The Crisis in Crisis Communications

I have noticed lately that companies seem to be more interested in hiring PR and corp. comm people with experience in crisis communication. It seems odd because I can speak both as one who has experience in both handling a crisis and writing a crisis plan that corporations want nothing to do with crisis planning. The intent does seem to be there but the desire to actually execute a plan and then have a meeting to discuss roles and responsibilities is non-existent.

As I mentioned I have written the plans and I have noticed that once the plan is written the final aspect of the plan, regarding regular meetings to discuss its execution never takes place. I am reminded of the scene in the movie "Airplane" where the sign to the passengers is saying, "Don't Panic," and then gets overloaded, burns out and says, "Okay, Panic." Needless to say bedlam ensues.

This is exactly what happens in most organizations when it comes time to actually deal with a crisis. The road way is littered with the corpses of organizations who have dealt badly with crisis and their lack of a working, and drilled upon, crises plan becomes obvious. BP is the latest proof of this and I can think of several more if not by name then by the fact that their crisis over came the spin that the organization was trying to maintain and eventually buried them. Think of all the bacteria outbreaks in various food service companies or lead in toys as a prime example of this.

The goal of a crisis communications program is not to protect the CEO from looking bad, nor is it really to protect the company from law suits. If you sneeze wrong in this litigious age you get sued. It is to protect the organization's relationship with all its markets, it is to protect the brand and most important it is to protect the company five years from now.

Sadly another factor that hampers crisis communications in this day and age is that organizations think quarter to quarter and rarely think as far in advance as they should. Therefore in many cases crisis communications is seen as something reactive and not proactive. It is that prize rose bush you only water because it looks like it's wilting in the sun.

One example of crisis communication done well was the recent incident involving McDonald's and the promotional glasses from the Shrek movie that had lead in them. This could have been a very serious issue for McDonald's as they could have been accused of endangering children, something many interest groups believe they do with the food the sell. Once the story broke, McDonald's jumped on it, announced they would accept a return of all glasses and issued a prompt apology. I am sure that a few gift cards or free Happy Meals went out too.

The point here is that McDonald's was ready for an incident, any incident, so when something happened, they were quick to act on it and limit the scope. They also controlled what was said by spokespeople and they provided both a resolution to the danger and had people on message and seemed to show genuine concern for their target market. I have checked and as of now I can't see any class action law suits against them. If only BP had been so upfront.

So as PR and corp comm people it isn't good enough to have a crisis plan or say we have experience in crisis communication. Like any good athlete we need to stay in shape and we do this by reviews and planning for ideally an event that will never come. Corporate types may not wish to participate but of course you can always tell them don't worry, when the storm hits, you wish you had!