Episode 53: Crisis Communications with Chris McCloud, Part Two

00;00;07;25 – 00;01;18;23
Rick Hoaglund
When a company experiences a crisis, they generally turn to their public relations firm to offer some guidance and assistance. This PR strategy is not one that’s normally created on the fly. It’s part of a comprehensive plan that was prepared well in advance. In business, there are basically three types of crisis. Reputational crisis, public safety crisis, that’s when the safety of or the well-being of their customers is at stake. And the last is financial crisis. The categories might be slightly different for personal brand management. Individuals generally don’t have to consider the public safety crisis, but reputational and financial crisis are both considerations when you’re creating a map for your future. And the tools you’ll use to ensure that your personal brand is solid. Chris McCloud, a cofounder of pendulum PR, is here to talk about public relations strategies during a crisis. Thanks for joining us, Chris. Tell me a little bit about reputation management. Why is a public face of a company important? And I know that might seem a very simplistic question for you, but why is it important?

00;01;18;25 – 00;03;07;21
Chris McCloud
Because trust with the public is the most valuable commodity that you have. No matter if you are selling a widget or you’re providing a service, you need to have a incredibly good understanding of how you are viewed by the public so that you can manage your reputation. In the earlier segment, you asked me how public relations has changed. And one of the ways that it is changed irrevocably is, is on the social media side. Everyone now has a microphone. Everyone now has a public opinion. They just need to type onto their screen and hit a button, and everyone will know what their opinion of anything is at any given moment or time. And I say that because in history it was a far more controlled environment and you only needed to manage certain relationships to maintain what you might feel is a squeaky clean image or, or just in general, the image you wanted to portray. It’s not necessarily your image is either bad or it’s good. In most cases it’s: I want my image to be this specific way and it’s just not quite right. And now you have anybody and everybody that has an opinion will share that opinion. And so the job to maintain your reputation can be endless. It can be very daunting. And you have to be respectful of that. That doesn’t mean that you don’t do the things that you think you should do. It just means that you really need to be even more hyper aware of all the noise that’s out there that might surround your organization at any given time.

00;03;07;24 – 00;03;22;29
Rick Hoaglund
Does that mean some kind of effective way to monitor social media? I guess traditional media as well, but probably to a lesser extent. Do you need to keep monitoring that so that you can react if something comes up, especially if it’s an untruth?

00;03;23;02 – 00;05;09;01
Chris McCloud
It’s certainly not a bad idea. If you’re using social media to communicate, then yes, you do want to, of course, make sure that you are monitoring those things. Especially, you know, as we talked today, there is nothing happening faster in our world than artificial intelligence, and there are any number of platforms that you can use to monitor your reputation. In fact, many of them will not only monitor your reputation, but it will intuitively give you what it believes, you know, the feedback truly is and give you a real, data driven view of how you are being perceived and what people are saying about you. So while the noise is louder than it’s ever been, there are also many, many tools that can help you do that. If you use social media and you don’t monitor it, you don’t know what is out there. You don’t know what to respond to. I think a lot of companies grapple with when they need to respond to something, when they need to let something go. I’ve worked with clients over my, you know, 20 plus years of doing this, and I will get a lot of times questions. Chris, what, you know, should we respond to this? Should we let this go? Should we delete these comments? And the the answer is not a one size fits all answer. It really depends on the situation you’re in, what your past reputation has been. And that’s why it’s always important to make sure that you really, truly have a good understanding. Your finger on the pulse, as it were, of, of, you know, what people really think about you and your organization.

00;05;09;04 – 00;05;46;17
Rick Hoaglund
You talked about the noise being kind of amped up sometimes. I would imagine that during some kind of crisis situation at a company, that noise gets incredibly ramped up probably ten times what it what it would normally be. What are some tools that companies can use during a crisis? I will be honest. I always think of the Tylenol and I know that’s an old example, but when there were Tylenol poisoning and the president of the company came out on camera and said, I’m very sorry about this, we’re working really hard. That was a big change in the way that companies do it. Are those kind of changes still coming, and what do companies have to have in their toolkit to deal with the crisis?

