Posted on: May 23, 2023
Show Notes
Air Date: 5/23/2023
What do you do when the media calls for an interview after a crisis? From time to time, businesses are forced to engage in crisis communications — messaging to the masses during turbulent times. You may want to just say “no comment,” but that’s the worst thing to say after a crisis. It immediately implies guilt and will hurt your reputation in the court of public opinion.
Perhaps your business is going through a product recall, or you’re dealing with an environmental issue. The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is just one infamous example of corporate turbulence. The parties involved likely had to rapidly develop a viable public relations plan — at a time when 4 million barrels’ worth of oil was flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.
But you can’t just wait until a crisis strikes to be ready to communicate. It’s critical to prepare a crisis communications plan months and even years in advance, proactively mapping out how to respond if and when the ship starts rocking. The best reaction comes from planning your actions in advance and listing specific steps that you will take to respond. That’s how you weather a storm — you don’t just act in the middle of one, but before.
The article read in this episode originally appeared on the Forbes Agency Council CommunityVoice™ in April 2023.
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