Lessons Learnt?

Of all the news I digested last week, one piece sticks in my mind - the FT's coverage of the ill-preparedness of UK companies for PR crises (only 26% plan for a media reputation crisis - surprise surprise).

To be fair, the article also highlighted other areas of weakness, including the fact that only one in three UK companies is prepared for the loss of a key customer (our industry knows all about this). And it did note that UK companies were stronger than average in preparing for threats such as destruction of property and IT failure.

But obviously the key message from this research is that companies continue to fail to establish a communications plan for crisis situations in advance of a crisis. Northern Rock has had to lean heavily on its corporate communications team recently (be interested in views on how this was handled - not the best performance by a CEO...) Why? Is it because we still cannot quantify reputation value?

Maybe we need to drill into this value - or perhaps a simple reminder of CEOs bailing fast is enough to convince the planning is worthwhile...

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1. At 25 Sep 2007 09:20, Ben Hunt wrote:

Part of the problem in preparing for crisis management is that each crisis is unique and therefore requires a unique response. The best preparation therefore is to ensure that you have systems in place to get moving as quickly as possible, so that the company and its advisors can convene at the drop of the hat and immediately plan for the response.

And so it sounds very simple but in the first instance you need to know where everyone is, how to get in touch with them. You need your media contact lists ready and both the company and agency need to have full command of critical business information, and then the ability to turn that into key messages very quickly and get those message to the right places very quickly.

In my experience the problems come where there is a knowledge or communications gap, where one or more party doesn't know what's going on and doesn't understand its implications. If you have all that then you should be able to get the show on the road very quickly.
2. At 25 Sep 2007 10:56, cass stainton wrote:

Was working in-house in London when terrorists bombed the tube and it became all too apparent that we were ill prepared for any crisis. Comms team used the incident as impetus to start collating key contacts, documenting emergency procedures and preparing for number of scenarios, from customer facing issues to internal crisis. Hopefully everything has been kept up to date since then...

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