Chapter 12
Crisis and Credibility
This is PR 11th Edition
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Objectives
• To create awareness of situations that could
become crises
• To plan strategies and implement policies that help
an organization through a crisis
• To recognize the triggering event that precipitates
a crisis
• To understand management's likely response to a
crisis in order to plan a coping strategy for dealing
with anticipated reactions
• To be sensitive to the needs of all publics, including
nimbus publics, when a crisis occurs
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Anticipating a Crisis
• Issues management helps organizations
anticipate crises
– Challenge is deciding which issues are
likely to engage publics or create an
event that triggers a crisis
– Role of PR is informing management
about issues and situations that could
escalate into crises
– Corporate culture, management attitude
determine management reaction
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Recurring Crises
• Urban myths can be resurrected
• New developments on old issues can bring
old crises back
• Continuing action on crisis issue can keep it
at crisis point
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Characteristics of Crises
• Always involve people
• Always interrupt the normal chain of events
or command
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Categories of Crises
• Physically violent or nonviolent
• Several causes
– Acts of nature
– Intentional acts
– Unintentional acts
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Crisis Management
• Key is anticipation
– Begin by identifying kinds of crises organization is
most likely to face
– Then examine policies that might be put into place to
prevent crises in each category of crisis
• Risk assessment
– Interpret data from research
– Evaluate vulnerability of organization
• Crisis management is aided by use of two-way
symmetrical public relations
– Warnings more likely when communication is open
and two-way
– Conflicts can be more easily resolved
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Crisis Publics
• Some publics easily identified
• Some often neglected in planning process
because not immediately affected by but
eventually feel the impact
– Called nimbus publics
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Imagining a Crisis
• Involve as many people in organization as
possible
• Take role of intelligent and resourceful
adversary, asking. “What’s the best way to wreck
this organization?”
• Assume role of corporate management and ask
“What is the best response?”
• Start by asking how money, people,
products/services, processes and locations of
operation will be disrupted
• Consider impact each event will have on each
public individually
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Communications Climate and
Crises
• Organization’s communications climate has
a great impact on how management
handles crises
• Shutting off the flow of information is worst
way to handle a crisis
• An open information flow quells rumors and
makes it possible to create trust
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Anticipating a Crisis
• Collect information on potential crises
before they occur
• Keep the information readily available to
those most likely to need it
• Keep it in a form that is usable in a crisis
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Anticipating a Crisis (cont.)
• Types of information to gather:
– addresses, contact information on all company
offices, branches
– floor plans, employee list for each location
– bio information on all employees, in-depth on
key executives
– photos of facilities, key executives
– statistics on facilities and organization
– history of organization
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Anticipating a Crisis (cont.)
• Types of information to gather:
– emergency information such as nearest
hospital, police, firefighters
– plan for contacting every member of workforce
– organizational documents such as vision,
mission, positioning statements
– position papers on key issues
– information on key publics and how to contact
them
– digitalized video
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A Crisis Plan
• A crisis plan should be:
– a guideline rather than an overly detailed
process
– easy to remember
– flexible
– thorough and comprehensive
– communicated
– reviewed regularly and updated
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Crisis Communication
Essentials
• Existence of a communications plan as part
of crisis plan
• Ability to assemble a crisis team when a
crisis occurs
• Use of a single spokesperson during a
crisis
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Guidelines for Communications
Plans
• Must include strong internal as well as external
communication
• Must carefully choose right medium for each public
• Must pretest message statements before they are
disseminated
• Should designate certain members of crisis team
as fact finders
• Legal counsel must be involved to avoid “no
comment” response when openness needed
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Crisis Narrative
• Story public hears must be truthful
• Key publics must be able to relate to story
• Narrative must demonstrate that the
organization has control of the situation and
will successfully resolve the crisis
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Crisis Spokesperson
• Choosing the one spokesperson is the most
important act dealing with a crisis
• May or may not be CEO
• Person sets tone for how crisis is managed
• Must be perceived as knowledgeable and up to
date on developments
• Must have sole responsibility and authority to
speak for the organization
• May have one spokesperson for internal and for
external audiences
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Employees’ Role in a Crisis
• Are on the front line in dealing with a crisis
– Organization’s most credible
representatives to people outside the
organization
– People will develop perceptions from way
employees behave
• Employees should never learn about a
crisis from the news media or other second-
hand source
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Hindrances in Crisis Management
• Extent of crisis may not be known
immediately
• Persons affected by crisis may be hard to
identify
• Cause of crisis may be hard to identify and
may be never known
• Crisis is always traumatic to audiences
affected directly
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Hindrances in Crisis Management
(cont.)