00;05;46;18 – 00;07;39;27
Chris McCloud
Well, sure. This goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Having a plan to deal with the crisis. You’re never going to be able to anticipate every single crisis that may come your way. It’s also important to understand what is a crisis and what is not necessarily a crisis, but you need to have a process in place to deal with a crisis. Let’s just pretend that we have a crisis. Doesn’t matter what the crisis is, but we have defined this issue as a crisis, and now we have to start acting so that when a crisis is right in front of you, we’re not all looking around at each other saying, well, what’s first? What do we do first? What do we do second? How do we make sure that we’re not doing what is third first, and what is first third to make sure that we are really addressing this and making sure that we are getting to a place of resolution as quickly and effectively as we possibly can. And that starts with a crisis communication plan. Who are the people that you, that need to be in that room when a crisis situation hits? Who are the key players in the discussion that need to take place in order to start filtering out what is not true, what is true, and then getting a game plan together for how you are going to to address it. How you’re going to address it is not the first thing you should be thinking about. Getting as many of your top minds into the room at the same time, to collect all the data, as much information as possible, so that you can make the most informed decision is really the most important thing. And it all starts with being prepared before there’s an actual crisis at your doorstep.

00;07;39;29 – 00;07;52;25
Rick Hoaglund
So with this preparation, it’s more than just typing up templates and throwing them into your book and throwing them on on the shelf, right? Is it actually drilling maybe, even? practicing? Is that all part of it?

00;07;52;27 – 00;10;53;12
Chris McCloud
It is absolutely part of it. And back to what I was saying earlier. While you can’t anticipate every situation you might ever find yourself in, it is our philosophy at at our firm, at pendulum PR that you can anticipate 90 to 95% of the things that might come your way based on your organization, based on past history, based on the monitoring of, you know, knowing what the public understands about you and your organization, what is your business, what are you involved in. And then you can understand what might be things that would fall under the crisis umbrella. Once you have those understandings, let’s just use the airline industry for an example. Obviously, the most catastrophic thing that could happen to an airline industry is a plane crash. So you put that at the top of the list, right? But there are many, many other crisis situations that happen that do not involve physical danger. Think back. Just a couple of years ago, the travel fiasco during the holidays with a number of airlines, southwest was probably the biggest. Its entire system went out. It couldn’t know what its own schedules were. Everybody was grounded and almost an entire ground stop in many parts of the country. That left hundreds of thousands of people stranded at airports during the worst time that you could possibly have. It. Is that life or death? Not as much as you would think an air disaster would be, but it was still nonetheless a massive crisis and what would be considered a massive failure by its customers. So that would be yet another example of something you would put, you know, on your crisis list. And then you yes, you drill for those things, you practice those things. You will understand. Okay, this is what happened. Now, what are the steps we are taking to make sure that, you know, every i is dotted, every t is crossed. Who’s speaking in front of the camera? That is just one minor, not minor. That is one aspect, one decision that has to be made out of probably a thousand that that your organization, depending on its size, if you’re a big, you know, company or organization like an airline, maybe there’s thousands of questions that have to be answered in a crisis communication plan. If you’re a small local organization, I don’t know, maybe there’s just ten. But no matter how many of those questions need to be answered, how big or small? You should have answers to those questions, or at least a knowledge of those questions, so that when a crisis actually hits that you you are operating at top speed, you are not looking at each other with blank stares. You are not asking more questions than need to be, in an actual crisis situation.

00;10;53;14 – 00;11;15;13
Rick Hoaglund
So you talked, in our last episode, you talked a little about internal communications, and I’m guessing with a crisis event, it’s very important to also communicate to those players that are inside the company, those that might have public facing jobs, those that might be making decisions or are honestly maybe just telling people that this is occurred. How important is that?

