Anticipating fears while demonstrating compassion, confidence, and competence is key for coronavirus concerns

Right now our Bernstein Crisis Management team is working with clients across the country to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19 concerns impacting both operations and customer trust. One of the most widespread fears is that of using public transportation, particularly air travel, which is why we thought Southwest Airlines engaging in a crisis communications campaign to highlight improved measures meant to keep surfaces sanitary was a great example for others to follow. First, Southwest sent the below email to its entire customer mailing list:

This is a great start, but there’s only so much you can say or show in an email, right? The Southwest crisis management team was no doubt aware of this, and by clicking on the link in the email you arrived at the official Southwest blog, where anyone with fears could see an in-depth explanation of the 6+ hour cleaning process, high def images, and even video of the enhanced cleaning measures at work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwd4J3sfK6E&feature=emb_title

With a brand as big as Southwest and the media hungry for any news related to COVID-19, the story was quickly picked up by mainstream news outlets, giving the brand’s communication even greater reach. This is smart, modern crisis management at work.

What should we be doing?

While there’s not much any one business can do to make the virus go away (unless you’re in biotech perhaps!) it’s important to consider how you’ll need to alter operations, and how you’ll communicate with your own customers and employees, if concerns about this coronavirus continue to climb. Think to yourself – or better yet have a group exercise with your executive team – and consider questions like these:

• How will concerns over things like public spaces impact us?
• Will customers feel comfortable walking in to do business?
• How do we let staff, customers, and business partners know we’re safe?
• What policies need to change ASAP to adapt to the situation?
• Are we doing what we can do prevent customer-staff or staff-staff transmission?
• How do we continue operations if a large portion of our workforce can’t physically come to work?
• What is our criteria for more serious measures like travel bans or even temporarily closing storefronts?

The bottom line is this – if you haven’t given serious discussion time to these types of questions you’re behind the curve already. Now is not the time to engage in, “It won’t happen to us” thinking. Get proactive, engage in the crisis management process, and prepare your business for impact.

[Erik Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy.]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Erik | Connect with Jonathan

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management

With coronavirus news disrupting business across the globe, we’ve been asked by quite a few clients, colleagues and friends what exactly they should be doing about a couple common areas of concern. Due to this interest, we felt it would be a good topic to cover here in our next edition of Crisis Manager On The Spot.

What are you telling clients who have employees in China or elsewhere who may have been exposed to the virus?

Unfortunately we have several clients in exactly this situation. We have advised them to follow the specific guidelines offered by WHO, CDC, the US State Department and other health authorities. That way even if people fall ill, company spokespersons can say they have met or exceeded any requirement for prevention and response.

Most importantly, we have advised clients to communicate with compassion for all those impacted and to do what they can to soften the blow of any necessary restrictions.

How does a company tell an employee they may need to be in quarantine, possibly for 14 days or more?

While nobody wants to command someone to be quarantined, a company doesn’t actually tell an employee what to do in that situation. That direction would come from a health authority and hence the onus would be on that authority, not on the company.

What else should we be doing on a day-to-day basis to reduce risk from coronavirus?

The best thing you can be doing right now is staying on top of the latest news and things like travel recommendations. If a trip can be postponed, it might be a good idea. Business needs to continue, but in the end it’s good crisis prevention to protect your most important assets, which of course includes valued employees and staff.

[Erik Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy.]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Erik | Connect with Jonathan

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management

Strong crisis communications salvages a sticky situation for the brand as the holidays get into full swing

It’s no secret that the holiday season is incredibly important to retailers, and that means big brands are trying to tread carefully to avoid becoming the next subject of an outrage outbreak. Hallmark stepped right into one, however, when it pulled its ad celebrating same-sex marriage from wedding site Zola.com after pressure from a conservative group…and that was only the beginning. As you might have expected here at the end of 2019 – a year that’s seen its fair share of marginalized groups striving for recognition – yanking the ad quickly drew even more upset stakeholders. Before you knew it hordes of internet and social media users, a hefty sprinkling of influencers and celebs among them, were chiming in to tell Hallmark, along with parent company Crown Media Family Networks, that the ad needs to stay.

