Your Crisis Communications
Why be concerned about crisis communications?
Here’s a list of situations that could effect your own organization,
even if you have done nothing wrong:
- An irate former employee
breaches security, enters your work
place and threatens a former supervisor
he or she blames for the termination.
- Rumors about your company
and your products or services are started
by a competitor.
- A key employee resigns
and then distributes to the media confidential
information on expansion, or a new
product to be introduced in a highly
competitive market.
- An advocacy group supported
by church leaders claims your products
are unsafe and threatens a boycott
in your prime markets.
- Neighbors oppose your
new plant under construction.
Carolina Image Builders has substantial experience in addressing
such issues in this market and on the national level with professional
groups, major corporations, and vulnerable associations. Chuck
Werle has been a speaker on the subject at Crisis Communications
Day at Western Carolina University and has authored guidelines
published in a Chicago business publication.
So what do you do when your management wants
the problem solved immediately?
Before you can communicate to your most important audiences,
some basic questions must be answered:
- What happened?
- Where and when did
it occur?
- What went wrong?
- How soon can the
situation be corrected?
- Who is responsible?
- Who has suffered,
or will, because of the situation?
Fortified with that vital information, you will
be better prepared to select the most important audiences for
immediate notification. One of them is bound to be the media.
What you say and do at that critical point after the crisis can
make all the difference in the outcome.
Further Reading: Dealing with the Press in a Crisis
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