Afterword
Perspectives on Crisis Communications Response
Throughout this book, you’ve gotten more than an earful of my views on crisis communications: what makes an effective Chief Crisis Officer, the tools, technologies, and team he or she needs to be effective, and the strategies and tactics that need to be at-the-ready to ensure a fast and effective response. While I like to think I know everything, I also realize that other viewpoints and perspectives exist that are, perhaps, even more insightful than my own. As such, I thought a chapter of interviews with other professionals with expertise in crisis communications response in all its various forms would be highly valuable to the Chief Crisis Officer, the core crisis communications team, and anyone else with an interest in these issues.
In this section, you’ll meet several crisis communications consultants who have been on the frontlines of major corporate crises. You’ll also hear from a former crisis communications professional, who now heads public affairs for one of the most prominent associations of in-house lawyers in the nation, and a former New York City police captain, who now advises corporations on emergency response. Finally, we’ll get insight from the Chief Content Editor of our CrisisResponsePro technology software, who spends each day analyzing what works and what doesn’t in the area of crisis communications response.
Harlan Loeb
Global Practice Chair, Crisis and Risk
Edelman PR
Chicago, Illinois
“… the more conservative position is to lay low and wait for that near-death experience before finding religion and good health.”
About Harlan Loeb
With more than 20 years’ experience, Harlan Loeb is an attorney and nationally recognized expert in corporate enterprise risk, including issues and crisis management, crisis training, and litigation communications. Harlan’s background includes: strategic counsel and execution across a broad range of operational, strategic, and financial crisis management engagements, high-profile litigation communications assignments, and comprehensive public strategy campaigns. His work spans all business sectors from health to technology and from manufacturing to finance. He has worked closely with a variety of governmental entities to develop issues and crisis management protocols and training guides, including work with the U.S. Air Force Academy, the DOJ, the U.S. Air Force, and the EEOC.
A former practicing lawyer with experience in nonprofit, public interest law, Harlan is a graduate of Vassar College and earned his law degree with honors from the University of Minnesota. Harlan is also a faculty member at Northwestern University Law School.
For many people, PR is about products, parties, and press releases. But the work of a crisis communicator is quite different. Can you describe what you do in the field of crisis and litigation communications?
Sure, I think we are the field generals and the surgeons for companies that face destabilizing risk. And in that capacity, we help companies and other entities navigate the unnatural environment that they’re thrust into in either high-profile litigation or crisis, which is fundamentally a different business challenge than most companies are equipped to handle.
How are they ill-equipped for such things?
If you look at a crisis, it throws senior decision makers and other corporate executives into a series of non-linear, non-quantitative events, which is really not the background and comfort level for most senior executives. It’s just the contrary. Most really relish control. They have records of success and achievement. And in some sense, more instant results, and instant data and confirmation.
In crisis, it is just the opposite—it’s not linear, it’s fundamentally dynamic, with things going in many different directions. And unless you’ve been through it and have developed what you and I would probably term, “experiential intuition” or “experiential intelligence,” it fundamentally forces a default to instinct, which generally leads them the wrong way.
So things start coming at you in a dozen different directions, and you’re ill-equipped to respond. Is that right?
That’s right. And what we see quite a bit is that executives in companies default to commoditized approaches, where their comfort level is nourished. “We should get a press release.” “We’ve got to put out this fire.” “We’ve got to put out that fire.” Rather than engaging proactively, or engaging on the issues in a very robust way.
There’s also a “hide” instinct, and brain studies confirm it. They hide behind the lawyer’s counsel to do no harm, which obviously does matter in some cases. But sometimes—many times—it is the wrong advice.
So, many times, they focus on the tools instead of the strategy. Is that a fair assessment?
Well said. It becomes very tactical. I think many companies find it hard to see the forest for the trees, look above … out at the horizon a bit … and that’s fundamentally where we come into play.
And risk, candidly, is never been more fragmented and more destabilizing than now, given all the tools—I call them social exposure tools. We see it in crises, in the context of litigation, and we see it in politics frequently. And so, companies really are operating in what I would call a new age of crisis and risk.
In the old days, the “cyanide-in-the-Tylenol” is the example of the old-fashioned kind of crisis, or your plant blowing up. And these days, it’s not so event-driven, and it’s not so specific. Is that right?
Correct. I think there’s greater—what I would call—“ambient” risk. Unknowns. For example, you’ve got companies with global supply chains that could face disruptive risk in the form of cyber hacking, force majeure—any number of things—as well as quality issues and corruption along the supply chain.
They know that those things are possible, but have very little control over it. And years ago, perhaps, they weren’t so exposed. Supply chains weren’t as robust. And now almost every global company has a supply chain, and regulation making them responsible for every stop along that train ride.
Do you think business executives and lawyers are getting it? Understanding the way the world is changing in that regard?
I think they understand the world is changing. I fundamentally don’t believe they know what to do about it. I think they struggle with the significance of digital, struggle with proactive engagement, because it does require a level of risk to manage risk.
So, naturally, the more conservative position is to lay low and wait for that near-death experience before finding religion and good health. And fundamentally, as you and I know, it’s $50,000.00 to put together a plan and develop a capability, or $500,000.00 later to clean up the mess.
Particularly because it can come at you now from so many areas, it’s unwise to think that it is going to pass you by. Is that fair?
I think it is. I think that in the days of old, crisis risk used to be a low-risk but high-impact. I think it’s skewing to moderate, and in some areas like cyber security, between moderate and high-risk. And so while also a qualitative proposition, companies fundamentally don’t have a choice but to be prepared on some level.
Because the notion of crisis management in any context, whether it’s litigation, financial fraud—whatever it is—the notion of crisis management is somewhat oxymoronic, because once it happens and you’re ill-prepared, there’s no way to manage it.
And legal elements now affect every sort of modern corporate crisis, correct? Because law and regulation is everywhere?
Right. There is not a corporate crisis I’ve seen that was not either preceded by or generated litigation. So it’s either on the front end, the middle end, or the back end, but litigation hovers quite closely.
Switching gears a bit: Tell me a little bit about how you got into this field and what you like about it. You were a lawyer, so that’s a nice fit.
It’s a good question. Part of it is I’m always a bit of an accidental tourist. I was working pretty aggressively and prominently in the nonprofit world, doing appellate litigation for significant constitutional issues. And, as a result, a lot of media work associated with some of the cases we were in, a lot of policy work on employment issues, hate crimes.
And as I began to think about what the private sector adjunct of that position was, somebody had footnoted the notion of working in litigation communications. At the time, I wasn’t really sure what that meant. And, after considerable examination, evaluation, I’m still not sure what it means! But it’s really been a very creative way to use a law degree … you can affect strategy in very different ways than you might as a lawyer. I always say to friends, “It’s the fun of being a lawyer on a strategic level without the hours and the detail that go into some of the mundane activities that our colleagues that are practicing law do every day.”
And in a way, some of those day-to-day activities of lawyers make them ill-prepared to respond during a crisis, right?
Right, and it gets to your point about tools and tactics. As high-achievers, senior executives, lawyers, whomever it is, we naturally default to our comfort zone, that which we know, that’s what’s worked for us in the past. And as you and I both know, that default, while comforting on some levels, is highly ineffective.
Just like it would be ill-advised if you and I decided to perform open heart surgery—we just simply don’t have the experience, training, or understanding. It does not make sense to manage a high-profile crisis, be it litigation or whatever source or cause without the experience.
And—as you know—what we do is highly experiential. It’s an immersion-based training protocol. And years in doing it matter, and I don’t say that as a sales pitch. I say it as—I wouldn’t pick a heart surgeon off of a brochure. I’d want to interview the person. I’d want to get a sense of what they know, how they’ve handled situations—how they handle confusion and complexity.
