A good year for crisis communications. Not.
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 3:56PM Erik Sherman over at BNET. Has an especially concise and pointed summary of why the past year's crop of public relations crises are perhaps the most instructive we've ever seen.
Tiger. Tylenol. Google. Souder. Facebook. Each is educational and cautionary example at the same time. And, of course, the mega disaster facing BP will eclipse them all in terms of crisis communications "should haves."
Does your company have a crisis communications plan? If so, do you review and practice it at least once a year? If not, you really don't know how you'll respond to employees, regulators and the media if (when?) a crisis strikes.
I wonder how often Toyota, Google and BP practice the communications components of their worst-case crisis scenarios? Erik's post suggests it's not very often.
Reader Comments (2)
Good post, Robert. From deep within the bowels of corporate America I can tell you that if the world's largest and most respected brands don't have crisis plans in place, then the "little guys" of the world sure don't. Scary, isn't it?
Not that it's not a communicator's dream and deepest desire to see each company have one, though. The conundrum is interesting. With each passing day I am convinced that EVERYONE realizes that corporations are houses of cards. Really - REALLY! I believe in my heart that 99 percent of them are not concerned with doing anything of true value because there is little foundation of/for value.
Sadly, I believe most corporate execs are only concerned with making it to the end of each trading day alive, with little vision, passion for quality/respectability or any of those desirable traits that we as communicators all long for. As the companies you mentioned have demonstrated, they are doing well to survive the trials of each day, and I believe really have little proactive going on. I think most share BP's stance: just keep ticking, and if a crisis happens (and we all know it will), we'll deal with it on the fly because right now we just can't be bothered by "what if" scenarios. P.S. "And we'll not deal with it well, but nobody else in the world is, either." (Toyota? Google? Tiger?).
Show me somebody, ANYBODY today who IS handling their crisis communcations at all, much less well. BP certainly is not, and they know it as well as we do. It's a sad world we live in these days. Companies know they are going to make mis-steps, that they will be scrutinized, and that they will eventually be knocked off the front pages by someone else who screwing up bigger and worse.
Sorry to be so negative (uh - "real") (for a communicator, no less), but I see this every day where I work. We don't even have the resources to handle what is on our plate at an average level of quality, much less worry about things that aren't on it right this minute. This problem comes straight from the top down. No vision. No desire for one, either. "Agility" = lack of vision and lack of passion - a "just make it through the day," non-strategic stance that couldn't care less about handling of crises, or -- for that matter -- the "brand."
Thanks, Alesa. You've inspired me to go find examples of companies that are doing it well. They are out there. In fact, the first Tylenol recall was a prototype for doing it right. Pepsi, Wendy's and others have as well.
I'm going to go look for others.