Top Tips For Managing Bad News Effectively
Flourish PR
Ultimately,
every business has one bad day, where events do not happen in a way you would
like.
Whether that is delivering a profit warning, announcing a delay or managing a crisis, your digital PR is one of your most crucial instruments in taking charge of the narrative and ensuring that the truth is heard and you have an opportunity to explain the situation.
Social media ensures these stories break almost immediately as they happen, and so one important part of modern PR management is the knowledge that you do not have the time you may have had 20 years ago to prepare, respond and explore options with the press. Even 20 years ago you would typically have had 30 minutes to draft, edit, approve and fax a holding statement.
With this in mind, here are some top tips on the best ways to handle bad news.
Take Ownership Of The Situation
Time is critical to ensuring you can take ownership and control of the narrative surrounding a situation and the worst decision to make in a lot of cases is to wait to see how it is reported because that delay in responding can often become the story.
Take, for example, the story of Bridgestone’s major tyre defect issues. In 1996, the tyre manufacturer was warned that the tread of some of its tyres separated from the car, which led to 271 deaths.
It took until 2000 for the issue to be investigated, with the prior four years seeing Bridgestone blaming its customers for not taking care of the tyres. This was the wrong decision to make, and had Bridgestone taken action earlier it may not have cost the company $1.67bn.
Be proactive, start producing communications and making apologies as soon as you can in broad strokes. The finer strategy can be decided later but if you wait to take ownership of a situation the narrative will be written for you.
This can be as simple as noting your awareness of the situation and that an internal review is taking place.
Never Say “No Comment”
You are human, as are your customers, and so make sure to act that way in communications, even if they come out of the blue. Saying “no comment” is not only a cliché, but it can cause people to assume you have something to hide.
Instead, be transparent if you do not have any information. State that you are assessing the situation and be as transparent as you can be within legal limits.
Be empathetic and heartfelt, especially when sharing details on how the company will move forward. People will react far better to a contrite apology and details on how you plan to resolve the situation.
Ultimately it is important to understand how the customer feels and replace spin with empathy.
Get Your Key Messages Ready
Once you have the option to prepare, get your crisis plan ready and ensure that everyone who has the authority and capacity to speak to the media is aware of the key messages you plan to share.
Do not let your executives go rogue and try to avoid having a scripted response, but instead provide what they can say about the situation so far.
Develop a crisis plan beforehand if you can, with the key people to notify, the process to review the situation in-house and a list of people who are authorised to speak to the media.
Try to avoid kneejerk reactions, even as people are pushing you for a response. As long as you have a response published and people are aware that an additional response is forthcoming, it is beneficial to take the time to write a well thought out press release.
And finally, don’t overlook or forget about your own in-house team. Are they aware of the situation at hand, and the appropriate public response? Internal communications is often the poor relation in a crisis situation, yet if done well it can help you and the senior leadership team get ahead.
