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LISA-ANN JOSEPH
If you follow the media’s coverage of the daily events of our lives here and across the world, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that our world is in one form of crisis or the other. We at Reputation Management Caribbean arrived at that position some time ago. We, therefore, developed a crisis communications programme to meet the needs of business corporations, large and small and even for individuals wanting to communicate messages to their publics in these times of crises.
With the programme, which evolved to meet needs over the period of time, we have been successfully conducting training in this area since our inception 14 years ago. Against such a background we are offering a few tips for crisis management to help communicators send messages through the mass media.
We begin by advising our clients to rethink how they navigate the media firestorm which will surely impact on your organisation as it seeks to send vitally important messages in what will be known – already is acknowledged – as the covid19 era.
Let me make two critical points we always stress, and these are matters you need to take note of in your crisis public communications through the mass media; indeed, in any form of your communications.
First, it’s vitally important that you respect the role of the media. The media are not the enemy; they have direct access to the audiences you need to reach. It must be expected that as a set of mass communications institutions, they have their set of objectives to be achieved and in the same way that your organisation has its agenda.
Anticipating that situation, there are organisations with apprehensions, many of them pre-conceived and inaccurate, which take the decision to avoid media. What we advise is rather than staying clear of media, learn to use them as a conduit to communicate key messages. The issue is how to achieve your strategic objective.
A useful starting point is to prepare a statement that includes the confirmed facts; communicate what the company is doing and provide background information. That seems simple enough; the difficulty comes about with discerning the messages to be communicated, the how and the specific “touch of class and intelligence” needed to deliver with an assurance of results.
Second, communicate, communicate, communicate – at the first sign of a crisis. The first rule of crisis management is to communicate as early hours after the event – it is critical to tell your story to have it accepted and understood. Such a dynamic response will set the tone for the duration of the crisis.
The media’s first questions are likely to be simple and predictable:
• What happened?
• Where?
• When did you know of the problem?
• What are you doing about it?
• Who is to blame?
• Were there warning signs?
• How will life or property be protected or compensated?
You cannot back away from such questions. However, your messages/answers have to match the needs and they must also reflect the urgency of the moment.
Be as forthright as possible in your responses and as soon as the opportunity arises. Tell what you know and when you became aware of it; explain who is involved and what is being done to fix the situation. Be sure to correct misinformation promptly when it emerges. And you have to do all of it with accuracy and credibility. The latter is easily one of the most important elements of communicating with your audiences. The audiences must believe you; that calls on you to be forthright, an essential agreement, like a good sauce in your doubles utilising sweet and pepper sauces.
Remaining silent or appearing removed, perhaps on the advice of legal counsel wary of consequences tends to enrage the public and other stakeholders; and when they do it will be with a measure of anger, you would have come across as being uncaring.
A balanced communications strategy must be developed that protects corporate liability while satisfying the demands of today’s information and media dynamic.
As demanding as members of the public may be, they are usually inclined to give an organisation the benefit of the doubt in the early hours of a crisis depending on both what is said and the manner of saying it. The public will judge a company and its leaders not only by the incident itself — which they recognise is often beyond the control of those individuals — but by their response.
RMC specialises in such communications and have brought good responses to our clients.
Lisa-Ann Joseph is managing director of Reputation Management Caribbean, a public relations and crisis communications agency. Recently she launched a training division, Institute for Reputation Management. Any questions and comments…connect with her at Lisaann@rmcaribbean.net or via www.rmcaribbean.net
[caption id="attachment_910739" align="alignnone" width="683"] Lisa-Ann Joseph -[/caption]
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