Speaker 1: Hello everybody. If you are in charge of marketing and branding, then dealing with the brand crisis is probably one of the most challenging experiences you'll ever have to deal with. A brand crisis can have a significant impact on your organization's brand or your church's brand or the reputation as a whole, you know, and it also has an effect on the loyalty of your customers. So they're going to stay loyal to you. The sales, I mentioned this a little bit in my previous episode. So welcome to Strategy with Dr. Epstein. This series is entitled Your Brand Strategy in a Crisis. This is episode number 12. So this is the officially last episode for this particular series. So we'll have other content for you. So stay tuned with us, check us out. But as far as this particular series, this is the official last one. I think I mentioned I have one more coming soon, but it may not be right away. So it is necessary to develop a recovery plan to address the root cause of the brand crisis in order to restore the brand's image, the brand's reputation. In this particular episode, we're going to discuss developing a recovery plan after a brand crisis from, say, a marketing perspective, from a brand strategy perspective. That's kind of how we've been looking at this entire series. It's one thing to look at it from a lawyer's perspective, case law and so forth. There's no disrespect to that whatsoever. That's super important. But the part that's always overlooked, in my opinion, is the brand strategy piece, the marketing component, right? Because as I mentioned in the previous episode, when a crisis hits or a brand crisis hits and, say, cost has to get reduced, one of the first things CEOs want to do is reduce the marketing budget, right? Reduce the branding budget. And truly, how do you spend to recover if you don't have some money or funds to set aside to handle the marketing, right? So let's get into it. A brand crisis recovery plan is a comprehensive document that outlines the strategies and the actions necessary to navigate and recover from a crisis situation. I'll say it again. A brand crisis recovery plan, that's what we're talking about today, is a comprehensive document, right? And it's forever evolving. And if you haven't created a document, then you can use this episode to help you start to create one. So it's a comprehensive document that outlines the strategies and actions necessary to navigate and recover from a crisis situation. So there are about, say, eight essential steps that I want to go over with you when creating this particular plan. So let's get into it. Hello, I'm Dr. M. Stoller, entrepreneurial strategist, helping cultivate brand clarity for community organizations and those that want to create social impact. And we do this through strategy. So welcome. Again, this is episode number 12. Let's take a look at the first step. What you want to do if you haven't done this already is establish a crisis management team. Now, some context to this. Once you're in the middle of a brand crisis, you should already have a crisis team already in place, right? But if you don't have one in place and the crisis is over and you're going through the recovery component and you've already debriefed, then you need to put a crisis management team in place. But let's give you some other context. It's possible that your brand crisis management team could be different than your recovery team, right? The recovery team is going to have different responsibilities and so forth than they did fixing the crisis or maintaining or managing the crisis, right? So when it comes to this particular component, you want to identify and assemble a dedicated team that's responsible for specifically managing the recovery efforts, right? In my opinion, I think you should have a couple of people from the original team to be on the recovery team. But it's possible that some people may be tired and need a break, you know? And so you as a manager, or at least you have to determine what that's going to look like. But really, identify and assemble a dedicated team responsible for managing the recovery efforts. You know, this team should include individuals from various departments, right? Relevant departments, depending on what's going on. Obviously, people in leadership should also be on the team. You should have people who handle communications, human resources. Legal is always a good component. Legal is probably going to be involved anyway. You know, overall operations, people who are close to the ground, right? But we're thinking of recovery at this particular point. We're not thinking of longer managing, which is why you want to have senior executives and people who have strength or in communications and human resources, right? Because it's not just legal, but it's also human resources, interactions that you may have to deal with when it comes to the other staff members, right? And how that is going to look in operations as well. So you want to assign specific roles and responsibilities for each team member, okay? We can get into those details in a little time, but this is going to be kind of high level today. The second thing you want to do is you want to conduct a risk assessment, right? You want to evaluate the impact of the crisis on various aspects of your organization, of your brand, whether you have a church, a community organization, right? And this includes operations, finances, reputation, whatever you title these departments, you know, and employee safety. But reputation is key, right? When you are conducting a risk assessment, you have to be able to do, be honest and say, you know what? Our reputation has been damaged, and this is about how much, right? There's ways you can kind of look at that to measure that, right? So you want to keep that with you. So, you know, you also want to take a look at employee safety. I don't know if I've said that, but employee safety, make sure employee safety is looked at there as well. When it comes to the risk assessment, in addition, you want to identify potential risk, right? And prioritize them based on the severity, the likelihood of the occurrence happening again, right? So again, you want to identify potential risk and then prioritize them based on the severity and the likelihood of those things happening again, right? So the assessment will help you to kind of focus on critical areas that are going to be necessary and require immediate attention, right? Again, we're talking about you had a brand crisis, you've dealt with the brand crisis, now you've debriefed, right? You kind of assess what's going on. The previous episode kind of talks a little bit about that. You debriefed, right? And now we're talking