SOS 101

Why Your Brand Needs a Crisis Communication Plan

Crisis. A word no one in the marketing world wants to hear. Whether it’s a natural disaster or an employee gone rogue, your brand needs to be prepared. Enter the Crisis Communication Plan.

Reacting to a crisis is basically Boy Scouts 101 — you need to Be Prepared. A good communication plan can help you deal with a crisis immediately, and resolve one before it escalates. Like a life jacket, it’s better to have one and never need it, than need one and lack it.

Sounds simple, but where do you begin?

First Things First

Your first step should be defining what a “crisis” actually is for your brand. Your social media manager accidentally posts a non-offensive personal tweet to the brand account — is that a full-blown crisis? Unlikely. What if your destination is being hit with a major weather event? Maybe. When we draft crisis plans we always provide the following guidelines about how to identify and categorize scenarios:

Issue: An unpredictable, unfortunate event that could temporarily disrupt operations and/or our reputation on a limited scale.

Response: Issue management and response is more tactical, action oriented, tends to be smaller in scale, and can usually be conducted by support staff. It’s generally more focused on day-to-day operations, and can almost be considered routine.

Crisis: An unpredictable event that directly threatens our reputation and/or function and performance, and negatively influences the perception and expectancies stakeholders have of us. A crisis is a serious event — just shy of a disaster — that requires immediate, careful attention from the crisis communications team.

Response: Crisis management is more strategic, large-scale, centered on communications, managed directly by leadership, and has as its main goal the maintenance of our reputation and return to business as usual as soon as reasonably possible.

Breaking potential crises into categories based on the impact to your brand will help you craft a response that’s appropriate for the situation.

Make a List, Check it Twice

It’s important that your brand communicates openly and honestly during a crisis — becoming a centralized source of information that’s relevant and helpful to your audience.

That sounds great, but it’s kind of broad. Try narrowing it down by grouping your approach into two categories: Always and Never.

For example: ALWAYS put people first. ALWAYS issue a holding statement as soon as possible. ALWAYS be as concise as possible. NEVER lie or go silent. NEVER say “no comment”. The list goes on, but once your messages and response are drafted, you can go back to your checklist to make sure they follow your plan.

Draft It

If it was easy to predict, it wouldn’t be a crisis. But you still can anticipate the types of issues or crises your brand might encounter.

Having a bank of drafted key messages and responses for a few crisis categories is key. When a crisis hits, judgement can be clouded by chaos, but you’ll have a framework to keep you and your team on track.

When drafting a response, ask yourself “what does my audience need?” and answer as simply as possible. Let’s say you work for a DMO and your destination has been affected by severe weather. You might draft simple prepared statements that read something like this:

We’re closely monitoring Hurricane ABC and will share official news or updates we receive. Currently we have no way of knowing its potential impact on destination XYZ, but we’re tracking the details. For the most up-to-date information, please check KLM. Our thoughts are with all those impacted.

Who’s the Boss?

Finally, your communication plan should clearly outline who does what (and when) during a time of crisis.

Identify everyone’s role — who’s drafting the press release? Liaising with media? Monitoring your social channels? Communicating with stakeholders? — and develop a workflow for each type of crisis. That way, when things get overwhelming, there’s a clear chain of command and everything is working like a well-oiled machine.

All brands should have a comprehensive crisis communication plan that gets reviewed and updated regularly. Hopefully it’s never needed.

Feeling like your own communications plan is in crisis? We can help! Click here to get in touch.

VERB Interactive is a leader in digital marketing, specializing in solutions for the travel and hospitality industry. Find out more at www.verbinteractive.com.