And I think there’s too little of that experiential skill set in this world of increasing complexity.
That they’ve been in the operating room before?
Correct.
Eric Rose
Partner
Englander Knabe & Allen
Los Angeles, California
“In a crisis, speed matters, and silence is always the most toxic strategy. We’re in an environment starving for news, and if you don’t fill that void with information … someone else will.”
About Eric Rose
Eric Rose is a skilled crisis communications consultant I’ve had the pleasure of working with for more than a decade. Based in Southern California, Eric has advised corporations, government entities, nonprofits, and individuals in all manner of crises for more than 25 years—both across the United States and internationally. He’s also active in politics, public affairs, and government relations. Eric has experience in virtually all major industries, with a specialty serving unions representing police officers and other public safety professionals. He has been a counselor to numerous Fortune 500 companies, trade unions, and other organizations, interacting with senior leadership and advising them on corporate issues management, executive exposure, and media relations. Eric has worked for both political and public sector clients in industries including higher education, healthcare, energy, transportation, consumer goods, hospitality and leisure, and environmental management.
Eric, who attended Cal State Northridge, comments regularly in the media on communications issues and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Southern California as well as before groups of PR professionals.
Tell me, Eric, how did you get into this field?
Accidentally, like most of us, I guess. I worked for elected officials for most of my life—well over 20 years—and I was a government executive for a while, having been a deputy chief of staff for a city council member, and a press secretary or spokesperson for highly visible elected officials. One day I got a phone call from a very senior representative of a PR company who asked: “Do you want to go to lunch? I think you should go into public affairs and crisis management.” I told him I have no skill set in that area. He replied: “What do you mean? You do … but you just don’t know it.”
And he was right … therefore launching me into this career. At the time, I didn’t realize the parallels between handling and working for a highly visible elected official who’s always under the microscope—essentially, always in crisis—and dealing with crises for corporate clients. Working through crisis and other issues—if you’re doing it right, the strategies and techniques are quite similar. Often, it comes down to, interestingly enough, understanding how others view an issue, being a good writer, and being able to articulate your position.
Indeed. Do you see differences in strategies between the crisis communications and public affairs? Why don’t you define the two, just so our readers will understand?
Sure, I define it this way: Public affairs is managing the daily issues that corporations deal with that have a public or governmental face to them. A crisis, on the other hand, is an unexpected emergency. It requires immediate attention—and left unattended, it can fester and become a critical incident. For a publicly traded company, it can affect stock price or the way the company is viewed by consumers. If it’s not handled properly, it could damage the brand and take a long time to recover.
Also, I think a difference is speed. In a crisis, speed matters, and silence is always the most toxic strategy you’re trying to overcome. The lawyers will often advocate for silence because they’re fearful of the repercussions from a legal standpoint, the liability, for any action a company takes. What I preach in my work with responsible companies is that there’s no rationale for silence. Silence becomes the focus of the coverage even if the actual response to a crisis, whatever it may be, is perfect.
In other words, even if the crisis is handled well, silence will paint another picture?
Right. If you have an operationally perfect response, but you are silent, you are setting yourself up to be fundamentally hurt in a very significant way from a reputational perspective. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that retreating to a “no comment” stance at the start of a crisis is almost always extremely harmful to the overall goal of getting a company through a crisis and regaining public confidence in its product or service. The lawyers involved are going to urge everyone to say nothing. My advice: Ignore that advice and do not go “radio silent” in a crisis. People need to hear from your company.
I tend to divide crises into two categories: the exploding and the unfolding. What do you think of that?
I like that. I like that a lot. And there’s also a matter of degree that needs to be assessed, and you need the proper tools to do that. I’ve actually developed a chart for companies to measure the severity of a particular crisis—because part of what you have to do is avoid escalating a minor incident into a major crisis. And while this is an art, not a science, there are certain measurements I believe that you can take to help determine whether an incident is actually a crisis, or if it is just an incident that bears watching.
Time and again, consumer product crises show that having a clear game plan can make the difference between a brand’s protection and its destruction. Moreover, we have seen that a plan based on open and straightforward communications, backed by a commitment to do the right thing for consumers, is a necessity in matters involving public health and safety.
So some incidents and events rise to the level of watching, but not necessarily need a full-fledged crisis response, correct?
Yes … 100 percent. I think that’s exactly right because there are all sorts of elements to consider. When, for example, do you want to get senior management involved? When do you escalate it? Who becomes the leader of the response effort? Who becomes the spokesperson? There’s all sorts of things that happen once you determine that a crisis has occurred.
It was actually challenging to put my chart together, because it was one of those times where you say something to the client and it’s so obvious they say “Oh yeah … I know that …” but when you actually ask them to articulate what makes an incident rise to the level of a crisis, they’re like “Uhhhh…..” And I’ve had situations where clients call me and say “We have a crisis!” But when we walk through a series of questions or exercises that I ask, it turns out they don’t have a crisis at all—they just have a situation that the crisis team should be monitoring because it may become a crisis. It’s one of those things that I’m always careful about: not making a non-crisis a crisis.
What do you think of the role of crisis planning in this process, and how well do companies do that?
I think good companies understand the critical elements of planning. You can’t plan for everything, so you have a crisis preparedness plan in place and you have holding statements. And they are invaluable as guideposts. Because, inevitably, things are going to change, but you need that guide-post. Having worked on, and with, airlines in crises, I think they probably understand it the best because they all have comprehensive standing crisis plans in place. They have prepared statements. What most people don’t realize is that when there is an aircraft incident—such as a crash—the first three to five press releases are already pre-written. And I’ve worked directly for airlines, and I have worked on crisis communications for airlines. People may think, wow, that’s cold … but it’s reality. We’re in an environment starving for news, and if you don’t fill that void with information, someone else will.
In a crisis, the companies that do best—especially in preserving their brand reputation—are those that do two things well: show they care about their customers and openly and quickly share the facts—good or bad—with the public.
Do you think airlines understand it better, and do it better? Are airlines the type of company that others should look at to learn how to do it right?
I think airlines are among the best at handling crisis communications. I think that you have companies in all industries that do it well, but from a sector perspective I think that they do it the best, because they have to. Specifically, a crisis plan has the best chance of success when the main objectives are to:
- provide as much information as quickly as possible to consumers, customers, employees, shareholders, and the media;
- help the public understand what is occurring;
- structure contact with the media to eliminate potential dissemination of misinformation; and
- put out as much factual/positive information as possible and counteract any negative response.
You mentioned you come out of politics and government. I sometimes feel that political types see everything like it’s a campaign, instead of a crisis to be managed and minimized. What do you think?
I think you’re right. Communications professionals who come from politics have an old saying: There are no Wednesday’s in politics, which means after the Tuesday election, it’s over. You’ve won or lost, and all that’s left to do is to measure your success and what’s been learned. But in crisis communications, that might not be so bad either—it teaches you to measure success. Because the product we offer is not tangible. So I take a page from politics: Did we accomplish our goal? What was our definition of success? Because you and I may—just for example—look at it and say: “Well, I was able to get the CEO on major national television programs and help explain the issues, thus getting back to normal business practices. And that’s a success.” But the CEO you’re working for may say: “No. Not until the stock price rebounds,” or some other variation. So in a way there is some value from the political world in that a lot of things in politics are measurable and there’s deadlines for elections, for passing legislation, and other tasks. So I do take a page from that book, but I also think that you’re right. You just have to be careful not to get caught up in all those traditional, political issues.
You can, though, see political consultants get caught up in the “message of the day” and things like that, correct?
