Braud Communications

Beware the Ides of March: Wisdom for Crisis Communications & Public Relations

The phrase, “Beware the Ides of March,” has always been a favorite chant of mine.

Beware the Ides of March

Billy or B-Shakes, to his friends, also known formally as William Shakespeare, penned the line for his play Julius Caesar. A soothsayer warns Caesar, “Beware the Ides of March,” forewarning that Julius would be killed on… you guessed it, March 15^th, the Ides of March. Twenty-three stab wounds right there in the Roman Senate sent Caesar to his grave, as he looked at his lead assassin and one-time friend, Brutus, and said, “Et tu, Brute?” which translates into, “And You Too, Brutus?”

Why should you care? What should this inspire et tu to do?

Like the soothsayer, I’m soothing to you that today and every year, March 15 is a great day to evaluate what might go wrong – fatally or not – within your organization.

In the world of Crisis Communications, we call it a Vulnerability Assessment. Today is a great day to conduct a Vulnerability Assessment.

A Vulnerability Assessment is the first step you should take before sitting down to write your Crisis Communications Plan. Your plan needs to anticipate all that might go wrong, so that you can have a pre-written communications template in your Crisis Communications Plan that addresses each vulnerability.

Hence, if your vulnerability assessment identifies 95 likely vulnerabilities, you’ll want to write 95 templates, which will sit in the addendum of your plan. That way, if and when that event actually happens, you can communicate quickly to the media, employees and other key stakeholders, because you’ll be simply filling in the blanks on your template, rather than staring at a blank computer screen and writing from scratch while under pressure, with, of course, people looking over your shoulder while you write. Best of all, these templates can be pre-approved by your executives and Crisis Management Team. This will eliminate that exhausting exercise in which non-writers try to wordsmith and re-write your communiqué, when you are under pressure to beat the clock.

As you assess your vulnerabilities, remember that you must consider the smoldering issues as well as the sudden issue. The smoldering issues will include things like executive misbehavior, internal theft. Penn State’s scandal is a perfect example of a smoldering crisis, which eventually reached a flash point. The sudden crises are the ones most people can name quickly, such as a fire, explosion or shooting at your facility.

I’m here to tell you, as your official soothsayer, that something is going to go wrong where you work and if you’re in PR, you’ll need to communicate to the media, your employees and other stakeholders. Heck, the Mayan’s are even forecasting the end of the world. Shouldn’t that be reason enough to make this Ides of March your day to prepare?

For details on how to conduct a successful Vulnerability Assessment, give me a call at 985-624-9976.

If you’d like to write a complete Communications Plan in just 2 days, I hold the secret that will allow you to complete a year’s worth of work using your team and working their fingers to the bone for 2 days.

Media Training Tip: What to do Before the End of the World

The Mayan calendar ends in December 2012 and many have wondered if this signals the end of the world. One colleague jokingly asked me if her company could forgo Media Training and writing a Crisis Communications Plan in 2012, because the world may end. She has been putting off these tasks for two years. Each quarter she reminds me it is still on her to-do list, but that she neither has the time nor budget. I laugh and remind her that her company spends more time and money preparing for their company picnic than they would spend writing their Crisis Communications Plan.

So I asked, “If the world were to end in 2012, do you think your company might face a series of cascading crises leading up to the end of the world?”

I’m not proclaiming the end is here, yet I’m not saying it might not happen. So I asked, “If we are headed to a gradual end rather than a single catastrophic day, might your company experience an earthquake in February, an explosion in March, civil unrest in April, financial troubles in May and so on?”

The colleague responded with a look of doom and said, “Hum, I haven’t thought of that.”

The fact is, whether you believe the end is coming or a series of events may happen leading up to the end, or whether you just use common sense, the reality is you are always better to be safe than sorry. If you fail to plan, then plan to fail. Just look at my 2011 Top 10 List of Mishandled Crises and you’ll see that most of these could happen to any organization. The list proves how unprepared big name organizations are when it comes to a crisis. It also proves how quickly millions of dollars can be lost in a single, poorly handled crisis. Reputations and careers can vanish quickly in a crisis.

As a supporter of always being opportunistic, I suggested to the colleague that she use “the end of the world” premise as a reason to revisit the plea with her boss to make 2012 the year they finally write a Crisis Communications Plan and put their executive team through comprehensive Media Training. Plus, I suggested starting the year with a good comprehensive writing retreat for her entire communications staff, so they can begin the calendar year with a great library of key messages to use in both good times and in bad.

If you are thinking about making 2012 a great year, here are the programs I’d suggest.

Kick-Butt Key Message – A one day writing retreat for your entire communications team. I’ll teach you my exclusive Key Message Tree writing system. I promise it will change the way you write forever.

Media Training – I always suggest a strong one-day course for starters. For best results, I suggest a maximum class size of four people, which allows each person time for three strong rounds of on-camera role playing. If you have a large team of potential spokespeople, plan on adding an extra day or two.

Executive Team Vulnerability Assessment – A well facilitated 3 hour Vulnerability Assessment will usually scare the pants off of everyone in the room. They’ll quickly see how prone to a crisis your organization is and how a well written Crisis Communications Plan will be their ticket to surviving a crisis. Gather your entire leadership team together for a life changing day.

Crisis Communications Plan – In just 2 days you can have an entire Crisis Communications Plan written. My exclusive system lets you use the strength of your team to accomplish a year’s worth of work in 2 days. And there are 3 pricing options, so one is bound to fit your budget. All 3 pricing options cost less than the company picnic!

