Crisis management in the digital age

Over the past few years, social media has had an impact, whether bigger or smaller, on people, communities and businesses and has brought certain undeniable changes with it. Even if its revolutionary and groundbreaking effects have been exaggerated by some, one thing that social media has definitely transformed is the way in which we communicate with each other. Which means that the way we discover information and share it is also transforming.

Today's social channels are more influential and powerful than their predecessors and they insure the rapid diffusion on public opinion. In this new digital age, news of a negative event or incident has the potential to spread faster that any crisis experienced by previous generations has. All of these things lead to organisations modifying not only the way they are handling, planning and implementing crisis management, but also the way they perceive and understand what a crisis is.

One of the first things that companies need to figure out is what they define as being a crisis on the web; what is the tipping point when an online event triggers or develops into a crisis for that organisation? Once that is cleared up they can start thinking about planning, both proactive and reactive, for the appropriate crisis management solutions.


Two years ago, Brian Solis talked about reinventing crisis communications for the social web and suggested that "many, if not a majority of potential crises are now avoidable through proactive listening, engagement, response, conversation, humbleness, and transparency." The crisis management model he put forward is based on listening, observation and conversation:

This model is a proactive one that aims at reducing the need for reactive responses and crisis communications programmes.

Monitoring becomes absolutely essential in the social web and companies must be sure to set up 'digital listening posts' on all relevant platforms. It is essential to have social media channels set up and the more credible they are (number of followers or friends, quality of information), the better the company will be able to make use of them in a crisis situation or for the prevention of such an event.

Timothy Coombs said that "the rapid evolution of new media often results in the practice of public relations getting ahead of research." This applies to crisis management where the relevant literature in the field has been slow in catching up with the challenges that social media is imposing on it. This gap is mostly filled by bloggers who look at the latest ongoing case-studies (such as Toyota or Domino's Pizza) to draw conclusions and develop or adapt rules and theory.

PR companies and professionals have also had to adapt to these new realities and incorporate digital services in their crisis management offers. According to Eddie Bensilum (who was a guest speaker in the course's Corporate PR module) from Regester Larkin, all the main principles of crisis management have stayed the same, but some of the rules, especially when it comes to credibility, are different.

Social media can be either a trigger for a crisis or it can work as an escalating factor for an already existing one. Due to its unstructured nature it can severely complicate the activities and actions of crisis management. Social media creates new structures and circles of trust and it requires up-skilling and different resources to be used in the crisis management process. However, it can also be an asset for the organisation; social media can help identify potential crises sooner and, thus, prevent them from escalating further, or it can take an incipient issue for the organisation and transform it into an opportunity to shine in front of the stakeholders.

Social media adds a new dimension to crisis management, as there are now larger groups involved and a lot less time to act. News, especially negative ones, travels much faster than through traditional channels and it has a much wider reach. If before a company could buy some time while the reporters researched the story, the facts were checked, the copy edited, the newspapers printed and delivered to the public, now all it has are the 30 seconds it takes to write a 140 character message on Twitter or the 30 minutes it takes to compose a blog post. And the reach that potential blog post or Twitter message could have can go beyond what traditional media can achieve.

It has become the job of the crisis communicator today to take notice of all these things, course correct the rules, strategies, tactics and tools to be used, while still following the same management principles that have paved the way to success in the past.

Communication - the key of managing any crisis

"When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters -- one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity" - John F. Kennedy

Communication, the key element of human existence, represents the basis of any activity and of any system, playing a vital role within the complexity of our contemporary societies. These societies' structures, dominated and influenced by mass media communication, generate a favourable setting for the appearance and evolution of an unlimited number of different types of crises. This is why crises have become common phenomena in the field of activity of all types of corporations or NGOs.

For organisations to truly exist in the public sphere they need to be in the attention of public opinion; to raise the interest of public opinion, organisations have to be visible; to be visible, they have to communicate. But, more than this, organisations have to know how and what to communicate to gain the public's trust and sympathy. Open, honest and constant dialogue, with all categories of public, is the vital formula which insures organisations' success in their activities and helps them avoid or better manage crisis situations.

Crises are complex phenomenon, dysfunctions that can affect, at a macro level the entire society, or at a micro level various areas of the social system (economic, political, cultural, financial etc.) That is why they have been defined and analysed by representatives of vast scientific domains, like economy, sociology, psychology, politics, history and last, but not least, public relations (Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow& Matthew Seeger, Charles Hermann, Thierry Pauchant, Ian Mitroff, Laurence Barton, Kathleen Fearn-Banks).


INSIDE CRISIS COMMS

It is essential for any organisation to know how to identify a crisis, what its characteristics and typologies are, and how it can be attenuated or even eradicated by communication. Crisis communication has become, more and more, the art of re-establishing reputation and rebuilding public image; and this art can be mastered through the willingness to learn from ones mistakes, through the accumulation of practical experience and receptivity to the public's feedback, needs and desires.

At the basis of any successful crisis management process we encounter an efficient communication strategy. Crisis communication stands out as one of the most innovative, complicated and provocative communication practices and a key crisis management component. An efficient crisis communication strategy has the capacity to barricade negative reactions from the stakeholders and to attenuate the potential harmful impact on the organisation.