about the recovery plan, okay? Sometimes the debrief and the recovery plan should have some overlap, but if this is the first time you're doing this, it's okay, right? So number three, or step three, you want to define some objectives and some strategies. What's the goal? What are you trying to get to at this particular point, right? You want to set a specific and measurable objective for the recovery process. What does that look like? Is it also about getting so many sales back or recovering so many sales, right? You want to determine what outcomes that you want to achieve, such as, you know, restoring operations if that's a thing, rebuilding a customer trust, that's going to be crucial and necessary. You know, is it a crisis where maybe there's flooding that took place? You're talking about physical damage, right? And I remember it was a church, it was in Houston, it's a big church in Houston, and they had a little bit of a brand issue because it came off that they didn't necessarily want to open the doors to let people in who needed help. And the people in the area were flooding, but for some reason, this particular church, I believe most of the church was okay, right? They could have opened the doors, but because of the way they kind of were, they talked about it on the news and so forth, they didn't open the doors for people, right? And they gave a whole, well, you know, but this is a big church, they got helicopters and things of that nature, you know? And so unfortunately, that created a brand crisis, they had to come and kind of resolve that. We can talk about that in detail another time. But again, you want to, that wasn't hurting that particular point. So they had to come back and figure out how they're going to rebuild the trust. Because you quote unquote, take our money, if you're in ministry, or you're running a church, take our money on a weekly basis, you know, your parishioners, right, the people who attend you, but now that we're in the middle of a flood or a crisis, you're not necessarily there for us, right? And that was the sentiment that kind of went out. So when that kind of happened, that's a brand crisis in itself. And you're going to have to come up with a way to rebuild that customer trust, right? Or while also mitigating financial losses, because if you're running a ministry, you know, you should be able to say, you know, on a good day with the primary pastor, the lead pastors there, so much revenue is coming in, right? And I know, sometimes we don't want to talk about the business component when it comes to community organizations, churches, nonprofits, but you have to, because you have to be able to keep the lights on, right? And so defining objectives and strategies also means determining what needs to happen to mitigate the financial loss that's already taken place. You know, so that means developing strategies and action plans that align with the objectives, right? But outlined with the steps taken, let's say to achieve them. And you just want to be very clear in that direction. So number four, your communication strategy, which is basically ongoing and nonstop, but it's now adjusted a little bit now, right? Now that the crisis is over and you've debriefed, your communication strategy is going to be different in the recovery process. You want to develop a comprehensive communication strategy to address internal and external stakeholders. That includes volunteers, that includes obviously staff members and so forth, donors, you know, big donors, small donors, right? That might, that may involve, you know, making some calls one-on-one to everybody, letting you know, being transparent, this is where we are. We dealt with a certain situation and now we are actually effectively moving into a place that is actually signifies that we are about to be successful again, or we are making progression in the right manner, whatever that may be. That's part of your communication strategy. You know, you want to establish protocols for regular updates, you know, and so again, you should have done that already during the crisis and this is going to be a little bit different. Maybe they won't be as frequent, but they need to be still transparent and detailed, detailed without giving up all the secret sauce. So, establish protocols for regular updates, you know, both within the organization, within your ministry, and to the public. You know, you want to ensure transparency, like I said, and clarity, right? And despite, you know, excuse me, you want to determine who's going to be the designated spokesperson or the team responsible for managing external communications and controlling the flow of information. Again, sometimes it's going to be the same person, but sometimes it can be somebody different. The reason why it can be somebody different is because the message is changing now. The message is basically that we are on the progress of, we dealt with the crisis, we solved the issue, now we are on the progress of getting things back to normal. This is what it's going to look like, and this is the timeframe for that. You know, if it's a damaged building, that's going to take a little bit of time. You know, if it's a financial loss or a hit, that's going to be, that can take a certain amount of time. It just kind of depends. Number five, operational continuity, right? You want to identify critical business functions that must be resumed as quickly as possible. So what happens is part of when you're in the middle of a grant crisis, you stop all communication, but sometimes you stop other functions as well. So now you have to quickly determine there's something you need to get back up and running like normal. Maybe HR wasn't into play, and now HR definitely has to be back in play because you're now in the recovery process, right? So we develop a contingency plan to ensure operational continuity, you know, during the recovery process. This may involve, you know, securing alternative resources, you know, establishing backup systems or relocating operations temporarily. You know, if it's a physical issue, is it a generator that you happen to, do we do, you know? Do you bring somebody in who's a specialist in marketing and branding for this particular type of area to kind of help with the messaging that gets out there, right? That's part of the recovery plan, you know? Someone who's in PR maybe, right? Step number six, resource allocation. We want to assess the resources required to implement the recovery plan effectively. What does that look like? You want to determine the financial, you want to determine the human component, the technology piece, right? Computers, servers, right? Are you mobile? You know, if you're an