00;11;15;15 – 00;12;14;23
Chris McCloud
As important as communicating with the public. In some cases, it might be even more important depending on your organization and, and the goals. You are spot on that a bigger organization, even smaller organizations, you do have public facing people in your organization that are communicating with the public on, on a daily basis, making sure that they have the right information so that when somebody calls, they are not saying to that person, “I’m not sure. I don’t know.” Those are the people. Communicating with your frontline staff is incredibly important. Making sure that your internal organization, your internal house, has been educated to the level they need to be educated. That doesn’t mean telling every single person in your organization the exact same amount of information, but it, it is imperative that you are communicating with each one of your employees or your staff in the way that they need to be able to do their job correctly.

00;12;14;25 – 00;12;32;09
Rick Hoaglund
So you talked a little bit about a spokesman, and I know that you said that’s one small sliver of this pie, and it probably is. But if you were in charge of a company and you were going to select someone to do the talking for you, what would you look for during a crisis? I’m talking about during a crisis situation.

00;12;32;11 – 00;15;24;02
Chris McCloud
I would look for someone who has some of the best communication skills and somebody who has some of the, the most innate knowledge of, of your organization. If it’s a true crisis and you are trying to protect your brand, then the top of the organization is usually that person. That person usually does have, you know, is a good public speaker because they’ve gone through training. If they haven’t, they should. Before a crisis happens, they should be, they should go through a public speaker training. They should go through constituent speaking training, executive media training, if you will. The top of your organization obviously also has the most knowledge of your organization. And he is, he or she, is the person that is who the public wants to hear from and quite honestly expects to hear from in a, in a crisis. That doesn’t mean, though, that, that is always the case. And that’s where I think you as an organization have to define like what is the level of this crisis? What is the level of this, of this issue? It might be that, you know, the head of your organization is the one that delivers the key addresses, whether it’s in written communication or whether there is, you know, some sort of a, of a press conference that, that needs to happen, but that person isn’t going to be accessible day and night. That person isn’t going to be the main point of communication to the media. If they are involved, press if they are involved. You need to have a strong public relations communicator in the room. I’ve worked with organizations who have left that person out. It is a mistake. In almost every case, it is a mistake. That person doesn’t need to be in the room and doesn’t need to control the conversation, but that person needs to be in the room for his or her understanding of what is happening and I have been in situations where that person has not been in the room involved in the discussions. That person is outside the room and then is dictated, this is what you’re going to say, this is how you’re going to say it. And it is. It puts that person in an incredibly tough position. Organizations want to inherently, they should be wanting to put all of their employees, all of their staff in a position to have success. And that person that communicates with the public that is in charge of communicating with the media should certainly have a seat at the table, along with all of the other people in the C-suite that have working knowledge of the company and the situation. So again, you can make the most informed decision possible as you, as you go forward.

00;15;24;04 – 00;15;42;27
Rick Hoaglund
What do you do if you’re the person that’s sort of crafting what that message looks like? And if you’re starting from scratch, let’s just say that you’re making a sort of a templated one so it can be used for various things. What kind of information would you want to have in there? Do you put things like history of your company? Do you put, what all do you put in there?

00;15;43;00 – 00;17;14;05
Chris McCloud
It really just depends. It depends on, you know, what the issue is. It depends on past history. Is this the first time something like this has happened? Is this, you know, is this the, you know, a multiple time that this particular instance has, has happened? Who is the audience that you were trying to share this information with? What is their expectation? Again, there are so many variables. It’s really hard to take just a general thought and say, well, this is what you want, but it all goes back to knowing your audience who you are trying to communicate with, what their expectation is, and then what the philosophy of your company is. This, this is, again, I know this is, these are these sometimes these, these messages are on repeat. But it all goes back to being prepared for whatever it is that you might be dealing with. Are you going to be 100% prepared? No. But if you are 80% or 90% prepared for whatever the issue is, whatever the crisis is, you’re going to be able to react much faster and make much more common sense decisions than if you are scrambling to try to put a plan together and at the same time, address the public and make sure that they are informed. Is the situation something the public needs to know? Is it something the public wants to know? Those are all nuances that have to kind of be weighed in when you’re, you know, kind of equating how you’re going to communicate and how often you’re going to communicate.

