Ten Top Tips for Succesful Crisis Communications

Preparation is everything. Your team and your spokespeople need to be crisis-ready at all times. Zero preparation leaves you floundering, on the back foot, feeling bad, looking bad. 

Your spokespeople’s performance is supremely important. If they do and say the right thing, you have a chance of coming through the crisis unscathed. If not, almost no chance at all. 

Most people neither know nor care about the details of a crisis. What they remember forever is how the company behaved. Your goal is to leave a lasting, creditable impression. 

You need to communicate rapidly and proactively with many different stakeholder groups. This means you must have the databases up-to-date and ready for use at all times. 

Most crises start with a media call or a post. Don’t try to move too fast. Verify, think about what to say, compose your initial response. This will take an hour or so. Don’t rush it. 

Your initial statement is very important. Sometimes it’s all you’ll need to say. It will be on the record forever. It should be written by someone with good writing skills and experience. 

Who should your spokesperson be? Someone senior – ideally a board-member, better still the CEO. Never field an anonymous spokesperson. Or a lawyer. The media don’t like it. 

Shut down unmanaged responses to media and stakeholder enquiries about the crisis. Route everything through your team. This is the only Crisis SOP that matters. 

Everything you say should focus on the people who’ve been affected. This is all anyone else cares about. It means speaking and acting with empathy, which can’t be faked. 

The best crisis communications investment you can make is crisis-specific media training for your spokespeople – taped practice in dealing with hostile and provocative questions. 

Adrian Wheeler and Kate Hartley present the PRCA’s two-day CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS MASTERCLASS