COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN CRISIS

First, determine the crisis and the necessary communication level with externals.

Identify the best worshipper to represent the enterprise while in crisis.

Having good communication doesn’t mean to share everything to everyone, just the necessary.

Suggestions during a crisis:

• Identify the affected ones
• Prove of the identified problem and possible solutions.
• Communicate only confirmed information in short messages.
• DO NOT LIE
• Don’t make hypothesis
• Reflect accessibility and trust
• Make assertive decisions
• Always stay calm
• DO NOT SAY “NO COMMENTS”
• Make a progress of the crisis

While in a public dilemma the best ally and worst enemies are your own workers.

“The best fortress is not to be hated by your people”

Nicholas Maquiavelo

CRISIS MANAGEMENT

TALK

Is best to communicate your position from the beginning and stay firm.

Every message MUST be useful and emotional

Clarity and quality, always be coherent

Take care of how the message sounds (Tone)

PESO MODEL (Payed, Earned, Shared and Owned)

Payed: Payed publishing spaces

Earned: Trusted spaces from another people. (Blogs, News)

Shared: Such as social media

Owned: Owned by the enterprise (web page, fan page, external media and internal media)

LISTEN

The point of listening is to direct the communication policy to eliminate or reduce the uncertainness.

The Building Belief model takes a communicator as a transformational exchange agent, which connects the enterprise with interest groups.

               Listen to talk, Give to receive; What do they want, so we can please them?

               Hear to do: Find the right words to calm down the people.

Crisis 2.0

• Social Media
• Solutions in the same platform
• More tech to come

SPEED

Time is always crucial. The less time invested on solving the problem the better. Better trust between coworkers and society

Nowadays people expect enterprises to communicate immediately, no waiting

Less than 60 minutes to respond, known in PR as “Golden Hour” such as the sunshine.

Alda Leparati calls “platinum minutes” to the first 10 minutes of the crisis, the same minutes to put a defibrillator to solve the problem or it will make several damages on the enterprise.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE URGENCY TO SOLVE CRISIS

Honesty

Rational decisions but with emotional consequences, being honest has to do with being logical and trustable.

Fear to unknown it’s the reason to personal crisis, fear to the truth it’s the reason for enterprise crisis.

Temptation to hide reality is still high

Truth will always help to shorten it, makes it more complex but leaves better results

Be clear with the sent messages to make them trustable.

Info is not just saying the truth but making it usable and with quality.

Closeness

Caring, proximity, empathy, humanity, warm feelings.

When we say Closeness, we’re saying emotions.

You should get to know your employees, what they feel and think about you, to make them loyal, Anger will be present when people feels like the enterprise is going after them or against their wellbeing, fear will be shown facing the uncertain, while anxiety would show itself after a immediate danger, lastly sadness would appear when someone losses a familiar member or similar.

Author: Marco Antonio Rangel Escobar

BIO

Robin Cohn (2008) The PR crisis bible, USA: Book surge publishing.

Jeffrey Caponigro (1998) the Crisis Counselor, Mich: Barker Business

José Carlos Lozada Díaz (2018) (NO CRISIS): La comunicación de crisis en un mundo conectado: UOC (Universitat Oberta De Catalunya)