00;17;14;07 – 00;17;36;08
Rick Hoaglund
Any advice when there’s bad information out there. So it’s, it’s been told by some expert that’s maybe not really an expert or someone that says something that’s just absolutely wrong. What is, what is your advice? What do you tell companies that, because I think immediately you want to feel like I want to correct that, but are there times when it’s just not, it’s not worth doing that?

00;17;36;11 – 00;21;36;25
Chris McCloud
Yeah. And that’s what, we talked about that a little bit earlier. In, in counseling, different clients. Hey, you know, there’s, there’s some information. If there’s misinformation out there, it depends on what, what level it rises to if, if it’s affecting your company, if it’s affecting the reputation of your company, if it’s just factually incorrect and it needs to be corrected, you, you know, more times than not, you know, if you feel strongly that it needs to be corrected, then by all means, correct it. And that’s where it goes back to the conversation about everybody has a microphone, everybody has an opinion. Everybody has. So to me there’s a difference between, you know, somebody that gets on social media and says something not very nice about a company. It maybe it’s their opinion. They’re angry about some, you know, level of service they got or didn’t get. What’s the old adage, if you go into a restaurant and you have a bad experience, you’ll tell, you know, ten of your friends. If you go into a restaurant and you have a really great experience, maybe you’ll tell 1 or 2 people. In other words, if you’ve been wronged or you feel like you’ve been wronged, you’re going to complain. And social media gives people the outlet to do that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. But there’s a difference between that and just spreading a false rumor or actually saying something, posting something that is just not factual at all, posting misinformation and there are many actual concerted efforts to do those things. It’s not just, you know, oh, somebody said something that’s not factual. They just weren’t informed. It’s there are, you know, real proactive efforts to defame. And those types of things happen all the time. Do you need to be paranoid about it? Probably not. Do you need to be aware? And it goes back to the importance of monitoring. Of course you do. You need you need to do that. So, you know, I’ll give you an example. One of the clients I worked with several years ago didn’t have a great reputation. It wasn’t sinister in any way. They just, they didn’t have a great reputation and they would post things and, you know, people would just pile on, you know, they’d post something positive and it would turn into, you know, a negative. And at one point, the organization started just deleting people’s comments. And it turned into a firestorm because those people, you know, knew that those comments had been deleted. Then they took on even more criticism, like, of course you’ll allow comments when people are nice to you and say positive things, but you won’t allow the criticism. And, and I think there’s a level where organizations need to just kind of, they need to take it a little bit as, again, as long as it is not, you know, incorrect, as long as it is not. And so so that company established a policy. Hey, if, if, if a social media post that is not, you know, that is a negative post includes any of these three or 4 or 5 ingredients, it’s deleted, it’s inappropriate. It’s, you know, defamatory. It’s whatever. If if it doesn’t rise to that level, what will let them keep it? Then on the other, at the same time, the company was working very hard to solidify its relationship to gain more, more loyal fans through a number of different things that it was doing completely separately. But yeah, you can get into those cycles and it is important to understand and really be convicted. If you’re going to, you know, depending on what kind of response you want to make. Because one thing you don’t want to do is you don’t want to let emotions get in the way of making a decision. And, you know, how many times have we all, you know, picked up a phone and started typing a response to something, and then you get halfway through it and you start deleting it and eventually, you know, you come to your senses, you let yourself calm down, and then you, you make a appropriate response to whatever those things are. Those are some keys I think that companies should keep in mind when they’re responding to comments.

00;21;36;27 – 00;22;04;08
Rick Hoaglund
Do companies need to have policy in place regarding employees? You talked about everybody having a microphone, and it kind of reminded me that that includes your employees. Like they could be on there saying all kinds of things or saying something that’s part of an investigation or something that’s going on at the company because of the event. Is it important that employees I’m not going to say are monitored, that’s not quite right, but employees should know that they should not be on their social media talking about these events as well.