Crisis communication, according to Kathleen Fearn-Banks (2007), is "the communication between the organisation and its audiences before, during and after the negative events. This communication is designed to reduce the dangerous elements that might affect the organisation's image." It contains strategy, message, time and distribution channels management activities for an efficient communication with the press, the employees, customers, communities and other decision factors.

Social media is transforming the way we communicate with each other, how we discover information and how we share it. Moreover, social media's impact has modified, to some extent, what we see today as a crisis and how we handle crisis communication. But I will come back to this in more detail is a future post.


Coming back to the traditional views on crisis communication, according to Newsom, VanSlyke Turk & Kruckeberg (2009), there are three key elements that insure its success: the existence of a communication plan, the existence of a crisis team and the use of a sole spokesperson throughout the crisis. Some of these principles may not apply anymore to the digital environment, as they were designed for dealing with mainstream media and “offline crises” For example, it becomes unrealistic and even unproductive to say that you can only use one spokesperson: communication during an online crisis needs to come from every direction, from every platform, from every channel, from every medium – in order to cover the increasing flow of negative content generated. On the other hand, it is realistic to say that any crisis should be managed by a crisis team, which Timothy Coombs (2007, p. 66) defined as “a functional group that contains those persons in the organisation designated to deal with the crisis.”

This team should be as small as possible and its members must be given the necessary authority to make important, on the spot, decisions. The team’s roles and functions, as identified by Coombs, involve designing the crisis management plan, applying it – both in simulated situations and real-life crises – and dealing with any additional problems that might appear during the crisis, that are not covered by the initial plan. The team members must be chosen from different departments, depending on the nature of the crisis, and they should give up performing their daily tasks during the events of the crisis.

According to David Guth and Charles Marsh (2000), crisis communication involves four types of activities: evaluating the risks, planning the crisis communication (drafting the plan), responding (applying the plan) and rebuilding the organisation. The crisis communication plan must be drafted in a flexible manner, so that it can easily apply to any type of crisis that might arise for the organisation.

Kathleen Fearn-Banks (2007) identifies some of the main elements of the plan as being: the cover-sheet, the introduction, the objectives and goals, the members of the crisis team, the press releases, a list of different types of stakeholders and audiences that might be affected, the channels used to communicate and inform the stakeholders, the name of the main spokesperson, the location of the crisis control centre, databases and files with key messages.

James Grunig (2001) and Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger (2007) offer some of the main crisis communication principles and rules. They are meant for "traditional" crises and need to be adapted in order to work in the online environment. The most well-known and used crisis communication strategies are those formulated by William Benoit (1995, pp 63-71) and Timothy Coombs (1995). Benoit’s Image Restoration Strategies include: denial, evasion of responsibility, reduce offensiveness, corrective action and mortification. Coombs’ Reputation Repair Strategies are: attack the accuser, denial, scapegoat, excuse (which includes: provocation, defeasibility, accidental, good intentions), justification, reminder, ingratiation, compensation and apology. However, the strategies must been seen and used in a flexible manner as they only represent a starting point in tackling a crisis and should be adapted to the features and particular evolution of each crisis

FROM CRISIS TO OPPORTUNITY

Communication represents not only an indispensable activity for the human kind, but also the key element in managing any crisis, on which all other factors depend and which permanently orients the publics' attitudes and reactions towards the negative events. Two-way communication with the public should not end as soon as the crisis is resolved. It must become a continuous and permanent process, which will help avoid future similar situations. A good crisis communication strategy can make the difference between the next market leader and the organisation on the verge of bankruptcy. What is more, it is essential to remember that any threat, such as a crisis, can represent an opportunity for the organisation to reposition itself as caring, socially responsible and ethical, turning a bad event into a beneficial situation.

References:

• William L. Benoit, Accounts, Excuses and Apologies: A theory of Image Restoration Strategies, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1995
• W. Timothy Coombs, Ongoing Crisis Communication, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, California, 2007
• W. Timothy Coombs, Choosing the Right Words: the Development of Guidelines for the Selection of the Apropiate Crisis-Response Strategies, in „Management Communication Quarterly”, no. 4, 1995
• Kathleen Fearn-Banks, Crisis Communication, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Publ, 2007Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow, Matthew Seeger, Effective Crisis Communication. Moving from Crisis to Opportunity, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2007
• David Guth, Charles Marsh, Public Relation: A Value-Driven Approach, Boston, Allyn and Bacon Publ., 2000
• Charles F. Herman, Crisis in Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion Politics in the World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993
• Doug Newsom, Judy VanSlyke Turk, Dean Kruckeberg, This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, Wadsworth Publishing, 2009
• Thierry Pauchant, Ian Mitroff, Transforming the Crisis-Prone Organizations. Preventing Individual, Organizational and Environmental Tragedies, San Francisco, Jossey- Bass, 1992
• Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow, Matthew Seeger, Effective Crisis Communication. Moving from crisis to opportunity, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2007