I’m not a big believer in the message of the day. But what I am a big believer in is message. The message is the hardest thing. This is where I completely differ from some of my friends in the political world who are more concerned about media buys and fundraising and rallies. More important is message. It is about consistency, clarity, and frequency.
Honing the message is important. It goes without saying that what a company says and how it says it, particularly in the first 24 hours of a crisis, can determine the ultimate outcome. As you have seen, the wrong message articulated at the wrong time in the wrong way may well set the course for how a company performs for the duration of a crisis. Having said that, we already know from research that it takes an average of four to five times for a person hearing a message for them to be able to retain it, so while I’m not a big believer in the message of the day, I’m a big believer in the message and repeating the message over and over again—to the point that the CEO or spokesperson is sick and tired of hearing the message.
I mean, look again at the political world: the most successful politicians at the national level, they have a stock campaign speech and the only people who are bored with the stock campaign speech are the members of the media who have to hear it ad nauseam. But the people who hear it for the first time, it’s new to them. So if you take another page from that book of politics.
I have another theory, by the way. I call it the theory of three. People for some reason remember things when there’s three. I often joke with my clients that the Ten Commandments would have moved better if they were the Three Commandments. More people would remember …
And maybe stop breaking them!
Exactly! Yet, some of the most unsuccessful crisis management people have too many messages and want to change them too often. I would add that when a crisis is under way, it is critical that messages be reviewed and updated as appropriate as the crisis evolves.
And long, elaborate position papers for reporters who don’t have time to read them?
Yes. The media—and the general public—have attention deficit disorder. And I remind people that, in interviews, thousands and thousands of words may be spoken, yet only a few are ever used. So your goal really is to be able to ensure that you use the right words, the minimum amount of words, the most important words you can use.
So I’ll talk to a client. We’ll go through media training and maybe they listen, but not all the way. Then they see the interview and remark: “Wow. Of all the things I said, the reporter picked up on that. That wasn’t the most critical point.” And I tell them that’s because the spokesperson wasn’t disciplined, because he or she gave them too much.
I will often tell a client: “You had a good conversation, but a bad interview.” Because they try to educate and explain and convince, when what they’re really supposed to be doing is sending a message.
I often hear: “Eric, that was a horrible interview. I was boring. I was repetitive. After about five minutes, the reporter said, ‘Okay. I have everything I need.’” I’m going to tell them that’s probably a homerun interview. If you tell me that you spent 20 minutes, the reporter has a complete handle on the situation and understands your perspective and you feel good about the interview, I’m going to say it’s a horrible interview. You gave them too much information.
I argue in this book that what is really missing from crisis communication management is not necessarily the tools, the website, Twitter feed, etc., etc., but the structure, the logistics, and the leadership of crisis response. Where people most get screwed up is that they don’t have a structure in place, and they don’t have a person in charge when a crisis occurs nor a plan to respond. What do you think?
I agree with you 100 percent. You and I are on the same page. It’s speed and leadership every time. There’s no excuses for not countering the negative imagery that comes from a crisis. That’s why you’ve got to be ready. There are right ways to do it and there are wrong ways to do it, but there’s no excuse for silence. The only actions you can control in a crisis is what you say and sometimes what the public sees.
I would say a close second—a very, very close second—is empathy: caring for the victim. You can have the most perfect response in absolute terms, but if you’re not showing you care for the victim, you’re interrupting the sensitive impacts that the crisis has caused on the community, the neighbors, and employees. In real time you are going to be unsuccessful with controlling the crisis.
How often do you feel lawyers will dissuade clients from appearing to care because they feel it somehow exposes them to liability?
I would say 90 percent and they’re completely wrong. You have to come in with the assumption you’re going to be sued, but companies that do the right thing will always prevail, so you can. There’s nothing wrong with saying, “I’m sorry.” Apologies are critical and just because you apologize does not mean you are admitting guilt. Fundamentally, the public wants to know three things: What happened? How did it happen? And what are you doing about it, or what are you doing to prevent it from happening again? And sometimes you will have to use the “s” word: Say you’re sorry, just because it is the right thing to do, and you know it in your heart.
I’ve actually had situations where clients have been afraid to say, “We love our customers.” They just can’t bring themselves to say it in response to the crisis, because the responders—including lawyers—tend to be very technically oriented, and love is not a measurable attribute of their product. They therefore feel like they can’t say it, or there’s something wrong with saying it, and the lawyers are telling them: “Well, instead of love, why don’t you say you meet the needs of the needs of the clients in all instances …” or some pabulum like that.
Right. And the imagery is critically important. In a crisis, you often have people who are hurting. There’s nothing like having someone out there actually helping, wearing the company uniform or logo and showing that the company really cares.
You get all the credit for caring and people don’t get that because lawyers stop it.
I have been the outside consultant on crisis management teams involving fatalities or serious injuries, and in preparing a written statement or briefing the CEO for an interview, the question will inevitably be raised about using the word sorry. The argument against saying “we’re sorry” is usually voiced by an attorney, who protests that “an apology complicates litigation,” because it may be construed as an admission of guilt or culpability. Simply put, they are wrong.
How often do you feel executives play kind of “ostrich syndrome”: That if they just ignore something or say as little as possible, maybe it will go away?
Too often … way too often. Frankly, the best tool nowadays to show them that this won’t work is social media coverage. Most executives I find are now in their 50s. So if you’re an executive of a company now, you’re probably middle-aged, right? And you haven’t grown up with social media and so you don’t understand how strong it is and so I think if you show them the social media coverage—and I’m talking everything from Twitter to Facebook and YouTube, all the different social media tools out there—then they kind of get it to see it. Most executives I work with don’t see the negative coverage because they are not seeing it in a newspaper or on television … but it’s happening.
I showed some social media coverage to one client about six months ago, in an instance where there wasn’t a lot of traditional media coverage, so they thought there wasn’t a problem. So we looked at YouTube, and there were more than two and a half million views based on a blog posting. And the CEO had never even seen the video, because their media department was only showing the CEO what was important to the CEO, which is what appeared in the mainstream media.
So CEOs need to understand that the world has changed from what they grew up with—and even from the early stages of their careers?
I think the job of a “Chief Crisis Officer” is convincing—showing through evidence that the event is real and impacting the company. Most executives I work with love research and evidence, so when I show them the social media coverage of their incident, they then tend to say: “Okay, we’re going to say something.” Then they tell the lawyers: “Help us to say what Eric wants to say without getting sued.” Then we’re in the driver’s seat.
Unfortunately, the sad part of most crises that spin out of control is that they’re always preceded by that initial week, or two weeks, of mishandling, where no one believed what was actually happening, no one recognized that the crisis was growing and getting out of hand. And then eventually things go bad, maybe they call in a crisis communications firm with expertise in this, and eventually everyone gets religion and starts doing things the right way. But by the time that happens so much time has passed, the crisis damage may be irreparable.
Derede McAlpin
Chief Communications Officer
Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC)
Washington, DC
“The biggest mistake most companies make when responding to a crisis is slow response. In this media environment, you have about 15 minutes or less to determine the appropriate response. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the media environment we live in.”
About Derede McAlpin
Derede McAlpin, vice president and chief communications officer at the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), is a crisis management expert with a special focus on high-stakes litigation and reputation management. Throughout her career, Ms. McAlpin has served as a trusted advisor to CEOs, Fortune 500 companies, high-profile figures, and senior executives. Some of her most memorable projects include leading international communications on behalf of the nation’s first full face transplant recipient, working on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court First Amendment case Snyder v. Phelps, and high-profile trials, as well as managing crisis issues following data breaches and scandals. In her current role, Ms. McAlpin oversees all of ACC’s communications, research, branding and publications functions, and provides executive-level counsel and direction for ACC and its Board of Directors.