00;22;04;10 – 00;23;39;24
Chris McCloud
I think most companies, most organizations do have some sort of policy in their handbook that, that does that. If you don’t, you might, you might look at adding something like that. I think it’s important to remind employees that even if they are off the clock, they are still a representative of their company and they need to act as such. You work for a company. I work for a company. I have every right to get on social media and post the things that I want to post. Thoughts that I have. I have opinions that you’re not. No one is. No one should should be censoring you from opinions. But if you are using profanity, if you are being inappropriate, if you, you know, there, there’s others and every company has a, has a different line for that. But I think it’s, it’s, many companies, and we will help some that that ask us to, hey can you rewrite our or can you write us a social media policy. Just understand. And most of the most of it involves a base line of hey, Rick, even when you’re not on the clock, you’re still an employee of ours. So you you have to conduct yourself in a, in a in a certain way. Does that mean that, you know, if you have a, an opinion about how the Seattle Seahawks played last night that you can’t get on and share that? Of course not. Of course. Of course you can. But I think it’s how you go about that that, you know, is, is is kind of the where, where companies, you know, can and honestly should draw the line. If you were an ambassador for your organization, then, you know, you have certain responsibilities depending on what, you know, what your job might be.

00;23;39;27 – 00;24;02;18
Rick Hoaglund
If you’re in a large enough crisis event, and especially if there’s criminal activity, you’ve got lots of other agencies working there as well. Is it important to sort of have a, I will call it a common message, or at least a central message that’s coming from all of those agencies so that the message goes out the same everywhere or do companies not really need to think about that?

00;24;02;20 – 00;26;02;11
Chris McCloud
Well, I guess give me an example of, of what you mean. I worked in, in government, for the first ten years of my career, and the agency that I worked for when there would be a crisis, like a disaster, a natural disaster that would, strike, you know, our state here in Illinois, we have something called the State Emergency Operations Center. All of those agencies, every agency that has a responsibility, it when, when there’s a natural disaster, earthquake, tornado, whatever it might be, flooding, what have you, has a seat at that table. All the agencies come together to share information and to communicate with the public. And yes, there should be a shared, coordinated message. Now, each individual agency is going to have their own constituents. They’re going to have their own responsibilities. They’re going to have their own messaging for the silo that they operate in. But ultimately, in the example that I gave the state of Illinois or whatever state you’re in, it’s one state and you are trying to protect the public and inform the public about what is or what is happening. And and so, yes, it’s always good to do that in, in, in our case. And that example that I gave, it’s great to be able to sit down in a room together, face to face and do that. You may not have the ability to do that in real time in your particular organization, but as you and I are right now speaking over, video conference, we now, with technology really do have the ability to be in the same room. I would certainly encourage organizations that touch one another on a regular basis. If there is a crisis. No, no different than than bringing your C-suite into a room when there’s a crisis within your organization. The same thing would apply here. Make sure that those organizations that you know you are working with on the daily need to come together and come together quickly to, you know, kind of assess the situation and then proceed from there.

00;26;02;14 – 00;26;12;20
Rick Hoaglund
What is, is speed important? So crisis happens. Your knee jerk reaction is, let’s get something out. Let’s get something out. But should that be your number one priority?

