Your Crisis Communication Plan and Your PR Strategy Belong Together
Why a Crisis Communication Plan and Proactive PR Belong Together
Most organizations put their energy into good news and put off planning for bad days. After all, nobody wants to write a crisis communication plan for something that may never happen. In this article, our colleague Mike Gross, APR, of AKCG – Public Relations Counselors, explains why that’s a mistake, and why proactive PR and crisis preparation make each other stronger.
His first point is worth repeating: when a crisis hits, people who don’t already know your voice and values will assign them for you, based on a first impression. That is true whether you run a law firm, a school, a hospital or a nonprofit.
Below, you’ll read how a strategy can move you beyond constant crisis response and why thought leadership depends on being ready for doubt.
Bruce Hennes, Hennes Communications
Stronger Together: Why Crisis Communication and Proactive PR Have a Mutualistic Relationship
by Mike Gross, President, APR AKCG – Public Relations Counselors
It’s natural for organizations to want good publicity and strong relationships with their stakeholders and audiences – we all want to be well-liked and successful. However, every company will experience a crisis in its lifetime, no matter how hard its leadership and employees work to prevent it. It can be tempting to solely focus on positive, proactive communications and delay developing a crisis communication strategy. However, these forms of communication complement each other and can significantly advance your overall business goals.
In this article, we’ll discuss four reasons why crisis communications preparedness and proactive public relations should both have seats at the table.
Stakeholders should know your voice and values.
In today’s world, people make up their minds quickly. Several studies exist that examine how long it takes someone to form a first impression, and the responses range from one tenth of a second to 27 seconds. No matter the number, these answers tell us we don’t have long before a stranger decides who we are in their mind. This same sentiment stands for organizations and companies. If your organization is experiencing an issue and your stakeholders have no direct knowledge of your mission, values or voice, they can – and will – assign those for you based on that first impression.
Public relations, or the strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and the public, is critical in establishing, protecting and managing your reputation. Think back to a time when a celebrity or company experienced a public relations crisis. Depending on their reputation, the issue prompted either shock because it went against their known image, or it confirmed the notion that this is par for the course. Proactive communications allows you to create and shape your brand and image so your most important stakeholders don’t question your values when it matters most.
Your organization will be ready to respond when questions are asked – internally and externally.
Once you have a reputation to uphold and maintain, your words and actions must go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always matter that you took the right steps and reacted quickly if you leave people in the dark during critical moments.
Crisis communications is largely planning to be ready to carefully roll out important information during events you hope never happen. At AKCG, we define a crisis as anything that can affect the goodwill of your stakeholders or your bottom line. A crisis doesn’t have to be a large, public event or story that ends up in a news publication. It could be an internal issue that begins as conversations in a hallway or an innocuous social media message. However, if left unaddressed or ignored, it could grow into an issue that affects operations, finances, employee morale, trust or more.
By waiting for a crisis to occur before you develop a communications plan, it’s difficult to thoughtfully respond to criticism or questions in a way that doesn’t appear delayed, performative or inadequate.
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