By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd
Welcome to Trump World where, with so much change going on, both in ideas and in economic circumstances, investing in your PR and media training is essential.
Are you sure you and your colleagues could cope in a crisis when the media spotlight falls on you? Seizing control of the narrative for a difficult situation has never been more vitally important.
There has never been so much media where criticisms can flourish. Social media can get the wrong messages circulating around the world in seconds.
What is a crisis?
Well as far as the media and the public are concerned any problem that gets into the news can be painted as a crisis. If you are not properly prepared, what starts as a small problem can become a real crisis.
You could face a really big crisis such as a fatal accident that appears at least initially to be your fault. These include airplane crashes or train, bus or tram crashes, trees, walls or doors on your property falling onto adults or children, and also food poisoning outbreaks .
An extreme example of a major crisis is the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and huge oil spill which killed 11 people and led to widespread pollution of the coastline of the (then entitled) Gulf of Mexico and severe problems for fishing and wildlife. This was in headlines across the world for months and cost BP billions as well as destroying its reputation in the US.
Other serious issues include financial problems such as fraud, or current cutbacks in public funding, poor cyber security leading to system hacking and failure to deliver services, and other problems that run the risk of a negative hashtag campaign and immediately diminishing trust in your brand and loss of future income.
Or, you could face a controversial problem such as legal cases against you, an ex-employee taking out a tribunal case against your organisation for racial and/or sexual harassment, an employee or ex-employee involved in a paedophile scandal, a leaked internal memo or offensive leaked WhatApp group messages putting your organisation in a bad light, strikes, job cuts, an employee or ex-employee suicide or murder, actions causing environmental pollution, allegations of widespread poor customer services, product recall, food poisoning in your catering and more….
I have often taken part in crisis management exercises providing real time media interviews with senior executives so they can understand that media pressures are an intrinsic part of the challenging experience of dealing with a crisis issue. It’s not enough to manage the issue. You must manage the media as well.
In one exercise I took part in, the senior management decided they did not need any preparatory crisis media training before the exercise. Both senior managers who took on the role of media spokespeople failed to understand that they should always express sympathy for the victims in their media interviews, in this case people killed in an industrial accident, and they just talked about how their company was handling the crisis. They couldn’t even say if the company was in touch with the victims’ families.
This came across as callous and uncaring about the victims and would have been damaging to the company when handling a real crisis.
There is a huge range of issues that can make headlines and who in your organisation is going to handle media questions about these tricky and often sensitive issues? Are they media trained? Do you have a crisis media plan that is kept up to date on at least a monthly basis?
When you’re in the eye of the media storm It’s too late to find out that all the people who are assigned the role of media spokespeople have either left your organisation or are not currently in the country. It’s too late to try to work out from scratch what are your best statements on sensitive issues.
How you handle a problem can either mitigate or amplify the damage to your reputation.
Most crisis media interviews are in fact problem media interviews. The media can call anything a crisis when really it’s just a problem.
‘Isn’t this now a crisis for you?’ they ask. Sometimes they are outside your offices or factory or other workplace, sometimes at the front door of your house. The media call this doorstepping. It’s a very unnerving experience if you have never practised dealing with it. We can practise this with you.
To avoid a problem issue becoming a crisis, you must prepare. You must assess all the changes currently occurring and all possible problems and your responses.
Preparation is the key to your success in ensuring that whatever the nature of the problem, when problems arise, your organisation can respond professionally in ways that can significantly impact the level of critical media attention it receives.
Now we are all living in Trump World, we all need to prepare thoroughly for the unexpected and revise some of our previous expectations.
Contact me at TV News London to talk about your crisis media interview training. We have trained hundreds of spokespeople in the secrets of successful media interviews during a crisis.
Email me at info@tvnewslondon.co.uk or call me on +44 (0)208 275 8854