00;26;12;23 – 00;28;14;16
Chris McCloud
Speed is important. Accuracy is more important. You’re going to spend far more energy and time trying to walk something. We in our in our business, we call it walking it backwards. If you put out misinformation and even though it was well intentioned, you’re going to spend more energy and time that you don’t have to correct that information. So making sure that it is accurate is the most important thing. I’m trying to think of an example. We had, as a as a former reporter, I am a former reporter. As a former reporter, you know, you want to be first, but you also need to make sure you are accurate and you are depending on the people that are providing you with the information to be accurate. If you’re the if you are the information source. Yeah. I’m going to try to double check the information. But at the same time, if I have trust in what you were saying, I will take the information and I will, you can use me as a conduit to pass it along to the public. This, we used to say the Associated Press is your best friend. And sometimes it’s your, it is, it is the worst thing because if it’s correct and it’s what you want to say and the Associated Press gets it out, you know, back in, in my day, it was, you know, you, you it, it blanketed the media landscape. It was everywhere. If the Associated Press reported something that was inaccurate, now you have the have the issue of it’s been reported inaccurately in every publication, throughout, you know, the state that you, you might be in or the, you know, sometimes, you know, nationally. So, so making sure you are, making sure you’re giving out timely information and making sure that you are giving consistent, not constant, but consistent updates, if that’s what the situation calls for, is incredibly important, but it is the most important to make sure that that information is accurate before it, it leaves your organization.

00;28;14;18 – 00;28;35;15
Rick Hoaglund
If you were advising a new company, or maybe it’s a company that did not have any of this that we’ve talked about in place, what are the most important things in their toolbox? So that if they have an event tomorrow, there are at least able to get off the ground a little bit farther than they were before. What would you say is the number, top 3 or 4 things they should have in their toolbox?

00;28;35;17 – 00;30;45;20
Chris McCloud
One, making sure that you have, you are able to be in contact with the 3 to 4 to 5 to 10 people in your organization that need to come together immediately. How are you going to communicate with those people? Is there a text string? Is there an internal mechanism that you use, etc.? Email probably isn’t, you know, necessarily the most reliable thing. How are you going to get a hold of them quickly? How are you going to communicate with the public? What are the channels you’re going to, you’re going to use? Are they working properly, making sure that, you know, you know, one, how you’re going to handle it internally. So who are those people and how are you going to get ahold of them, making sure that you understand who is going to deliver those messages, and then how you are going to deliver them. Are you doing it, you know, via social media? Are you doing it via email blast? Are you doing it, you know, with, with a live stream? Are you doing it via teleconference? How are you communicating, making sure that you, you have those things. I think, you know, there are services out there. Empathia is one of those that, you know, that that can help you build plans that have the the actual software, the systems in place that can really make it incredibly easy and fast for your organization to understand what the issue is, who needs to know what it is, make those decisions, and then get that information out to the public, as as fast as possible. Some organizations have the, the tool kits that live online. Some people have, you know, that in an actual physical, you know, binder, our organization has it in a physical binder. We, we, we all know who’s on first. We know who needs to be in the room. We know you know what step A is step B is step C is step D is no matter what the crisis is, you can insert the crisis. But you have to have the roadmap to be able to then not have to think about the roadmap and only concentrate on what’s in front of you.

00;30;45;22 – 00;30;51;27
Rick Hoaglund
That’s great. Do you have any final words of advice for anyone concerning especially crisis communication?

00;30;51;29 – 00;32;18;18
Chris McCloud
Sure. Here’s the three things I would say. Be prepared. Be prepared. Be prepared. Make sure that you are talking about these things internally. Again, I just there’s no, there is no substitute for preparedness, no substitute for knowing the information, knowing what your, you know, who your organization is and putting a plan in place together. If you feel like your organization doesn’t know where to start. There are many companies, organizations, and tools that can help you prepare yourself. Don’t be the organization that says it’ll never happen to us. Don’t be the company that says, I will just deal with that. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The bridge might not be there for you to cross if you are not prepared to find another way around. So making sure you’re prepared and then practicing often. What does often mean? I would leave that to the to the company. At least once a year, making sure that you you have practiced, you have you have done the fire drills, so to speak, so that when you are in the middle of a firestorm, that you are thinking clearly and can focus all your energy on, you know, what is, what is directly in front of you.

00;32;18;20 – 00;32;38;23
Rick Hoaglund
Chris, thanks for being a guest on our podcast. To hear all episodes of OnTopic with Empathia, visit our website empathia.com, follow us on social media @empathia and subscribe to OnTopic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund, thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia.