150605_under pressure and managing risk_12-13

8/21/2019 150605_Under Pressure and Managing Risk_12-13

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Yesterday wetalked about how

you use different

channels totarget your

messages at

differentaudiences


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It is great when you are controlling the

story or taking the initiative.

But what happens when something

goes wrong?

Selecting your channels


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Responding under pressure starts with

preparing when the pressure is off.

But what should you look for when

preparing for a potential crisis?

Be prepared


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Operating under pressure

The ‘allowable time’ in which organisations

can respond to an issue has declined

The range of potential issues that can

blow up has increased


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Times Top 1000 companies

In the early 1990s, 1000 companies were asked what were the most likely

crises to occur:

• environmental pollution;

• product defect;• unwanted takeover bid;

• sabotage;

• death of senior management member;

• kidnap of senior management member;

• computer breakdown;

• industrial dispute;

• fraud.


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Today …

• ‗Issues‘ can become ‗crises‘ (at least in the minds of companies)very easily

• The damage to a brand and its reputation is not necessarily

proportional to the damage the actual issue can cause

• The world spins faster … and so do the PR people


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The average in 2013

in one survey was

5.1 hours with 10%

of companies

answering within an

hour, and 93% of

companies

answering within 48

hours.

Beating the clock: response times

enginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-study

http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-studyhttp://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2304492/brands-expected-to-respond-within-an-hour-on-twitter-study


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http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-data

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-datahttp://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/twitter-response-time-data


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Complaintvertising?


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Consumer-led attacks

•

Tripadviser• Food review sites

• Complaints on your facebook

page

• Forums, blogs, parody

accounts, attack sites …


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United Airlines


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Anyone with amobile phone

potentially poses aserious threat toyour business or

client


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1The sad tale of

Domino’s Pizza


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It was the

EasterWeekend in the

US … … And two employees were

bored in their store.


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Key times

• Sunday night - two employees get bored and start making a video.

By end of Sunday night several thousand views on Youtube.

• Early Monday another site publishes videos and alerts Domino‘s.

Shown to VP.

• Mid Monday photos are taken of the video and distributed internally.

By afternoon a viewer online identifies the store.

• Monday night (24 hours after first posting) store location is

confirmed.


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Key times

• Tuesday morning - police and health authorities are notified and

arrest employees.• Domino‘s responds on two websites to people about the story and

tells employees action has been taken.

• Late Tuesday, Youtube viewings now up to 250,000.

• Domino‘s social media team realises there is a lot of chatter onTwitter.


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Key times

• Late Tuesday night - Domino‘s creates a Twitter account to respond

to comments.

• Wednesday afternoon - President flies back from holiday.

• Wednesday night - Youtube viewers hit 1 million views.

• Late Wednesday, Domino‘s releases a YouTube apology for the

video: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=dem6eA7-A2I

• A week after the event, a YouGov survey confirms perception of

Domino‘s brand quality went from positive to negative in 48 hours. Anational study found 65% of respondents who would previously visit

or order Domino‘s Pizza were less likely to do so after viewing the

offensive video.


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Crisis management planning

• What are the potential crisis situations that could arise?

• What policy can we put in place for its prevention?

• If crisis x occurs, what strategy should govern our response?What tactics do we use?

• Who will be affected by this policy? Who is essential in resolving a

crisis?

• What channels will we use to communicate, WHILE MINIMISINGdamage to our reputation?

• Will all this work?


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What happens ifour plane crashes?

What happens if

several passengersget food

poisoning?


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The early response

• Find out what you know — and what you don‘t know

• Get some facts out fast into the ‗information vacuum‘

• Be clear about when the next update will come

• Research - Action - Communicate - Evaluate


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The crisis press statementPress statements should always announce news in the following order:

1. nature of the incident;

2. location of the incident;

3. details of fatalities (numbers not names);

4. details of injured (numbers not names);5. details of areas affected;

6. details of impact on the environment;

7. details of action to be taken for customers;

8. quote from senior manager expressing regret for incident and praise

for those involved in all aspects of the emergency;

9. details about follow-up investigation into the cause of the incident;

10. reminder about site‘s safety record (if good) prior to the incident.

