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?
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...
I had an interesting call from a PR colleague today that sparked an idea for a post. My colleague has a client who wanted her to find them a crisis communications “workbook” or fill-in-the-blank template to create a crisis plan. Apparently the client company was not anticipating any issues, but rather wanted to check a task off their corporate ‘bucket list’.
My colleague rightly believed that such an approach was short sighted and she was working to bolster her argument with opinions from...
