Your Crisis Communications Plan is Obsolete
Emerging threats in the world of information disorder require new, pre-emptive measures in crisis planning.
Crisis communications plans are not obsolete. In fact, they are probably more necessary and critical to organizational and reputation resilience than ever before. With that said, your crisis plan is probably obsolete. Realistically, until a crisis strikes, most organizations’ crisis plans go untouched, all while serious threats evolve. That’s what’s been happening. The threats are evolving — at incredible speeds. It’s time for communicators and executives to catch up or bear the consequences.
All organizations still need to prepare for the “standard” threats — the ones your organization has planned for and dealt with for years: litigation, product issues, supply chain delays, physical security threats, cybersecurity, cultural issues, etc. Your crisis plan probably does this well. However, the greatest new and emerging threats to any organization right now are not so easily identified or addressed.
Reputations are built on trust, and trust is built on reliable and verifiable information. Well, that “reliable” information about your brand — the foundation of your reputation — faces rapidly growing threats. Misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, deep fakes and manipulated content pose crisis-level threats to every organization — and how organizations respond to a crisis of false information is not as simple as a product recall.
More likely than not, no one at your organization has experience with this kind of issue. Beyond that, tracking and identifying these issues requires different tools — and a different communications response and approach than any other type of threat. Does your crisis plan effectively incorporate infrastructure to identify information threats to your organization’s reputation? Do you have scenario plans for how to respond to information threats with an effective counter narrative? One that incorporates behavioral psychology and social platform dynamics, so as not to reinforce the false narrative unwittingly? If no, your crisis plan is obsolete.
Companies and organizations need to better understand and mitigate the effects of information disorders and get their crisis communications plans up to speed.
So, what does your organization need to do?
1. Set up new listening / analytics tools: By the time a false narrative hits Twitter, it’s too late. At that point, there are limited options to mitigate. You need new tools to identify potentially harmful narratives before they hit mainstream channels. It’s also essential to know what groups and organizations are sharing this content and where, as well as how much of the content is being manipulated by bots and/or other coordinated network attacks. Our Global Intelligence teams and our partners at Blackbird.AI can help run a comprehensive Media Security audit. If you don’t have the infrastructure to identify emerging threats, it’s not possible to create a comprehensive crisis plan. Further, you will miss every opportunity to mitigate growing threats before they become mainstream.
2. Update crisis comms plans with new scenarios: If a false narrative emerges about your brand, chances are if you say, “that’s not true,” your key audiences will only become more likely to believe the false narrative. Only with a comprehensive understanding of the narrative threat, behavioral psychology and the values, beliefs and experiences of the audiences impacted, can you incorporate effective counter narratives into your scenario plans.
3. Establish new plans for collaborative learning: Every organization needs to develop new skillsets and adopt ongoing, collaborative learning to keep up with these threats. Regular meetings and training sessions — across multiple departments — are crucial to share the latest information on new threats and updates to scenario plans. Since most employees have not dealt with these threats before, this rigor is vital to increase reputation security.
Here’s the good news. While your plan may be obsolete today, you can get up to speed to prevent a crisis tomorrow.