Prior to joining the ACC, she served as vice president of Levick Strategic Communications, where she led strategic communications, litigation, reputation management, and marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 companies, law firms, associations, and other professional service organizations. In that role, she served as lead communications counsel for global clients facing crisis and litigation issues, including regulatory matters, class actions, whistleblower cases, data breaches, and sports and entertainment issues, among others.
After graduating from law school, Ms. McAlpin served as a judicial law clerk in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia where she gained extensive experience in trials, hearings, and other court proceedings on the civil, criminal, and family law calendars. Early in her career, she worked on the news team of Philadelphia’s leading 6-ABC WPVI-TV, where she covered local and national news stories.
Ms. McAlpin earned a Juris Doctorate degree from the Temple University School of Law and a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Howard University. She also studied international law in Rome, Italy, and completed the Yale Publishing Course (YPC, which is advanced leadership training for book and magazine professionals).
How did you become a crisis communications consultant with a legal background?
It’s funny … I never planned it. You never know what your destiny is going to be. I officially started my career at 6-ABC WPVI-TV—an ABC-owned and operated station in Philadelphia, in the station’s public affairs department as an intern and then moved to the news department after graduating from college to work as a member of the news team—where assignments ranged from presidential elections, governmental scandals, to trials and the biggest news stories of the day. My most memorable work includes a breaking news story involving Gary Heidnik, a serial killer whose case inspired the movie Silence of the Lambs, and the trial of Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, a member of the American Mafia who was later convicted on RICO charges in federal court in Philadelphia.
After working in the media, I attended Temple University School of Law. After graduating from law school, I worked as a judicial law clerk at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, which provided invaluable insight into the inner workings of the court, judicial reasoning, and legal process. It was the clerkship that really inspired me to combine my communications background and legal background. As a former member of the press, I particularly enjoyed working with journalists and anticipating quotes and the next day’s coverage. I must say it was quite fulfilling to sit through a Felony 1 or civil trial and accurately predict news angles and coverage.
After my clerkship, I decided to combine my communications and legal background and experience into a niche career rather than pursue the practice of law. Working behind the scenes in the media and law created a perfect foundation for me to direct media strategy on high-profile trials, Supreme Court cases, amicus filings, and bet the company litigation. And that evolved into a whole practice of litigation and crisis communications work.
I made an argument in my last book that litigation communications and crisis communications were two very different disciplines, but I’ve actually come around in my thinking a bit because crisis communications is now so intertwined with legal issues, no matter what the particular crisis happens to be. What do you think of that?
I would say that litigation and communications do intertwine, but they’re still quite different disciplines. Traditional crisis response tactics can run afoul with the Model Rules for Professional Conduct, as well as the ethical constraints for litigating in the court of public opinion. A litigation strategy also requires careful evaluation of the potential risks and benefits of engaging with the media. It’s a delicate dance that requires balancing the pros and cons of being responsive to media inquiries with the overall litigation strategy.
So your sense is that sometimes people who are traditional crisis communicators aren’t seeing the whole playing field when they go to give recommendations in litigation situations?
I would say that it can be a “blindside” and disservice to a client. It’s like reaching for a Tums to make the pain go away, when you actually need heart surgery. Why? Litigation is a very specialized subgroup of crisis communications. It requires a different skillset, which includes an intimate knowledge of the court system, working knowledge of the ethical rules, and knowing how to advance your client’s or your organization’s position while playing by the rules. It also involves having the understanding that in litigation, media often don’t understand the process. There’s often an automatic presumption of guilt, which means the fundamental guarantees of fairness under the law and our judicial system mean absolutely nothing in social media and the court of public opinion.
What are the skills needed for these various types of crisis?
There is not a one size fits all when it comes to managing crises. It all comes down to subject matter expertise and hands-on experience. The top five traits of an effective crisis manager include being an active listener; thinking outside the box; the ability to triage and come up with solutions on a dime; and the capacity to handle stress and remain calm while under fire.
Ultimately, you want someone at the table with crisis management experience—and in most cases it should not be someone in the corporate communications role.
Why is that?
Someone with only corporate communications experience might not have the skills needed to manage a crisis. Another factor is privilege. If you’re relying on your internal communications person and then you’re sending memos, all communications are subjected to discovery.
Very good point. How often in crisis matters do you find that the legal department drives the process more so than the communications department?
In my experience, the corporate communications department rarely drives the response. It is usually outside counsel along with the General Counsel. Why? General Counsel are no longer simply lawyers. They increasingly serve as guardians of the enterprise. This is supported by ACC research, which finds that chief executive officers and boards of directors are increasingly expecting General Counsel to “see around corners,” address potential legal and regulatory issues, and mitigate risk.
So it is the case that the General Counsel or one of the top assistants becomes the Chief Crisis Officer within the organization and is working directly with the outside consultant?
Yes, in most instances General Counsel are the protectors of enterprise. They serve as the gatekeeper. Based on research from the ACC, we are finding that the role of an in-house lawyer has expanded from traditional legal work to one that wears three hats: leader of the law department, counselor in chief, and strategist.
How well do you think in-house lawyers understand the process of responding publicly as opposed to just legally?
I think with more and more high-profile cases, there is a much higher appreciation for the need to respond. Attorneys by nature are risk-averse, so it goes against their nature, but they know it’s necessary and you see the reputational harm that happens to other companies when they fail to respond. As a result, there are fewer that go for the “No Comment” option—but it’s still part of the instinct.
What about outside lawyers at law firms who are actually litigating the cases?
Outside lawyers with experience on high-profile issues often use the press as a strategic tool. I find litigators are most skilled and great in this area. They know the importance of good communication and how the court of public opinion can turn a case that has very minor legal issues into a crisis. At the end of the day, the actual outcome in the court of public opinion could be worse than the outcome in the legal system.
What’s the role of planning in this? Some companies have a crisis plan. Has it been your experience that when things start happening they don’t even use it?
I would say the biggest mistake most companies make is that, despite the fact that they have a crisis plan on the shelf and they have a robust team, they don’t respond fast enough. There’s just a lack of preparation and training within a team to respond fast.
Another problem is that the crisis plan by itself gives a false sense of security. There might be general outline—especially if you’re managing a big brand or a product—of certain things that could happen inside a plant and the protocols to respond. But there are things that can happen that fall outside of the plan. Lack of training and testing also leads to failure.
I often find that when people put together a crisis communications plans, they have in mind only gigantic events: A product gets recalled, there’s cyanide in the Tylenol, that sort of thing. And that may well happen, but there’s all sorts of events that fall under the definition of crisis and need to be attended to that no one has thought of so they start making up a response.
That’s true, there are just things that could happen that you don’t anticipate. Maybe you planned for the explosion but you didn’t plan for the disgruntled employee that’s disparaging your company online. You have to have a discussion with stakeholders and key parties in all of the different departments. There’s no quick fix, but you might find that you can address these issues in the social media policy, you can train employees and improve overall communications within the organization. As an organization, you shouldn’t be sitting down to discuss an issue for the first time after something has happened.
Exactly right. How often do you in your current role get involved in crisis communications issues?
For the ACC, my experience is particularly relevant to the members we serve. I do workshops on crisis management, and we hold conferences on data breaches and other emerging trends.
How often do you get a call from a General Counsel asking: “We really have something bad happening, how can you help us?”
All the time. I get these calls for recommendations for crisis professionals, or members come up after they’ve done training and say: “Oh, I didn’t see that this was relevant then, but this is my problem.” In my role here I don’t represent clients, but I do know the space well and people with the right experience.
