Crisis Management Panel Tells IWPA Members
by Suzanne Hanney
Humanize a public relations setback,
Crisis Management Panel Tells IWPA Members
by Suzanne Hanney
Public relations in a crisis boils down to honesty and humanity in real time, a panel of experts told members of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association at its September meeting. The panel included a journalism professor, a public relations specialist and a representative of the Chicago Police Department.
"Reporters want responses as quickly as possible to ‘how, when, where, why and who,’" said Lillian Williams, director of the broadcast journalism department at Columbia College in Chicago.
"Just be honest and say, ‘I can’t respond now; I will get back to you later.’ [However] I think it’s a good idea to respond as quickly as possible, because if you don’t, it keeps the crisis going," said Williams, a former reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and for WKYC-TV in Cleveland, Ohio. "If you respond right away, it could be a one-day story."
Honesty is Best Policy
Kimberly Kumiega, executive vice president of the reputation management group at
Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, said, "If you’re not honest and forthright,
people will begin to doubt your explanations, and it’s all downhill from there."
"You have to define it or the media will go to their sources and define it for you. Some will be right, some wrong," but they will continue to recycle old information out of their newspaper or film archives, added Kumiega, a former St. Louis Globe-Democrat reporter.
In a strong news town like Chicago, through, reporters listen to police scanners. For example, TV cameras and choppers were already on the scene when word came that a policeman had been shot--fatally, as it turned out--during a traffic stop on a stolen car at 33rd and Cottage Grove in Chicago.
Then it became a matter of "tell me what you’ve got, and I’ll tell you whether it’s accurate before you go on the air," said Lauri Sanders, director of news affairs for the Chicago Police Department. Detectives often need 24-48 hours to piece together information from police officers and bystanders.
It’s a challenge to guess whether reporters will head to the crime scene or the hospital, Sanders said. Her staff has to be there so media representatives get the right information--and a live newsfeed, if possible.
Police Crisis
The department is "still grappling" with the aftermath of the LaTanya
Haggerty and Robert Russ fatal shootings following traffic stops in June, she said, in
terms of what it teachers officers and how the police force conducts business.
One of the goals of her department is to prepare a crisis manual listing the names and phone numbers of those who should be informed in various situations, said Sanders, who previously worked in similar capacities at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Chicago Public Schools.
Anticipating Risks
"Be prepared," said Kumiega. "Not only should you have a plan; you
should know who’s on your crisis team and who’s your audience."
Anticipating a corporate client’s potential risks is the first thing her staff does. When a crisis does hit, the media will look at your company’s track record--with the Environmental Protection Agency, for example. If its’ the first bad news, she said people may give the company the benefit of the doubt.
Although executives’ response after tainted Tylenol caused deaths has been called a model, Kumiega said its turnaround would be considered too slow for today’s 24-hour news milieu, dominated by the Internet and CNN.
In 1996, she helped the California-based Odwalla fruit juice company respond after E. coli in its unpasteurized products made children sick. It was the first time E. coli had been found in fruit juice.
Within 24 hours, Edelman had set up an explanatory Web site that received 20,000 hits in 48 hours. Product was pulled from shelves in seven states and Canada.
As a result of this rapid response, Odwalla became not only a market leader, but also "crisis gurus," Kumiega said.
Shareholders, and particularly employees, are important parts of the audience. "My rule of thumb is that you communicate from the inside out. Employees don’t want to read about it in the newspaper; they want to hear about it from you. Otherwise, they’re blindsided," she said.
"Humanize, humanize, humanize," Kumiega said. "People respond well to the human touch."