3 Tips for Navigating Crisis Communications
Posted on Mar. 28, 2023 / Subscribe 0
As public relations professionals, navigating crises is a part of the job, but preparedness and cross-sharing best practices are essential for improvement. We recently gathered at Identity's new office in Birmingham to hear some compelling lessons learned from a panel of excellent PR pros.
- Bret Gallaway, founder of Trestle Advisors
- Sharon Tatom Garcia, MA, APR, Senior Director of Communications, The Salvation Army Great Lakes Region
- Andrea Trapani, managing partner at Identity
There were many topics discussed, but these were my three biggest takeaways.
Team coordination
The first and most important step of being prepared for a crisis is creating a solid communications plan. The second step, however, is ensuring the team is on the right page. This means:
- Everyone is clear on roles and responsibilities
- The cadence of communications to internal and external audiences is clear
- The reporting structure is in place and is clear
- Collaboration is always welcomed
Sharon shared, “The Salvation Army really showed its strength in having an emergency disaster planning structure in place globally when COVID-19 emerged in 2020. We had a command center, met daily with reps from each department to discuss internal and external communications, regularly evaluated the needs of our community such as food, utilities, those who were laid off and more.” A true testament to their team’s ability to coordinate efficiently!
Brad also shared that he took and recommended FEMA training to truly be prepared for anything and everything. He added, “FEMA training helps you understand how emergency management processes work – that way you don’t have to ‘train as you go’ you are already trained.”
Speed
There are so many times that we as PR pros need to think fast on our feet, but none faster than during a crisis.
Andrea advised, “Speed is what matters in moments (of crisis); the ability to think on your feet and ask the right questions is critical. When we were called to assist with media relations in the middle of the Oxford, MI tragedy, we didn’t have any previous relationship with the prosecutor so we had to get up to speed quickly.”
Evaluation
The only way to get better is to measure strengths and areas of improvement across all PR campaigns but particularly after each crisis.
Bret said, “The measure of success is different for each crisis. Sometimes the (ideal) metric is no news/story. Sometimes it’s telling the story to the right people in the right order. Other times it’s that you reached the right number of people. This is why it’s important to outline the objective of each crisis upfront with leadership to ensure everyone is aligned…There are also a lot of Artificial Intelligence tools to help measure efforts.”
Many thanks to all who attended, to Identity for hosting us, and to the panelists for their impactful takeaways. And please keep an eye out for our upcoming programming – we’d love to see you soon.
Megan Bonelli is a Senior Communications Strategist with DTE Energy and is the 2023 PRSA Detroit Treasurer.
0 Comments