Effective Strategies for Managing Media Crises: Planning, Compassion, and Control (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: The best way to avoid being destroyed by a media crisis is to plan for a media crisis. Now that may sound like you're looking for trouble, but let me explain. If you had a fire in your warehouse, you would have a plan in place and you would act quickly to put the flames out. Well, the media crisis is no different. You need a plan. You need to know what you're going to do to dampen down the fire and hopefully put it out altogether. The first part of your plan is the holding statement. And even if there's very little that you can say, you have to say something. You have to fill that void that will otherwise be filled by somebody else. You are talking to your audience through the media, that is the wider public, us. If the worst has happened during your crisis and someone has been killed or injured, then you have to show that you care and that you are compassionate. Make sure you know the name of the person or people affected. Make sure you have contacted the families either directly or through a health care professional. And it may be that in your holding statement, the one that you put out within the first few hours of the crisis only contains that care and compassion. That's fine. The next thing you may have to do as a spokesperson is talk to the media, talk to journalists. And remember that journalists are only asking you the questions that they think their audience would ask if they were in their shoes. So don't take it personally and do try and address the wider audience. Show care and compassion, especially if there has been something awful that has happened to people as a result of the crisis. But be honest. Don't say things that you can't back up. Don't say things that you don't know to be true. It's OK to say, I don't know yet. We're still investigating. Finally, by the end of the crisis, you have to take back control and you have to show your customers and the wider public that you are back in charge. It's this reassuring message that is often the most difficult to convey. It's best done through examples. If you can show if there was a fire, that you did call the ambulance as quickly as you could, that you did have a plan in place, that you did call the fire brigade. That is reassuring actions. Make sure that you've got as many of those in your plan before you even have the crisis. And make sure that when you do have a wrap up, maybe at the end of the day, that you can list the action points that you've made. By the end, this is your checklist. C-A-R-E. Care. C-Have you shown concern and compassion? A-Have you got action points that you've taken? R-Are you able to reassure people that you are back in control? And you do that through E, through your examples.