(Regerster and Larkin, 2005, Risk Issues and Crisis Management)


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The post-crisis interviewCrisis Media Training Best Practices (Coombs 2011, http://www.instituteforpr.org/crisis-

management-and-communications/)

1. Avoid the phrase ―no comment‖ because people think it means the organization is

guilty and trying to hide something

2. Present information clearly by avoiding jargon or technical terms. Lack of clarity

makes people think the organization is purposefully being confusing in order to hide

something.

3. Appear pleasant on camera by avoiding nervous habits that people interpret as

deception. A spokesperson needs to have strong eye contact,limited disfluencies such

as ―uhms‖ or ―uhs‖, and avoid distracting nervous gestures such as fidgeting or

pacing. Coombs (2007a) reports on research that documents how people will beperceived as deceptive if they lack eye contact, have a lot of disfluencies,or display

obvious nervous gestures.

4. Brief all potential spokespersons on the latest crisis information and the key message

points the organization is trying to convey to stakeholders.

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Every second counts

Initial Crisis Response Best Practices Crisis Media Training Best Practices (Coombs

2011, http://www.instituteforpr.org/crisis-management-and-communications/)

1. Be quick and try to have initial response within the first hour.

2. Be accurate by carefully checking all facts.

3. Be consistent by keeping spokespeople informed of crisis events and key

message points.

4. Make public safety the number one priority.

5. Use all of the available communication channels including the Internet, Intranet,

and mass notification systems.

6. Provide some expression of concern/sympathy for victims

7. Remember to include employees in the initial response.

8. Be ready to provide stress and trauma counseling to victims of the crisis and their

families, including employees.

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The customer

is always right?


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Risk communication can work two ways:

1. Where a hazard is not serious, yet the public is near panic, it

can be used to calm people down. For this kind of

situation, the goal is to provide reassurance.

2. It can also help generate a sense of urgency where

data indicate that the hazard is serious, yet the public response

is one of apathy.


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What do we

mean by RISKRisk: a threat of loss, real

or perceived, to that which

we value.


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• Health

• Safety

• Economic• Environmental

• Wildlife

• Quality of life

• Legal• Trust/credibility

• Ethical

• Technical

• Historical

• Religious

• Educational

• Policy • Cultural

• Fairness/equity

• Political

• Historical • Responsiveness

• Process/procedural

• Technical

• Psychological

THREATS


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Threats can be vague or

specific• Health

• Deadly disease, eg bird flu, SARS, malaria, cholera, typhoid, West

Nile virus, Ebola fever etc.• Human afflictions, eg cancers, AIDS, diabetes

• Self-harm, eg mental health, suicide

• Self-induced, eg alcohol, tobacco, obesity

• Natural disasters• Floods, fires, earthquakes, cyclones, volcanoes, tsunamis

• Climate change, serious natural pollution


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They can be sensible or

ridiculous


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Risk Communications should

• Enhance knowledge and understanding

• Build trust and credibility

• Encourage appropriate attitudes, beliefs and behaviours• Provide people a sense of:

• Hope

• Self- and community worth

• Safety• Calm

• Connectedness


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Game changing

• High concern situations change the rules of communication

• The key to risk communication success is anticipation, preparation, and

practice.• Most of the skills involved are non-intuitive and non-instinctive and

therefore must be practised.

• The key to success is preparedness.


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4 types of risk communication

Peter Sandman classifies risk communication into four categories:

1. Hazard high/outrage low. Task is: ―precautionary advocacy‖ or

pre-crisis communication – alerting insufficiently upset people

(apathy/denial) to serious risks.

―Watch out!‖


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Peter Sandman classifies risk communication in 4 categories:

2. Hazard low/outrage high. Task is ―outrage management‖ –

reassuring excessively upset people about small risks.

―Calm down.‖


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3. Hazard high/outrage high. Task is ―crisis communication‖ –

helping appropriately upset people cope with serious risks.

―We‘ll get through this together.‖


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4. Hazard/outrage both intermediate. The ―sweet spot‖ – dialogue

with interested people about a significant but not urgent risk.

