Shaping Your Crisis Communications Message

As stated earlier (but it is a point worth repeating a thousand times),

when there is a difference between perception and reality, perception
always wins. Behind the scenes, you and your crisis management team
may be doing a bang-up job in wrestling with a megacrisis:
successfully keeping disaster at bay, saving towns from impending
environmental doom, and protecting shareholder value. But if no one
knows about it, your critics and aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys will
have a field day belittling your efforts as too little, too late. Worse,
they may accuse you of doing nothing and putting people or the
company at risk by your lack of action. It’s no different from the
proverbial tree falling in the forest: if no one hears (about) it, did it
really happen? And then when you are finally forced to step out of your
bunker to defend your actions, you find yourself on the defensive and
you wonder why.

Companies in crisis that think that they have no responsibility for

keeping their myriad publics informed because they believe they “have
things under control,” are wrong. I have had clients rankle at having to
talk to the media during a crisis for a variety of reasons, but they lose
sight of the fact that while they may deem the media an annoying
intrusion into their private business dealings, the media are also a fast
conduit for reaching the publics that the company needs to reach.
There are other ways, such as using social media, which we will
examine shortly, that are even faster and more direct. But not
communicating is never the right decision.

Effective perception—the impression you want people to have of the

way you are managing your crisis—does not happen by itself. The
message or messages must be carefully and strategically shaped. For
our purposes here, let’s operate on the premise that you (your company
and your crisis management team) are doing a good job of managing
your crisis. (Later we will address the alternative and discuss how to
manage your crisis communications message when it’s bad news.)
Your goal is to ensure that your publics are awar e of the job you are
doing.
How?

You need to develop key message points that are strategically targeted
to your key constituencies, and you should do so proactively. And
remember, especially if you will be delivering periodic updates via the
news media, your first statement sets the tone for all that follow. In the
limited confines of a book, not every conceivable type of crisis can be
considered, but here are some broad topic guidelines for crises that
often occur.
In an environmental crisis (oil spill, groundwater contamination, air
pollution, train derailment and resulting chemical spill, nuclear reactor
accident, and the like), after you describe what you know for certain has
occurred, your first comments need to address the health and safety of
the community and your employees. In describing what occurred, be
factual, be truthful, be fast, and be visible. Tell your story, and tell it
first.

If a portion of the community is at risk, say so, explain how and why,
and in the same breath, say what you are doing about it. If it is a crisis
that involves emergency personnel, as opposed to your own personnel,
say so, but add what you are doing to aid those teams. Obviously, if no
human life is at risk, state that clearly and early. If human life has been
lost, say so, express your condolences, and, as there usually is an
investigation (internal, external, or both), say so and promise to report
back when the investigation has been completed.
These events are rather routine, at least in crisis management circles, but
what sometimes is lost is whose message is being put out there. You
need to establish control of your own message.

If you have a time frame for closure (say, a highway spill or accident
will be cleaned up by rush hour tomorrow morning), say so. Usually,
though, the best you can do is promise to provide regular updates, then
be sure you do so.
You want to remember to compile y our key message points in
advance. These message points should also be turned into a written
statement for the media, and you need to be sure that what you say
tracks what’s in the statement. Provide the same information and
updates via social media outlets.

Everything you do and say up until this point is proactive. But then the
media (or other publics) will ask questions. From this point forward,
much of what you do and say is reactive, and this is where you can get
into trouble, if you’re not careful.

When we work with clients, we conduct crisis simulations (for crisis

management training) and crisis media exercises (for crisis
communications training). Part of the training deals with staying on
message. To the greatest extent possible, you will want to shape your
message to conform to your crisis.

Do not allow yourself to be led down dark alleys by negatively charged

questions. Beware, and avoid, questions that put you on the defensive
just by their very wording (“Isn’t it true that …?” “How can you say
that …?” “Do you mean to imply …?” and so on). Treat those types of
questions the way you would handle a loaded gun: carefully, and trying
to avoid shooting yourself in the foot. And just as you would naturally
point a loaded gun away from yourself, do the same with loaded
questions.