So it sounds like you believe legal, rather than a company’s communications department, should take the lead on a core crisis communications team. That the crisis communications functions should exist primarily in the legal department, with representatives from brand PR and corporate communications as members of the team but not driving the process, right?
If you leave it to your company’s PR department, it might be someone with only experience in “regular” PR or social media … things like that. You really need someone with the right experience, someone who can call the shots and will know how things will play out to make the right recommendations. You just can’t make those recommendations if you’re only a person that writes corporate Tweets. However, during a social media crisis, you definitely want someone in place with social media expertise.
I think that’s a very good point. A lot of companies don’t have a gigantic corporate PR staffs, and they’re doing all sorts of other things. You can’t do a real estate opening on Monday, a new product announcement on Tuesday, then a crisis, or a legal issue, Wednesday. You simply don’t have the skills and experience.
Right, because at the end of the day, legal is going to be, in many cases, driving the response. It’s all about the strategy. The General Counsel is going to be the key advisor to the CEO.
Tell me about the importance of speed in crisis and litigation communications.
The biggest mistake most companies make when responding to a crisis is slow response. In this media environment, you have about 15 minutes or less to determine the appropriate response. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the media environment we live in. You start out your day thinking you’re going to be working on one thing, then all of a sudden you get a phone call about an issue and you are in crisis mode. It is all about readiness.
And it’s very often the lawyers who are thrust into the lead role, and in this current environment they should be, it sounds like.
Yes, absolutely. Crisis happens—it is not an issue of if, but when. General Counsel play a primary role when it comes to risk management and crisis management—they are the ultimate protectors of the brand.
Thomas Mauro, Jr.
Senior Director of Corporate Security
Metro One LPSG
New York, NY
“Media relations creeps into every crisis, and you can either be in front or behind it.”
About Thomas Mauro
Thomas Mauro has a unique background for this book—but one that is of great value when understanding the role of communications in effective crisis response.
Mauro is currently a consultant with Metro One LPSG, which provides a full range of protective services for corporate complexes, high-risk industrial sites, retail and education facilities. Mauro’s current role builds upon a 20-year career with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), where he rose to the rank of captain, assigned as executive officer of two precincts in Brooklyn and serving as incident commander (duty captain) for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. He also spent seven years as the director of exercises and training for the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH). During emergencies, he led the agency’s planning efforts as planning section chief. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, he was DOHMH incident commander for a high-rise building search operation in the Rockaways section of New York City. He is a subject matter expert in Active Shooter Planning, a certified National Incident Management System (NIMS) Incident Command System (ICS) instructor, a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Master Trainer, and a certified Master Exercise Practitioner by the Department of Homeland Security.
Tom holds a master’s degree in Criminal Justice from the State University of New York at Albany and a bachelor’s degree in English Education and is an adjunct professor at St. John’s University and Wagner College.
So you got started in crisis response at the New York City Police Department, correct?
Yes, I was with the NYPD for 20 years. Several years of my career were spent in training, from training recruit officers at the Police Academy, conducting leadership and management training for NYPD supervisors using hands-on scenario-based training, to providing Executive Development Conferences for police department executives.
That must serve you well in your current job.
Oh yeah. And I’ve continued my educational growth by obtaining additional credentials in the field since retiring from the NYPD. I am able to support agencies, private sector, faith-based groups, and non-governmental organizations with their preparedness efforts using a cycle that includes planning training, exercising, and evaluating. When training is needed, I am able to use my formal education, NYPD training, and personal experience to develop customized training programs to meet clients’ performance needs.
And at that time you were with the NYPD, did you have a communications role? Did you deal with the media and other public audiences?
Oh, all the time. As a precinct executive I needed to work closely with neighborhood newspapers as well as the city dailies and TV media. That is how the precinct advertised its community relations programs and also answered questions about crime and other incidents that occurred in the precinct. It was a very two-way relationship with the media. When the media needed information from me, I would provide it—and when I needed to push out my own programs and messages, I would ask them to run an article or attend precinct events, such as police awards ceremonies. It was reciprocal relationship built on trust.
So even though that wasn’t your primary role, it sounds like it was a major part of your job.
Yes, it was an important part of my job because when an incident occurs, when an emergency or a crisis occurs, we have to rely on the media to get information out to the public in a timely manner, and also to push the agency’s messages out. We could only do that by developing relationships with the media. I think that’s one of the keys to a good media relations strategy—developing relationships in advance of a crisis.
And how do you go about doing that?
As a precinct executive, it was not uncommon to physically visit the neighborhood newspaper media outlets. I have arranged meetings with reporters that covered my areas exclusively. In the private sector, my company arranged meetings with the press to talk about current events, and new initiatives that the company has developed to help agencies, organizations, and the public become better prepared. We see a relationship with the media as an opportunity to open dialogue with the public and let them know what to expect during a crisis and how they or their agencies and companies can be better prepared. It’s important for the public to know how information will be communicated during a crisis and strategies they can put in place so that they are informed and prepared.
Most media outlets are now competing with social media, and we all know how quickly social media pushes out information. The problem is, social media is not always accurate. So if agencies can push out accurate information quickly to media outlets—and the media knows the information is reliable because they have a relationship with you—then they can better compete with social media.
Do you find that social media is the bane of your existence these days?
No, not at all. In fact, I think social media can be used to an entity’s advantage. Social media provides information that we couldn’t get through other channels. Social media allows us to know what people are thinking in real time. Another good strategy is to stay ahead of social media by monitoring it. Monitor Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, Vines, any other similar outlets. I won’t embarrass myself by trying to name all the social media feeds that my kids use, but you can subscribe to a service where you monitor Twitter and other feeds that are coming into a defined geographic location. That’s a strategy presently used by many governmental agencies. Agencies and businesses will know what information is circulating and if the information is inaccurate, we have the chance to correct it by providing accurate information.
Do other ideas come to mind about what people should do in terms of getting ahead of a crisis?
Well let’s go back to the problem with social media regarding rumor control. When you read what people are thinking and saying in real time, much of the information will not be truthful, so if you have a good social media strategy, you can push out accurate information to the people that are reporting information, and to the groups that are reading the rumors. So getting in front of the traditional media channels and keeping up with the social media channels are always important. Press conferences are important because official and accurate information that we have at that time will be relayed to the public through a number of media outlets: traditional television and newspaper sources, on-line, and through social media. It is important for officials to inform the public specifically what they should do or not do, so the public may begin taking steps to protect themselves, if necessary.
Right, so now tell me what you do in your current job, your main focus.
I provide the tools to help agencies and businesses prepare for emergencies and disruption of services through planning, training, exercising, and evaluating. The key to crisis management is having a plan: a plan that everyone involved has been trained in and has practiced through some type of exercise. When a crisis occurs, it’s important that we use the plan as we have trained and exercised. It’s great when companies take the step to write a plan, but it’s equally critical to take that plan and use it and practice it and not just let it gather dust on the shelf. It is also critical that the information contained in the plan is shared with those who will be tasked with the responsibilities of implementation. An agency’s leadership is often involved with planning and exercising, but we need to ensure that the people that will be on the front line know the plan and have been trained. I have experience in all phases of the planning cycle including the operational implementation, so I am able to provide my clients with planning, training, and exercising, that will be realistic and practical when the plan is needed for a real-world event.
Now, in the work that you do, is it right to say that your main focus is on the emergency response and business continuity rather than the communications side?
