay calm and objective. There is no reason that short-term pain has to turn into long-term damage to the...
TNT’s newest drama, The Last Ship, has drawn me in over the past few weeks, and as the story unfolds, it has become a weekly lesson in crisis management and communications. Based on the novel by William Brinkley, The Last Ship is a compelling chronicle of the USS Nathan James, a U.S. navy warship sent on a top-secret, radio-silent mission in the arctic with a team of epidemiologists. When the mission ends, and the ship is ready to head home, the captain and crew learn that in their absence, a...
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A company’s reputation can take years to build, yet it can be destroyed in the blink of an eye due to a crisis.
In the past year, we have seen several companies suffer financially, failing at crisis communication in situations that needed frequent, honest and transparent messages: Target. Malaysia Airlines. General Motors. Takata (the airbag manufacturer). To name but a few.
Recent studies indicate that only about half of North American companies have a crisis plan, and of those, only...
It’s not the kind of number you want to see increase. Unfortunately, 2014 saw a nearly 30 percent jump in data breach reports in the U.S. alone. Some companies have communicated effectively with their stakeholders, while others have failed miserably. Moreover, those failures have a significant cost in revenue, profitability, and reputation, in addition to the hard IT costs to beef up security.
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (www.idt911.com), in the United States in 2014...