The pressure poured in, and it didn’t take long for the powers-that-be to get the message. Indulge me in this terrible wordplay as I invite you to read the apology below, which has all of the Hallmarks (okay, sorry, it’s out of my system now) of great crisis management communications.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (December 15, 2019) – Earlier this week, a decision was made at Crown Media Family Networks to remove commercials featuring a same-sex couple.

“The Crown Media team has been agonizing over this decision as we’ve seen the hurt it has unintentionally caused. Said simply, they believe this was the wrong decision. Our mission is rooted in helping all people connect, celebrate traditions, and be inspired to capture meaningful moments in their lives. Anything that detracts from this purpose is not who we are. We are truly sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused.” said Mike Perry, President and CEO, Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Hallmark is, and always has been, committed to diversity and inclusion – both in our workplace as well as the products and experiences we create. It is never Hallmark’s intention to be divisive or generate controversy. We are an inclusive company and have a track record to prove it. We have LGBTQ greeting cards and feature LGBTQ couples in commercials. We have been recognized as one of the Human Rights Campaigns Best Places to Work, and as one of Forbes America’s Best Employers for Diversity. We have been a progressive pioneer on television for decades – telling wide ranging stories that elevate the human spirit such as August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and Colm Tóibín’s The Blackwater Lightship, both of which highlight the importance of tolerance and understanding.

Hallmark will be working with GLAAD to better represent the LGBTQ community across our portfolio of brands. The Hallmark Channel will be reaching out to Zola to reestablish our partnership and reinstate the commercials.

“Across our brand, we will continue to look for ways to be more inclusive and celebrate our differences.” Perry said.

What really caught my eye with this piece of crisis communications is the complete and utterly open apology at the top. While you can’t always do this, for example when litigation is involved, falling on your sword fully right at the top of a message is one of the fastest ways to get folks who are on the fence about whether you’re a decent organization at your core to understand that you recognize you made a mistake, you truly do regret it, and you’re working to set things right.

Joining the ranks of Peleton with a holiday crisis management scare, the folks making up Hallmark’s C-Suite and crisis team probably had a rough couple days. That said, everyone makes mistakes and people are willing to forgive – IF the apology is right and IF you walk your talk after the fact. Hallmark is off to a good start and, especially considering that we’ve not seen the last of the holiday time reputation threats, I’d guess it’s on track to escape the naughty list fairly quickly here.

[Erik Bernstein is vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy.]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Erik | Connect with Jonathan

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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What should you do when the need for crisis management appears out of nowhere?

A local police officer walks into your coffee shop and an employee decides to label them as *PIG* in the system. What exactly were you supposed to do to prevent that?

Unpreventable crises happen all the time, just ask Starbucks, which seems to attract more than its fair share of them…though when you consider that in my native Southern California there are often two or more within a single city block maybe it’s surprising there aren’t more? The incident described above did actually happen in an Oklahoma Starbucks, on Thanksgiving no less, and drew an upset social media post featuring the offensive label from the officer’s chief who lamented this type of treatment for someone who had foregone turkey and football to take over the often-brutal law enforcement holiday shifts.

While training and reminders are important for more complex matters like crisis management protocol, there’s not a whole lot you can do about someone deciding on the spot to do something that’s guaranteed to cause trouble. What you CAN do is be prepared for the inevitable moment when a crisis appears out of nowhere. After all, while you can’t predict the specifics of every single issue that might impact your organization, it is quite realistic to predict the various categories of problems you may face. Think broad here – things like employee misconduct, natural disasters, supply chain interruption and unexpected litigation should be on the list.

Starbucks is no stranger to crises related to random employee misconduct (give it a quick search if you’re curious) and this experience shows in the speed and quality of the brand’s response. First came a statement from Starbucks itself:

This is absolutely unacceptable, and we are deeply sorry to the law enforcement officer who experienced this. We have also apologized directly to him and connected with the Chief of the Kiefer Police Department as well to express our remorse.

The Starbucks partner who wrote this offensive word on a cup used poor judgement and is no longer a partner after this violation of company policy.

 

 

Are you ready to face a crisis head-on?

While nobody wakes up in the morning eager to face a crisis, it only takes one look at the headlines today to see that crises can (and do!) come out of nowhere. They impact organizations of all shapes and sizes, from small local charities or “Mom and Pop” operations to global Fortune 500 companies and everything in between.

The reality is that you’re bound face situations that could easily become crises constantly, and some of these situations will become a true threat to your reputation, and your bottom line. Understanding the risks and opportunities in these situations can make or break your organization, but to capitalize the right way – and with the necessary speed – you need to know what you’re doing in advance!

Here are our Top 3 Reasons You NEED To Know Crisis Management Best Practices:

1. Recognizing a crisis early on speeds response. Today’s audiences expect communications within minutes of learning about an issue, leaving no time to “learn as you go” when a true crisis situation appears.
2. Plans are useless unless you know your best practices. You may have a crisis plan gathering dust somewhere, but plans are only worth the paper they’re printed on if nobody knows enough basics to actually execute.
3. Being prepared saves money. Knowing how you will detect, prevent, and respond to crisis situations reduces reaction time, increases effectiveness of your response, and overall leads to less lost business due to negative issues of all kinds, from the “small but sticky” to full-blown crises that threaten to close your doors for good!

One of the most common statements heard from clients we assist with breaking issues is, “I wish we would have gotten started on crisis management sooner.” The place to start is learning best practices, and the time to do it is now.

If you’re interested in taking the next step, we’re now offering a free preview of our new e-Learning course on Crisis Management Best Practices.

[Erik Bernstein is vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy.]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Erik | Connect with Jonathan

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Editor’s note: There’s no doubt that one of the fastest growing ways to lose the trust of clients, business partners, or investors is to put their information at risk. Security events create damaging headlines constantly today, and making certain your systems are safe, secure, and protected (as much as possible!) against an attack plays a real role in keeping your reputation intact. We thought our readers might find this post, from the InfoSec Risk and Compliance experts at ReciprocityLabs, useful in understanding more about how these two areas intersect.]

Building your company’s reputation takes years. Nonetheless, what you struggled to grow for years can get irreparably tarnished by one unfortunate headline after a security event. The most significant risk to your company’s standing in the industry and its market value is reputational risk. You should effectively access and manage risks that can threaten the viability and success of your company.

It requires continuous focus and effort to safeguard your corporate reputation. Likewise, how you respond to a cyber or physical attack significantly impacts the event’s severity. Developing and sustaining a solid reputation is essential to all organizations, particularly those that offer critical infrastructure services. Today, corporate boards of directors’ focus on security issues. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that protecting an organization’s reputation after a cyber-attack is of significance.

Meeting Core Commitments for Reputation Management

Your company’s reputation is built over a long time. It is also determined by how well you meet several core commitments. These include value provided to customers, reliability and safety of your products and services, positive customer experiences, and surpassing stakeholders’ financial expectations. Entwined with these core expectations is your mandate to protect the security and confidentiality of personal data as well as providing a secure and safe experience for employees and customers.

Cyber Breaches Are Here with Us

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the frequency of data exfiltration and cyber breaches. As a result, the public’s tolerance towards cybersecurity inattention has waned. Currently, it’s no longer a case of whether your company will get exposed to a data breach, but rather when that will happen. In 2018, there was a record number of data breaches across all industries. Companies have been upping their cybersecurity game, but hackers have equally refined their attack techniques.

Going by the recent cyber-attack at Equifax, it’s now common knowledge that failure to manage a crisis effectively has a devastating effect on a company’s reputation. You must implement an effective risk management strategy to address such critical risks irrespective of the size of your company. Technology evolves at a pace that is difficult for companies to match, leave alone surpassing. In the case of cyber risks, it’s a matter of technological advancements outpacing security protections that companies have in place.

Stakeholder perceptions towards emerging risk factors such as cybersecurity can significantly affect an organization’s reputation. Whenever negative attitudes towards a company arise, its reputation is likely to wane. This, in turn, leads to a loss of company value and stakeholder support. Recent cyber breaches affecting financial institutions, retailers, and other high-profile organizations clearly illustrate that companies of all sizes face risks. These risks can suddenly propel the organization into global headlines that can create complex enterprise-wide events that can affect their reputation.

Mitigate Risks to Sustain Your Reputation

It’s easier to manage and mitigate some risks more than others. Management teams ought to meet before a crisis so that they can evaluate potential events and issues while under no constraint. Once you identify risks that you should be managing, you can start implementing strategies for preventing their occurrence. To effectively do this, collaborations across all functions is necessary. All impacted shareholders should also be consulted so that the management team establishes a formal framework for:

• Identifying potential events that can affect your company’s reputation
• Analyzing events based on the likelihood of their occurrence and severity of their impacts
• Evaluating your organization’s readiness to avert a threat and minimize its effects
• Prioritizing risks for their importance
• Mitigating risks with regard to their significance and enhancing organizational readiness
• Monitoring risks.

When you deploy these risks mitigation strategies, you will significantly minimize reputational risks. However, there isn’t a single solution that eliminates all risks that are associated with a cyber-security event. It’s advisable to leverage crisis management skills and tools that can help you mitigate reputational harm in case a crisis occurs.

Traditionally, the reputation of an organization was best on several public interactions. Nonetheless, when a risk materializes into an actual attack, your reputation can be affected by;

• Response Time. In today’s digital world, news of a cyberattack always spread like bushfire. Response paralysis leads to the formation of a costly and dangerous information vacuum, which anyone can fill. Once a breach hits you, ensure that you respond on time.
• Mitigating Fear, Doubt, and Uncertainty. A critical aspect of a post-crisis management strategy is reducing fear, doubt, and uncertainty. Accurate and timely insights can eliminate the blatant lies that often emerge following a crisis. After an event, you should avail a high-level report explaining what happened. The report should be fact-based and well-articulated.

Every company should enhance its ability to safeguard its reputation. You should implement a strategy for measuring and monitoring your company’s reputational risks. Similarly, you should stay active and vigilant so that you provide safeguards for preventing reputational loss.

Tips To Help You Prevent An Avoidable Workplace Crisis

Crisis management experts share media training tips

Let’s face it – most people are uncomfortable giving public statements about good news, much less speaking for an entire organization in the middle of a crisis management situation. While refusing to answer questions might seem like a solution, the reality is that not responding to asks or delivering the oh-so-passé “no comment” reads as “we’re guilty” in the minds of the public. The number one way to reduce the natural fear many have on this topic is to be prepared, and on that note we’d like to share 4 Quick Tips For Responding to Reporters from the Bernstein Crisis Management media training experts:

1. If you really are severely pressed for time, put on your “calm and confident” face and try telling the reporter that you’d absolutely love to grant an interview but there just isn’t enough time right now, and would they like to get their story via phone or email in the near future?

2. If a certain subject needs to stay under wraps, pull that “calm and confident” face out again and tell them you can’t talk about that just yet, but as soon as you’re able they’ll be the first to know.

3. If they’re pressing for an in-person interview and you’d rather be in control or you don’t feel 100% prepared to deal with tough questions on the spot, all you need to do is tell them you would love to do an email interview instead.

4. If legal issues really do prevent you from discussing a specific topic, let the reporter know you wish you could, but that your attorney has advised against discussing anything related to litigation, but perhaps some statement would be released at a later point..

There are many cases where you can, and should, deny a request for further explanation (especially when sharing more might negatively impact legal strategy), but always do your very best to offer an alternative message and make sure you remember to come across as compassionate, confident, and competent while doing it!

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Jonathan | Connect with Erik

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Crises don’t wait for your organization to be established for 20 years. All young companies experience growing pains, and sometimes they face a potentially game-changing moment early on, one that could stall or stop the trajectory towards success. In this post, Jon Harmon – Bernstein Crisis Management team member, and founder of Jon F. Harmon Strategic Communications – looks at one such situation that impacted emerging pet provider Wag, and how they conquered a potential crisis management nightmare.

When a sudden event threatens your company, step up like Wag

What do you do if you’re a five-year-old company suddenly faced with an existential crisis—that is, an unexpected event that threatens the very future of your business?

If you are dog-walking service provider Wag and one of your independent contractor dog walkers has kidnapped the dog he was supposed to be protecting, and the Internet is beginning to light up, you pull all the stops to make things right. And then emerge with an even stronger brand.

Two days ago, a New York couple contracted Wag to walk their dog, Benny, as they had done many times before with good results. But this time the dog walker from Wag abruptly had to cancel, so the company sent a second walker. When he arrived at the Troper’s apartment, he discovered that Benny was missing. Wag called the couple who frantically contacted the police. Surveillance video showed an intruder keying in the code to the apartment and then stealing their dog.

“Someone walked into our apartment with the intent to take him, just him, no other valuables,” Max Troper said. No one beside the Tropers and Wag had the code to the apartment, so suspicion quickly centered on the dog walker who had cancelled.

At this point, things looked bleak for Wag, a fast-growing app-based company that unofficially aspires to be “the Uber for dogs.” Oh, and I should mention that the Tropers are pretty obsessive about their dog; in fact, Bennie has his own Instagram page. So this insider dog-napping case was quickly going viral.

Facing a tsunami of public anger if the situation was allowed to fester, what did Wag do?

• Assure the Tropers that they would do everything possible to find Benny.
• Immediately hire a private investigator to work with the NYPD to track down the rogue contractor and rescue Benny.
• Have actress Olivia Munn, a prominent investor in Wag, message the couple expressing her support.

And say all the right things to the media every step of the way:

• Asked to explain their hiring process for their dog-walkers: Wag told the CBS New York affiliate that all their applicants are screened through a background check and also have to complete an online test covering dog safety.
• But the company’s main message was its desire to help bring home Benny safely, confirming to media it had hired a private investigator to assist police and was fully cooperating with the NYPD.
• When Benny was back home safe, Wag dog-walked the fine line of taking responsibility while pointing out its existing safety measures, thanking police for their swift action, and then stepping back to let the story with the happy ending center on Benny and the Tropers. On Good Morning America this morning, Wag provided this statement:
  

  “Every walk on the Wag! platform is insured and backed by the full support of our Trust and Safety team, which means in the extremely rare case of an incident, we are committed to working directly with the pet parent and the appropriate law enforcement agency.”

This post was originally published on the Jon F. Harmon Strategic Comms Blog. Click here to read more from Jon!

More and more often while working with clients we see examples of how extremely polarized audiences have become today. While gauging public reaction to your crisis communications is a recommendation any expert will give you, fewer mention the fact that you may see completely different responses to the same messaging depending on which public is viewing that message. Let me give you an example…

An organization runs into trouble which results in national news coverage and has to publish a corporate apology. When they go to listen, they are met with a flurry of mixed reactions. On Twitter their response is being eaten alive, with a heavy dose of trolling added in for good measure. But, over in the comments on CBS and NBC coverage of the issue the public seems cautiously receptive and prepared to move on. Meanwhile, a post mentioning the situation pops up on the local Nextdoor forum and, while there are some vocal doubters, the discussion has quickly moved on to the positive experiences former employees who live in the area had there. To round things out, the direct email campaign to customers and business partners is being met with responses sharing understanding and minor concerns which customer service staff is actively addressing.

A bit confusing, right?

Yes, you absolutely want to gauge the reaction of anyone who isn’t outright trolling you, and yes I will always advise taking measure of even known opponent’s reactions to crisis messaging. However, you need to understand that each platform or medium comes with its own audiences, that those audiences are often tremendously polarized in terms of their world view and beliefs, and that this polarization means the most extreme of reactions in either direction must be taken with a large grain of salt. In fact, I’m fully convinced that if Shakespeare himself came back with a Master’s in Public Relations and authored your messaging, some people would STILL tear it apart because that’s how the outrage machine works.

Understand the polarity of your publics, recognize which reactions are actually genuine or important, and avoid letting the “yes” crowd make you overconfident. That’s how you successfully listen to an audience today.

[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

We love to connect with readers on LinkedIn! Connect with Jonathan | Connect with Erik

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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