―And what do you think?‖


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Precautionary advocacy

1. Keep it short. Apathetic people have a short attention span.

2. Make it interesting. Boring messages are worse than no message

at all.

3. Stay on message. When people are barely paying attention, youneed to keep focused.

4. Test your messages.

5. Appeal to needs. The obvious need is to feel safe. There may be

other, more obscure needs.6. Appeal to emotions – especially fear. Emotions trigger action.

7. Bring other emotions into play as well, eg concern for families

and others.


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Precautionary communication

4 main responses to precautionary or pre-crisis communication

1. People who were worried already are usually relieved the issue is being

addressed.

3. People who have too many other worries are usually apathetic and hardto reach.

4. People who were already too worried are usually in denial and hard to

reach in a completely different way.

5. People who are hearing the bad news for the first time usually over-react,a temporary and useful response.

If a crisis is actually coming, pre-crisis communication has considerable

upside and no downside.


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The outrage factor

Risk = Hazard + Outrage

Risk communication must be handled very carefully or the communitywill become outraged as it becomes more stressed about what it

perceives as unnecessarily high risk.


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The outrage factor

There is a tiny correlation between:

1. A risk‘s ―hazard‖ how much harm it is likely to do and

2. Its ―outrage‖ how upset it is likely to make people.

If you know a risk is dangerous, that tells you almost nothing about

whether it‘s upsetting.

If you know it‘s upsetting, that tells you almost nothing about whether

it‘s dangerous.


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Outrage management

Risk = Hazard + Outrage

Low hazard, high outrage

• Listen

• Echo what you heard

• Ask questions

• Find points of agreement and points to add

• Find points to voice reservations about.


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Core principles

When people are concerned, stressed, or upset:

• They want to know you care before they care what you know.

• They often focus more on the negative than on the positive.

•

Key role of factors such as trust, benefits and control.

M


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Messages

When people are upset, they often have extreme difficulty in:

• hearing,

• understanding, and• remembering information.

• So, keep it simple!


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AGL- 4: message clarity rule

Low Stress Situations

• Brain processes information at AGL (average grade level)

High Stress Situations

• Brain processes information at AGL- 4 (average grade level minus 4grade levels)

Average school reading grade minus 4:

When people are stressed and upset, they typically process

information at four grade levels below their average grade level.

Exceptions:

Words defined in clear language

Words that would be well understood by the target audience


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Trust factors in high-stress situations

Relative weight of elements of

trust

Source: V. Covello, Center for

Change/Risk Communication, and

Wojtecki & Peters, 2000


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Fact versus perception

• Facts about the actual risk play

virtually no role in public perceptions

and decisions about risks, concerns or

worries.

• ―Perceptions are reality‖

Ri k i


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Risk perception

Lower perceived risk

• Trustworthy sources

• Voluntary

• Controllable

• Fair/equitable

• Natural origin

• Familiar

• Certain

•

Higher perceived risk

• Untrustworthy sources

• Involuntary

• Not controllable • Unfair/inequitable

• Human origin (man made)

• Unfamiliar/exotic

• Uncertain •


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Primacy and recency

When people are stressed or upset, they typically focus most on what

is said first (primacy) and last (recency).

High stress – message recall is 1, 3, 2

Low stress – message recall is 1, 2, 3.


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The 27 / 9 / 3 communications formula

Everything in threes:

• Three key messages

• Repeat messages three times

• Key messages supported by three supporting messages of threecredible sources

• 27 words in total (for all three key messages, with each key

message 9 words long on average).

• 9 seconds each• 3 messages


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Fast facts: MERSMore than 430 dead

Very contagious

40% mortality rate

Cases spiked since Feb

3 Cases now in S.Korea

Your goal: MERS

Three key messagesNo more than 9 words

Calm me down OR

Scare me into action


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Messenger

• People judge the messenger before the message.

• People judge the messenger mainly in terms of trust.• Information about trust comes from:

• non-verbal communication

• verbal communication

• actions.

C i ti


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Communication

• Be first, be right, be credible.• Inform, not inflame.

• Address rumours, inaccuracies and misperceptions quickly.