Yes, but communications is always a component of every emergency. Communication is always the first area in need of improvement when we conduct “hot washes”—after action reviews of how well we dealt with a real-world incident or performed during an exercise. There should always be an honest review conducted so that when the crisis is winding down, those involved may gauge how well they did and what areas need improvement. I find that most often, intra-agency and inter-agency communications require improvement. During the after action review, I will ask the participants, what could have been improved? You got through this emergency, but what can we improve for the next time this happens? The number one concern is always communications. What information do you need? When do you need it? Who needs to have it? Plans should include a notifications section listing positions and contact information for persons requiring the information and identify who is responsible to make the notifications. Written documentation that the notification occurred is important so that the responsible person may prove later on that the notification was made. During the review, participants also need to ask, do we have a plan? Did we follow the plan? Maybe we need to rewrite our plan.
You said the number one area that needs improvement is always communications. Why do you think that is?
Because people always feel that they did not have the information that they needed when they needed it. They were either not notified or not brought into the loop early enough. Also, the mechanisms of communication may have failed—such as cell phones not performing as expected, radio frequencies being underutilized or overutilized, or user errors such as being unfamiliar with equipment or technology. Also, interagency communication is often a failure point. We need to work on our mechanisms to keep all the partners informed during the emergency so everyone involved has the same information at the same time.
And in terms of media relations during a crisis, this internal communications breakdown affects what’s being said to the media?
Exactly, and what is key to navigating the media during a crisis or an emergency is for everyone involved to be on the same page. It is critical that each different agency or participant in an emergency is sharing the same information, especially with the media and the public. The media will report the information provided by a source, so without a consistent message the public will end up confused and then involved agencies will need to devote resources to correcting inaccurate information. Everyone involved needs to be on the same page. We have to avoid a single entity going off-script and the script needs to have accurate information. All persons handling information for their organization need to be informed about relaying the same information provided for the incident and that no individual should add information to that script or invent information that doesn’t exist. All agencies and other partners need to speak with one voice.
Are there any examples that you can think of where that was a problem?
There are examples of this from 9/11 at the World Trade Center site. One that stands out in my mind during the first few days was the complete chaos after a message went out through media that anyone who wanted to volunteer can come down to ground zero and lend a hand. This was not an official message, coordinated and approved by the fire and police commanders in charge of ground zero, but a single person speaking off-script to the public through mainstream media. Volunteers showed up and there was no mechanism in place to check them in. Most came down with good intentions and were carrying buckets of rubble alongside responders. Some volunteers dropped off donations of clothes, equipment, and food. But unfortunately, a few people who showed up with other intentions, and walked off with responder equipment, including firefighter coats and helmets.
Aside from the stolen property, this was dangerous on many levels, especially having untrained civilians without proper respiratory equipment working in a contaminated area. I think it was day three or four when police took control of the perimeter, had a fence erected along Canal Street, and allowed access to the site to only pre-assigned, credentialed responders and construction workers. The public message changed then and the police were able to begin bringing control and coordination to the chaos.
Do you think you have a different take on the media relations aspect than somebody who’s just focused on media relations?
Well, a lot of times, governmental agencies see the media as an adversary. I think just the opposite is true. As a former police captain, I provided interviews and information to members of the media and that information was reported inaccurately or with a political slant. Significantly, this only happened with members of the press I had not met prior to them covering an incident. I had no rapport with them. Reporters who I worked with regularly reported the facts accurately for the most part. There’s a lesson in this: you need to embrace the media, develop relationships, and come up with a plan for working together during an emergency. Mainstream media has a stake in making this work as well, because they’re in competition with social media channels. During large-scale emergencies, where there is information coming in from numerous sources and places, it is beneficial to have a single-point for collecting and coordinating the information and crafting public messages. Usually this person or office is called the Public Information Officer (PIO), and each agency probably has their own. Bringing the PIOs from different agencies and businesses together to share information and agree upon the accuracy of content going out to the media improves communications during emergencies.
Here’s a quick story about a time when I was actually pleased to have a good relationship with the media. A local cable news reporter I work with in the past—on New York 1 (the local 24-hour news channel) interviewed me about a car accident when I was an executive officer of the 63rd precinct in Brooklyn. The accident involved fatalities in the Marine Park section of Brooklyn. The camera went on and he asked his first question—and I was not able to answer the question as articulately as I wanted to. I just messed it up. So the reporter actually stopped the interview and let me start over. I attribute that to having a relationship with the person in the past. He didn’t want to embarrass me on camera, so he allowed me a “second take” … I don’t know if that happens often, but I was certainly grateful.
Since media relations is not your primary role, have you been in situations where you’ve been frustrated with the way media is handled?
Absolutely, and this is why agencies and other entities need a plan for public messaging and understand the importance of providing timely information to the public. When the media calls an agency’s press office requesting information about an incident and its effect on let’s say, public health, if the agencies involved do not provide a statement, the media will go ahead with a report anyway, using sources that are not reliable. This provides inaccurate information. I don’t think it’s intentional because they have their deadlines to meet, but the result is the same. Agency leadership needs to work toward drafting and approving public messages in a timely manner, so that accurate information is relayed through the media. A specific frustration that I had was when the PIO had drafted an accurate message for the media but agency leadership would not take the time to approve the message. Instead (and as I predicted), media interviewed “subject matter experts” located across the country with no grasp of our situation, and they painted an inaccurate picture for the public, which caused unnecessary concern and alarm.
In terms of your preparation and training work, is there a crisis communications aspect in terms of dealing with the media and other audiences?
Yes, I direct functional exercises to help clients manage communication with agencies, responders in the field, and with the media, as well as our governmental officials. Functional exercises are designed to simulate realistic conditions because a good scenario will make the exercise participants feel as though the incident is unfolding for real. The exercise planners spend many hours and days designing “injects,” which are scripted questions, for the players. For each inject there is an expected action, usually based on an existing plan. The action taken is evaluated and if the expected action is not performed, there is usually a training issue or an issue with the plan itself. Both can be corrected before the plan is needed for a real emergency. Among the injects are those written for players that involve media questions or the need for a public message. Exercise controllers will make an actual phone call or send an email to a targeted player requesting the information. This is a good way for agencies to practice drafting public messages and dealing with the media under simulated conditions.
How do all these levels of communications—with media, interagency communications, internal communications—work together in a crisis. Do you see the media relations as separate and distinct area?
Absolutely not—it all works together. It’s not separate at all. What needs to happen first is that all the entities and stakeholders involved come together to figure out what has happened. What are the facts? What is the truth? And the facts could be good or bad, but facts are facts. And once you’ve gathered this information, you figure out who needs to know it, and when they need to know it. So during an incident involving more than one entity—let’s say a corporation or public authority, local law enforcement, regulators—there should be a meeting taking place at a joint information center. A joint information center is a place where agency PIOs will convene to share information, to share what they know with each other and with the official in charge, whether that be a mayor or a commissioner, or the CEO of a business.
Once everyone is brought up to speed about what the facts are, then there needs to be a selected person who is a single point of contact for the media. That person needs to take the information and prepare a press release and then provide it to the media.
Do you have advice on who that single point of contact should be?
It should be the person whose job it is to deal with the media as part of their day-to-day position. Their job description should include interfacing with the media. It should also be someone who’s been trained in media relations and also public speaking. A problem many entities face is that some of their top leadership have no experience speaking in front of a camera, or to a group of people, and public speaking is not something that everyone has the skills to do. Public speaking can be developed through training and practical experience. In 2002, the NYPD sent me to the FBI National Academy program in Quantico, Virginia, where I took a course in public speaking. The instructor, Penny Parrish, was excellent and used, at the time, modern technology to video our presentations so we could watch ourselves presenting, see our mistakes, and correct them.
The single point of contact needs to be someone specially selected, with public speaking skills, who understands how to gather information and then cull it down to a series of messages and then work with the media to push the information out to the public. It is beneficial for this single point of contact to represent one of the key agency stakeholders, or even come from the local mayor’s—or other elected official’s—office. The person needs to be a credible source for the media and for the public, and be able to speak as an authority on the nature of the emergency. It is helpful to identify the persons who could fill this role in advance and include them in plan writing, training, and exercising.
You know, it’s interesting, I started out thinking that the media relations might not be central to what you do, but from everything that you’re saying, it sounds like I’m wrong, that it is pretty top-of-mind in the training that you did. Is that accurate?
It’s definitely accurate, yes. Absolutely. Media relations creeps into every crisis and you can either be in front or behind it. The way to get in front of it is to pre-identify your media relations leaders, establish a joint information center to gather information from every partner with a stake in what’s happening, and then ensure a single point of contact to manage the information and public messaging so that the message is consistent across agencies and jurisdictions. Often when agencies are working to bring an incident under control, their focus is on operations—so communications and media relations relating to public messages may not be a priority. Pre-identified professionals performing this role and working with operations to obtain accurate and timely information will allow operations to focus on life-safety and incident stabilization, while the media professionals ensure that the public receives the information that they need to ensure their safety. My days of being in the middle of operations may be in the past, but in my current position, I have enjoyed being able to use my experience and training to work with agencies and strengthen their communications capabilities through plan development, training, exercising, and evaluating.
Thom Weidlich
Crisis Consultant and Chief Content Manager
CrisisResponsePro, Inc.
New York, New York
“It’s unusual to see a company that really has it together … it’s one of those situations where you’re spending a lot of money preparing for something that may happen only infrequently. But it can have a huge impact when it does happen.”
About Thom Weidlich
An accomplished journalist and crisis communications consultant, Thom Weidlich servers as chief content manager of CrisisResponsePro, the online software for crisis and litigation communications. In that role he writes about crisis communications and also oversees the creation and collection of a wide range of content on the site, including templates, public statements issued by other companies, and crisis planning materials.
As a crisis communications consultant, Thom specializes in litigation communications, crisis management, and media-relations strategy. Before beginning his tenure at CrisisResponsePro, Thom was a consultant at Sitrick & Company, a nationally known crisis and bankruptcy communications firm. Prior to this, he was a longtime reporter for Bloomberg News, where he covered the trials of Enron’s Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling and media mogul Conrad Black. He also covered bankruptcy, securities cases, structured-finance litigation, and the federal courthouses in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
A journalist for more than 20 years, Mr. Weidlich previously had been a reporter at The National Law Journal, where his beats included law firms and employment law; PRWeek magazine, which covers the PR industry; and Direct, a direct-marketing publication. He also had been a freelance journalist, writing for the New York Times, ABA Journal, and other media outlets.
Thom holds a master’s degree in History from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from The New School in New York. He was a 2010 fellow in the Journalist Law School program at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. In 2001, he won the Bertrand Russell Society book award for his book on the British philosopher, published the previous year.
So let’s start by discussing your background and how you got into this field. How did you find yourself in crisis communications, and particularly as the chief content manager of CrisisResponsePro?
I had been a journalist for many years, 20 years, mostly covering legal issues. My last seven and a half years were at Bloomberg, where I was on the legal team—so mostly what I covered was adversarial situations. I always had it in the back of my mind to go into high level PR, although at the time I really thought it would be more in the area of financial PR. I’ve been an editor at PR Week magazine and wrote about the industry in some detail. Then, I got much more interested in crisis communications because I thought it would be more strategic. And, of course, litigation communications, since I was a litigation reporter for so many years.
Eventually, this brought me to Sitrick, and then to PRCG, another crisis communications firm,* and to CrisisResponsePro, which was a software created by PRCG that was just being rolled out. One of the big attractions was working on the software. When I first went into crisis communications, I thought that there had to be some sort of software to automate crisis communications and get people organized. So, I was really surprised to learn that there really wasn’t anything like that on the market.
How do you define crisis? Obviously, a lot of crises are legal, but what’s the definition you would use?
There are different types, but I would say any kind of incident where a company’s reputation is at risk, and the reputation risk can really affect the bottom line.
So, anything that affects reputation in that sense would be a crisis, you think? Or are there certain types of events that are more likely to be crisis—the immediate or unexpected threats?
Well you have the quicker crises, such as fires or accidents, and other events that might develop more slowly, such as litigation or, I would say, even issues management.
You spend a lot of your time analyzing what companies do and don’t do during a crisis. What do you think, after doing this steadily for several years now? How well do companies respond during a crisis?
It’s depressing, to tell you the truth. I think companies are shockingly bad at this. It seems such a waste in a way. There’s a trend of people writing about the problems of being overly optimistic, and I think that’s one of the problems here is that companies don’t want to admit that they might run into problems—which they, of course, they will, because there will always be problems in any company above a certain size. So, they don’t prepare and aren’t organized beforehand. When a crisis hits, they seem to be just making it up as they’re going along.
So more companies mishandle things than handle them well?
I would say it’s more that they mishandle things. It’s unusual to see a company that really has it together, or has someone in-house dedicated to crisis. It’s one of those situations where you’re spending a lot of money preparing for something that may happen only infrequently. But it can have a huge effect when it does happen.”
So, as a former reporter, did you think companies had it all together?
Yes, I really thought they were far more organized than this. I often say that, as a reporter, when I would call a company in the morning about a lawsuit, about them being sued, it would take them all day to get a statement saying simply: “We’re gonna fight this lawsuit vigorously.” All day! Now, I understand why. It’s because they have this incredible bureaucracy that keeps them from responding quickly.
So, you’ve been reviewing companies and analyzing their crisis communication response. What types of companies or industries do a really bad job? Anything jump out?
Well, there’s been a number of crises in the healthcare arena in 2015 and 2016 that were particularly poorly handled. Valeant, the pharmaceutical company, had problems with their financial disclosures and pricing. I don’t think they’ve been particularly transparent about that.
Then, there’s Theranos, the blood testing company. They became very belligerent when The Wall Street Journal started writing about them in the fall of 2015, alleging that there were problems with their testing equipment and protocols. It turned out that nearly everything The Wall Street Journal reported was true. The CEO now cannot manage a blood lab for two years, and the entire business is in jeopardy. I don’t think they handled that very well, and they’ve gotten a lot of criticism for the approach. We just recently wrote about a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle comparing Theranos’ response to their crisis with the response by Zenefits, the employee benefits startup. A crisis at Zenefits developed when, among other things, it was discovered that their employees were not properly licensed to sell the insurance they were selling.
How did Zenefits’ response differ from Theranos’?
Zenefits really appeared to have done a better job. They immediately admitted there was a problem—the exact opposite of what Theranos did. The CEO stepped down, unlike at Theranos, where the founder and CEO (and one-time media darling Elizabeth Holmes) is still running the show. It looks like Zenefits is settling with state regulators over these issues and really trying to change. That makes a difference.
I have a theory that the public will forgive mistakes, even egregious mistakes, so long as you properly handle the aftermath. Is that your sense?
Yeah, I think owning up to the problems is really one of the most important things a company can do when facing a crisis. And be genuine about it. In Theranos’ case, I think they may have genuinely believed in the early stages that they weren’t the problem, that they just had a PR issue. But in retrospect, it seems crazy that they viewed it that way.
Well there’s a school of crisis communication response that says “Admit nothing, lawyer-up and try to scare the hell out of the media outlet. At the least, you’ll get a better story.” Theranos has proved that wrong, haven’t they?
Yes, Theranos really went after the Journal, and the Journal didn’t back down. The only thing I can guess is that the Journal felt that they really had the goods on this company.
In a way, Theranos protested too much?
Yeah, right. Exactly.
Tell me about what you see in the area of apologies and how companies handle that.
Well, it’s funny. Apologies are actually a whole academic area. How to apologize, including on the corporate level. Again, it just seems people don’t want to ‘fess up to mistakes that they’ve made. It’s very difficult to admit that you were in the wrong. But it’s clear in the cases that we follow that in many cases you have to make an apology and own up to the mistakes that you made, you have to say what you’re going to do to make amends. A lot of companies don’t do that.
Do a lot of them issue the non-apology apology, right? As in: “If you were offended, I’m sorry?”
Yes, absolutely: “We’re sorry you misinterpreted our bad actions.” I actually think companies are getting slightly better at this recently, because the fake apologies, or non-apology apologies, are almost a pop culture thing now. Harry Scherer, on his radio show, even has a weekly segment on apologies of the week.
So are apologies the crisis technique du jour?
No, I don’t think so. But I think that just as we say most crises involve some sort of legal aspect, a lot of them often involve an apology, too.
The other technique that you used to see on a regular basis is the internal investigation as a PR technique: You’d hire a famous outside lawyer—George Mitchell or someone like that—who’d investigate the crisis or incident and prepare a report, usually months later. You’d appear to be serious about addressing the crisis, but it would be months before the public would learn anything. Have people begun to see through this technique? What’s your sense?
No, I don’t think people have begun to see through them, and I do think in some instances it’s a genuine attempt to find out what happened. But it is also a valuable crisis communications technique to appoint some sort of an internal committee to show that you are, at least, trying to do something. An internal investigation was launched by Fox News, for example, in the 2016 Roger Ailes employment lawsuit.
The CrisisResponsePro service has a database of thousands of public statements issued by other companies, and as Chief Content Manager, you oversee this. Have you seen some really awful statements issued by companies over the years in response to crises?
Oh, yes. For the most part, we’re trying to post good examples of statements so they can serve as a guide to users of our service, so we tend not to post many bad ones. An exception would be for an extremely high-profile story. If the story is big enough, we’ll consider posting a statement related to that crisis, no matter how bad it is.
What do you find in the public statements that companies issue? What’s your sense of what works and what doesn’t?
They really run the gamut. The statements that work well are ones that follow the basic rules of initially—especially an event like a fire or accident—explaining that something has happened, what people need to do to be safe, and what the company is doing to deal with the situation. And, in the very early stages, that they’re doing everything they can to gather information about what has happened and convey that information in an accurate manner to the public.
And good statements always have a “human face,” expressing sympathy for anyone affected by the crisis.
Right. Sometimes, there is a concern when you express sympathy, that it might sound fake. There’s been a recent backlash, in fact, about statements that begin with phrases like: “Our hearts go out to …” Are there clichés like that that you think work against a company?
I think it is a big mistake when companies state that “safety is their first priority,” because I think people don’t believe that. They know a company’s first priority is making money. I’ve seen statements that are much better where a company will say: “Safety is a top priority” or “among our top priorities.” I think the reaction is far less cynical.
Ok, so let’s say that I’m a company. I want to manage crisis communications the right way. Based on your experience and what you’ve seen analyzing these issues for quite some time, what should I do?
To me, 90 percent of crisis communications is preparation. Most companies just don’t have the systems in place, nor the people in place. So, number one is to have somebody in charge of the crisis—including monitoring potential crises. That person should have a feel for what could turn into a big crisis. Events and issues and other potential crises should be feeding up to that person for proper vetting. Second, you need a crisis team that will assemble when there’s a crisis, and for each person on that team to know what they’re supposed to do when a crisis hits. Finally, you have a plan in place so that they do know what to do. And you train against that plan.
How well do you see companies doing that?
Again, I don’t think they’re very good at it because that would require that they recognize that things can go wrong.
Right, it’s that optimism thing again. But is it optimism or is it Pollyanna-ism?
I think it’s just basic optimism that nothing will go wrong. But also, that companies are so busy doing other things that they don’t have time for this—or so they think. It’s an opportunity cost question: It is a lot of effort to create a crisis plan, and a team, and have a leader and train on a plan … for something that you may only need infrequently. But the problem is that depending on the crisis, it can have a huge effect on your reputation and the bottom line.
Why didn’t Target, for example, have a plan for a potential data breach?
Data breaches are very interesting because they’re really the crisis du jour. So many companies seem to be getting hit with data and cybercrime issues, and they just don’t have a plan in place for dealing with them. You often see IT people writing on this, and in the IT community there is a call for a crisis plan specifically geared toward a data breach, and they always recognize that you have to have a communications aspect to that.
Do you feel that IT is driving crisis response in data breaches, where communicators should? Because ultimately, the damage is as much to reputation as to your data and systems.
Yes, I don’t think IT has the expertise in terms of communicating with the media and with the public.
So what else should I do? I’m a company who wants to do it right. My lawyers are telling me, “Say as little as possible and get the hell out of the way. There’s no way you can control the media. There’s nothing you can do.” What do you think?
I think there has to be buy-in from the top that the organization is going to do this and do it right. We’re going to have the systems in place. We’re not always going to do what lawyers want, in terms of not talking. Some lawyers do get it, but most don’t. So, that’s an important thing. Culturally, there has to be an understanding that we’re going to take this seriously and get it right, because reputationally, the return on investment is there.
There are people who say that a crisis plan doesn’t help you because when all hell’s breaking loose, nobody follows it anyway. But I don’t think that’s really true. Obviously, you can’t predict everything that’s going to happen in a crisis, but if people generally know what their role is and what their duties are, it will go a lot smoother.
Which leads us to technology. How can technology facilitate the process?
The vision behind CrisisResponsePro, again, is to be organized about crisis communications response, instead of just doing it on the fly. And this means organized in a couple of different ways. One is just to have a central place to collaborate, instead of using email. A central place to keep the documents and for version control of those documents. It is truly shocking, in this day and age, that companies still haven’t figured out how to keep track of which version of the document is the latest version. I joke that we can put a man on the moon, but we can’t institute true version control in a corporate environment. So CrisisResponsePro helps with that.
Technology is being used in other ways, of course—smartphones and social media just being two examples.
Ah, Social media. Older executives and older lawyers and others will say, “Well, that’s just a bunch of crazies or teenagers. I can ignore it.” Right?
Right, and that’s totally wrong, because for a lot of people social media is the main way they’re getting their news. And very often, the public first learns of crises through social media as well. And reporters monitor social media closely in their reporting, to find out what stories are out there. So, social media has to be a big part of any crisis plan.
If you could fix one thing about companies and the way they respond to crisis, what do you think it would be?
That they don’t think they have to plan ahead. I think that’s the biggest mistake I’ve seen in Corporate America, because I think people just don’t understand how quickly things move. I actually think having worked at Bloomberg for so long was good training for this. In fact, we had a saying at Bloomberg: News is predictable. Some news may not be, but a lot of it is.
For example, if you’re covering a lawsuit, you know the stages of the lawsuit, you know that a decision on a motion to dismiss is going to happen at some point, so you’d write your templated story ahead of time for any scenario that might happen. Then when the ruling comes down, you just fill in a few blanks and file the story.
It’s the same thing with crisis. You know what industry you’re in. You know what kind of crises you’re vulnerable to. There’s no reason not to have templated statements with a lot of blanks in them that need to be filled in. If you generally know what tone you want to take in various situations and what information needs to be disclosed, you can have the templates approved ahead of time. This enhances the speed of response considerably.
If a Bloomberg reporter can do it to help report the news more quickly, it stands to reason that the subject of the stories, the corporations out there involved in crisis, should be able to do it as well.
* PRCG/Haggerty LLC, the author’s firm.