Prevent the crisis from growing

A media crisis can put the wind up in even the calmest CEO, as crises have the potential to affect share prices, turnover, and employee retention. Therefore, crises need to be taken seriously and acted upon quickly – especially as social media has accelerated the pace at which crises can develop. This requires the right crisis preparedness and knowledge of the channels. And even if your organisation can't prepare for a specific crisis, there are a number of effective tools that we have experience with.

How we work with crisis communication

When the company’s CEO appears on TV for an interview, it will typically be on the basis of hours of intense media training, well-structured message documents, scenario descriptions, which have been prepared in collaboration with the company’s lawyers, the communications manager, external communications advisors, and management. It was all done in a very short time because everyone involved in the company prioritised the challenge and pushed aside most of the other work. Or so it should be. However, this is far from always the case in reality.

Our experience with crisis communication in companies is that the most important approach for a good result is the necessary prioritisation from the company’s internal stakeholders, which is why the preparation of a coordinated crisis plan, and a crisis communication team is crucial.

When we at RelationsPeople work with companies on crisis communication, much of the preparatory work will take place in the regular ongoing collaboration, for example through annual media and message training, message documents within core areas for the company as well as action plans in particularly sensitive areas, alongside a fixed monitoring setup that provides an overview of relevant topics that can develop both in traditional media and on social media. In this way, we work with our clients to build a solid platform for their crisis communication, allowing them to respond effectively should an issue arise.