• Avoid unnecessary negatives

• Speak and write clearly

• The larger and more diverse the audience, the less effective the

communication.

• For each issue, develop lists that represent 95% of stakeholder

questions and concerns (preparedness). It is easy to predict

stakeholder concerns.


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Visual aids

• Visuals – a good visual can increase message attention,

understanding and recall by >50%.

• Credible sources – a lower credibility source takes on the

credibility of the highest credible source that agrees with its position

on an issue. When a lower credibility source attacks the credibility

of a higher source, the lower source loses further credibility.

• Non-verbal communication. Provides up to 75% of message

content, intensely and quickly noticed, typically overrides verbal

content, typically interpreted negatively.

• Bridging statements. ―The most important thing for people to know

is…‖


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Risk communication and crisis communicationare extremely difficult

Practice won’t stop you making aterrible mistake but it will help!


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Crisis management

• Control

• The objective of crisis management is to exert control over activities

with the aim of assuring stakeholders their interests are a priority.

• Crisis response is more effective if it is planned.• At the core of planning is control, and therefore crisis planning is about

control – or giving the perception of control.

• Crisis media relations is intended to give this perception of control and

credibility. (Backfired with the BP oil spill and Toyota car brake crisis in

2010!)

• (Heath & Palenchar, 2009, pp. 278-279)


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Social media monitoring

• Your best defence in a crisis

• Listening and monitoring are critical in managing crises in the digitalage.

• You need to be able to ‗listen before you leap‘, ie monitoring the

millions of conversations on the internet and the many items in the

traditional news media and will enable you to make better decisionsabout a response.


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First hand vs second hand

• When a crisis hits, many people think the news media are the key way to communicate

about the crisis.

• Wrong! 30 years ago, the news media might have been the best way to communicate

widely, but now we have the internet and mobile technology.

• Key stakeholders don‘t want to hear from secondhand sources like the news media; theywant direct contact.

• Therefore stakeholder relations management before, during and after a crisis is vital to

corporate reputation and therefore operational viability.

• Also: in a big organisation, cultural issues may arise in a crisis due to international

operations.


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Who is listening tothe people?

How will they hearyou speak?


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• The internet has become a crisis communication tool

• Can be used by pressure groups to oppose on an issue

• Use by third parties can trigger a crisis

• Can be used to resolve a crisis...

• Respond to activists and pressure groups on corporate website, social media and by

email

• A tool for monitoring and managing crises:

• - rapid response websites (dark sites – ready to load in a crisis)

• - crisis communication manuals on intranets for staff

• - extranet messages to key stakeholders

• - emails to stakeholders

• 3. Triggering a crisis – monitor to highlight rumours and hoaxes, parody or attack

sites, and hackers


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Steps to using social media

• Stage 1 – Fact-finding stage

• Twitter covers breaking news Video posted on YouTube• Anti-fan club established on Facebook (eg Tiger Woods)

Aware of incident XXX. More info to come asap. Follow @XYZ

for latest news and updates.


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Stage 2 – The unfolding drama

Publish tweets with links to your website for more details.

Public messages on Facebook for more personal contact.

Manage rumours; provide updates, reports and context on key social media sites.

Post relevant pictures and videos on Facebook and YouTube, showing the human side of the story.

Respond to criticism demonstrating the action you are taking; Tweet and blog.

Publish links to interviews on website and Facebook.

Consider publishing a statement on LinkedIn.

Showcase heroes on YouTube, Flickr and Facebook.On Flickr, post relevant pictures showing your actions.

Demonstrate care and concern and show employees working.


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Stage 3 – Reinforce your position

Post updates on Facebook to show what you are doing to fix the problem and to ensure it doesn‘t

happen again.

Publish video updates on YouTube if needed.

Tweet updates and links to more information.

Jordan-Meier, J. (2011).


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Stage 4 – Resolution and fallout

Tweet updates on Twitter.

On Facebook, post updates about stories found, pictures of team meetings, memorial service (if

applicable), pictures of products back on shelves.

Use Flickr for human interest angles showing employees in action.

Jordan-Meier, J. (2011)

150605_under pressure and managing risk_12-13

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