Crisis Communications Drill – Every Crisis Communications Plan needs to be tested at least once a year. An intense 4-hour drill, followed by an honest evaluation after the drill, moves you and your executives one step closer to being ready to tackle a real crisis. And remember, the presence of Social Media in your Crisis Drill makes it more realistic and complicated.

If discussing these options will benefit you, just give me a call at 985-624-9976. Managing a crisis is no picnic and preparing to deal with a crisis costs far less than any company picnic.

Media Training and Crisis Communications Tip: Reporters Will Interview Anyone Who Will Talk (Who Are Often People with No Teeth and Live in Trailers)

Let’s be respectful here and realize that many poor people don’t have either dental insurance or the ability to pay out of pocket for dental care. And let’s realize that while hoping to someday fulfill the dream of home ownership, many people live in an affordable alternative – a mobile home.

Let’s also recognize that many of these people are in lower income brackets and therefore also tend to live near industrial facilities where the more affluent members of society may work, but do not live.

With all of that out of the way, let me acknowledge that when I was a journalist, people would actually ask me, “Why do reporters always interview people with no teeth who live in trailers?”

The answer was, because when the industrial facility blew up, no one from the company would agree to an interview with us. The people living near the facility were the only eye witnesses and they were willing to speak.

If you work for a company that has a crisis, you have the responsibility to provide a spokesperson as soon as the media arrives. Usually the media will be on site within 30 minutes to an hour, depending upon the crisis. And as more media outlets become dependent upon web based audiences, their need for news is even more immediate.

Reporters need facts and quotes and they are going to get them from somewhere. It is their job to get interviews and their job is on the line if they do not deliver.

If you don’t give the information to the reporter, the reporter will go get it from someone else and that someone else will likely not represent your point of view.

And as the age of Social Media and web based tools expands, more and more media outlets are dependent upon digital photos and video taken by eyewitnesses. A simple cell phone is capable of doing an enormous amount of reputational damage by providing the media with pictures and video.

So what do you do?

First you need to establish policy and practices that insure you have a spokesperson ready to respond at a moment’s notice.

Secondly, you need to have a crisis communications plan that contains a vast array of pre-written statements designed to address all of the many crises your organization could face.

With those two things, a spokesperson should be able to pull a pre-written template out of the crisis communications plan and walk out to the media to deliver that statement. It also allows your organization to post the template to the web, email it to the media, employees and other key audiences.

Even if you only have partial facts, your organization still needs to make a statement. And it is critical that the statement is delivered by a person and not just issued on paper or via the web. The human element is critical in gaining the trust of the media, employees and other key audiences. A written statement is simply a cold cluster of words.

In my world, the spokesperson should be able to deliver the statement live within one hour or less. It should never be longer than an hour and hopefully much sooner than an hour.

One of the biggest delays in issuing statements is the lengthy process of waiting of executives and lawyers to approve a statement. This delay should be eliminated with the pre-written statements. The statements should be pre-approved by executives and the legal department so that the public relations or communications department can issue statements quickly.

Certain portions of the template must be fill-in-the-blank, and the communications department must be authorized to fill in the blanks with information such as time, date, and other critical facts. Executives and lawyers need to establish a trusting relationship with the communications department so that they help speed up the process rather than hinder and delay the communications process.

When you follow these simple steps, you begin to manipulate the media because you are meeting their wants, needs and desires. You also become their friend. The more you can provide the media with information, the less need they have to interview an ill informed eyewitness who is thrilled to have their 15 minutes of fame. The more you can occupy the media’s time, the less time they have to spend interviewing people with no teeth who live in a trailer.

Check out my 2-day crisis communications plan course: You will knock out your plan and templates so your organization is never ill-represented in the media.

Virginia Tech Shooting Today: Crisis Communications Case Unfolding – Social Media Impact

Virginia Tech has another school shooting today. Two have died. Please keep these people in your prayers today.

For those who are students of Crisis Communications – both university students and public relations professionals wishing to learn more about proper crisis communications in the age of social media – today is sadly one of those days when you can watch a crisis unfold in the Social Media and online world.

The 2007 Virginia Tech shooting was characterized by slow communications. The first official notice to students in 2007 went out 2 hours and 10 minutes after the first 2 victims were shot, which was also 10 minutes after 30 more people were killed. I’ve long contended that slow communications lead to 30 unnecessary deaths.

Today’s Virginia Tech shooting has had rapid notice by text alert and numerous updates to the Virginia Tech home page

Follow #VT on Twitter to study how this social media venue unfolds.

Like the VT Facebook page to watch the wide variety of comments.

You will see many YouTube videos. I’ve posted this video for you.

Follow some of the online links like this. This is an example of the types of social media some of you may sadly face some day; the types of social media you must prepare for.

Among the crisis communications trends you should follow is whether Facebook becomes a place where students complain because their text messages were slow in arriving and whether they were unable to access information on the Virginia Tech website. During a university or school crisis, it may take 20 to 30 minutes before all students receive their text message. Also, high traffic keeps people from getting updates on the official website.

As you follow Twitter messages about the Virginia Tech shooting, pay close attention to the problems caused by well intentioned people who re-Tweet old and incorrect communications and information. In other school shootings that I have studied since the advent of Twitter, it has been my experience that hours after an all clear has been communicated, people will re-Tweet old messages warning of the shooting as though it is still happening. This is one of the reasons I hate social media when a crisis is unfolding.

To discuss what you may need to prepare of a similar crisis at your school, university or corporation, please contact me via the Braud Communications website or theGerard Braud e-mail.