academic environment, then are you able to let people work from home, right? During COVID, that was kind of popular amongst most institutions, but that may not have been the norm for everybody, right? So it might have been a long curve. So part of your recovery plan is now, or an institution doesn't necessarily deal with quote-unquote people working remotely, you now have to have a plan in place that says, you know what, this is the plan to get people back inside the building. Or if this is to be the plan of continuation moving forward, that we're going to continue to work remote, if that's the plan. It just depends on what your culture, what your environment is, right? So determine the financial, human, and technological resources needed to allocate and allocate them accordingly, right? So this can involve, you know, reallocating of budgets, right? I took this before, dealing with marketing and budgeting. The first thing they want to do is slash the marketing budget, but I promise you, I promise you, you're going to have a very poor strategic recovery plan if your marketing budget is not in place. Don't let them cut that budget. So if you're the marketing director, you're the brand strategist, whatever your role is, you got to fight for that budget, got to keep it, you got to tell them it's necessary, and that's the best way in order for you to be able to build your resources back up and build your trust back up and build the reputation back up. So, you know, again, reallocating budgets, requesting additional funding if necessary, you know, and then mobilizing external support. You have to get some outside resources, right? Contracting someone like myself to come in and say, you know what, we need you on team for 90 days, you know, that might be a particular process. I've done that before, maybe the project takes 30 days, you know, that's something you need help with, you can definitely reach out to me and my team. Step number seven, training and testing. Train employees on their roles and responsibilities during a crisis, right? Train employees, they should have already been training, but sometimes we do stuff only when absolutely necessary. So, let's go ahead and do this now. Train employees on the roles and responsibilities during a crisis, which is different than day-to-day. You got to make sure your team understands that, right? You want to conduct drills, simulations to test the effectiveness of the recovery plan, and you want to identify potential gaps in the area for improvement. Gaps, where is something not being accounted for? This is why you need people from different departments. You need people from different departments working together so they can say, you know what, you're missing something, right? We talked about this, this, and this, we have nobody from maintenance or from facilities on our team right now, right? You can't go through that door in the middle of a crisis because that door is connected to the street. You got to go through the back door, whatever that case may be, right? So, again, regularly update and refine this particular part of the plan, you know, on lessons learned from these exercises. That's the thing, we talked about in the previous episodes that you have to make sure you're learning from these things that take place, and this is another component of that, right? That's training and testing. So, we're almost done. The evaluation, evaluating the lessons learned. This is what I talked about a little bit before in the previous episode, but periodically you want to evaluate the effectiveness of the crisis recovery plan, right? So, you created a brand crisis recovery plan, you have a brand strategy in place for your recovery plan, now you've implemented it and used it, now you need to understand, you know, what does that look like? And you want to evaluate this periodically, you know? So, you had the debriefing when it happened, when you do it right after the event is now officially resolved, but then you want to look back at six months from now. So, and you want to refresh people around, so it's not just something that just sits on the shelf until you need to pull it out, pull it off the shelf until you need it, right? Hope that makes sense. So, periodically evaluate the effectiveness of your brand crisis recovery plan, you want to measure the progress against your initially defined objectives, right? You want to analyze the action that you're taking and you will be taking, you want to identify the successes, you know, and the challenges, you know, you want to document the lessons, you want to document the lessons, lessons you've learned for future reference, right? You know, you want to use this feedback to continuously improve the plan and enhance the brand crisis preparedness, right? It's a fancy phrase, you just want to make sure that everyone's on the same page and prepared just in case a brand crisis hits, right? And that's why people will have role play and practice over and over again, so you can kind of make sure you're on the same page. So, remember, a brand crisis recovery plan should have a, it'd be a living document, you know, it should be reviewed on a regular basis, right? It should be updated to reflect the evolving nature of your organization, of your ministry, of your community organization, right? If you're non-profit, you know, and whatever, and with various potential brand crisis scenarios, you know, what does that look like, you know? So, develop a recovery plan after a brand crisis, you know, it's something, this is something that is essential for restoring your brand's image, it's essential for rebuilding the trust with your customers, with your clients, your volunteers, the people who, who support you, you know, this may be what you have to decide, you need to reposition yourself, you know, I've talked about repositioning in my other videos, is this time to do that, you know, to intentionally change the direction and perception of your organization, right? That's repositioning, you know, so if you follow these steps that I, that I gave you, this gives you a, a way to kind of start off at a high level, right? So, you can effectively develop a recovery plan, or begin developing one, or improve the one that you have, and make sure you're taking the necessary actions to recover from the brand crisis, okay? So, that's it, thanks for hanging out with me, again, this is the last episode, official episode, episode 12 of this particular series, your brand strategy in a crisis. I am Dr. M Stoller, and remember to keep pushing forward, drive your influence, and be intentional by using strategy. You have a good evening, or good morning, or good night, depending on where you are.