Take negatively charged questions and turn them around into positively
phrased responses, but do not get defensive. Remember that your crisis
is being managed well and that this is the perception that you want to
create and maintain. Allowing yourself to be put on the defensive eats
into and badly erodes that perception.

So, before blindly answering a question that begins “Isn’t it true that
this accident was both foreseeable and avoidable?” recast the question
before answering into something like: “If you’re asking if there is
anything this plant should have done differently, I would point out, as I
did in my opening remarks, that our safety record is the best in the
industry. I also stated that we have launched an investigation into the
cause of the accident, and that until that investigation is complete, we
are not going to speculate on possible causes, and those that do so are
being irresponsible. At the same time, I remind you again of the steps
we are taking to bring this crisis under control.”

From beginning to end, BP never really got control of its crisis

communications message. The perception was that the company was as
out of control as its gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

In almost any crisis, the public’s safety is paramount, and nowhere is

that more true than in a food or health crisis. That is because, unlike a
raging fire or rising water, people can’t actually see what is causing a
food or health crisis, so they’re never completely sure that the food
they’re about to eat is completely safe, or that the person next to them
isn’t carrying some deadly virus—that is, until they hear your crisis
communications messages.

If there is a health scare associated with your food product or your

restaurant, you need to get out in front of the story with the support of
the local or state board of health and any other applicable government
agency. While the state or county department of public health will
investigate to try to determine the cause of, say, an E. coli outbreak, you
need to conduct your own independent investigation simultaneously.
Do not wait for someone else to issue a report that will shape your
crisis communications message. Assuming that the two investigations
mesh, announce the findings jointly. If the government agency is slow
to agree to join you, announce your findings first, proactively.
Remember, it’s your crisis and your crisis communications.

Here’s a food contamination crisis example from my own client files.

A few years ago, a successful southern California restaurant chain, Pat &
Oscar’s, had an E. coli outbreak. The chain, owned at the time by the
same parent company that owns the Sizzler Steak House chain, is a
family-oriented sit-down restaurant specializing in pizza, salads, and its
signature breadsticks.

When the San Diego County public health department contacted the
company, and then the media, to report the outbreak and that some
people had been hospitalized, restaurant customers stayed away i n
droves. Overnight, the chain’s business plummeted by more than 70
percent.

I was contacted the next day by the chairman of the board of the parent
company and retained to handle all aspects of the crisis—whatever
needed to be done: crisis management and crisis communications.
There generally are two possible sources for an E. coli outbreak at a
restaurant: poor food handling (for example, employees not washing their
hands or coming to work infected with a transmittable disease) or
contamination from an outside food supplier. We immediately launched our
own simultaneous investigation and determined that the source was an
outside lettuce vendor. That was “good news” because reporting this
information (which soon was corroborated by the health department) and
firing and replacing the outside vendor (which we did publicly) sent a
strong message that we had identified, isolated, and remedied the crisis.
Also, we announced that popular food items that we had previously
removed from the menu as a precaution until we knew the source of the E.
coli were now available again. Our message points also included the
information that we wanted people who ate in our restaurants between
certain specified dates to be medically tested, and obviously that we were
going to reimburse patrons for any related medical bills.

But the public remained skeptical about returning to the eateries. Business
was still off by about the same percentage. The original story (“E. coli
outbreak at restaurant chain; people taken ill”) was the lead story in all
media outlets and commanded people’s attention. Our new message (“The
restaurant was not the source of the outbreak, and now it’s safe to return”)
was having a hard time breaking through the clutter of all the other
everyday news.

Also, our crisis had suddenly shifted, which often happens (remember: a
crisis is “a fluid and dynamic state of affairs”). Whereas our crisis had
previously been the source of the outbreak and all that that entailed, now
our focus was on rebuilding the busine ss. It was a classic case of loss of
confidence. The crisis communications focus now was on restoring that lost
confidence and rebuilding the business. This was our “keystone crisis.”