• Accurate and appropriate information about
the crisis is expected by the publics,
sometimes at unreasonable levels
• Information decisions are made under high
stress
• An organization’s credibility is suspect in a
crisis
• A crisis incites emotional behavior
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Crisis Constants
• People learn about a crisis primarily from
personal networks
• People tend to interpret the seriousness of
a crisis in terms of personal risk or risk to
people important to them
• Government sources are relied on as the
most authoritative
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Crisis Constants (cont.)
• Amount of mass media coverage indicates
the significance of the crisis to global
publics
• Availability to information in an open-
communication environment reduces rumor
and increases the accuracy of assessments
of the situation
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PR’s Responsibility in a Crisis
• Forewarn and prepare management
• Continuously monitor publics
• Convince management to act
• Give managers insight and objective information
they don’t have
• Provide guidance to avoid arrogance and bad
judgment
• Identify appropriate ways to involve employees
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Dealing with the Media
• Prepare a first response release
immediately
• Issue update bulletins as written briefs,
taped actualities, updated on Web site
• Crises generate contradictory information:
hard to keep facts straight
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Role of PR Practitioner in a Crisis
• Conduct the delicate negotiations between
the source and media about what to use
and what not to use
• Provide enough opportunities for
information to be given to the media
• Educate as well as inform the media
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Media Tips in a Crisis
• Speedy replies to all queries are important
• Keep cool under pressure
• If you don’t know the answer, say so and attempt
to get it
• Eliminate obstacles reporters might encounter
• Never ask to see a reporter’s story
• Use your name when providing information and
allow yourself to be quoted by name
• Never argue with a reporter about the value of a
story
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Media Tips in a Crisis (cont.)
• Any information that goes to one source should go
to all
• Never flatly refuse to provide information
• Always know the names and employers of the
reporters you are talking with and how to contact
them
• Never give an answer to a reporter’s question that
might not stand up or might embarrass you later
• Never falsify or slant your answers
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Media Tips in a Crisis (cont.)
• Be especially alert about photographs
• Pass information along to reporters as soon as you
get it
• Have employee and organization records available
to refer to in the event of a reporter’s question
• Point out positive aspects of the organization even
as it deals with crisis
• Confine damage estimated to general descriptions
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Media Coverage of Crisis
• Instantaneous coverage creates problems
of perception vs. reality
• Time pressures may force media to release
information without adequate checking or
editing
• Media coverage of military, terrorist events
may use inflammatory words or
descriptions and may use victims of
terrorism as symbols
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Media Coverage of Crisis
(cont.)
• Difficulties arise due to a conflict of opinion
about the function, role and responsibility of
media in reporting global crises
• Differences in government control of media
and journalists’ own sense of responsibility
lead to different global interpretations of the
same news
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Rumors
• Thrive in crisis situations of anxiety, emotion,
uncertainty, distress
• Are likely when:
– Authentic information is lacking, incomplete
– Situations are loaded with anxiety, fear
– Doubts exist
– People feel they can’t control the situation
– Prolonged decision-making delays occur
– Organizational conflict is present
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Combating Rumors
• Analyze the scope, seriousness, impact of
the rumor before trying to combat it
• Analyze the causes, motives, sources and
disseminators of rumors
• Confer with persons affected or damaged
and share your concern
• Provide immediately complete and
authentic information
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Combating Rumors (cont.)
• Feed the grapevine yourself
• Contact the formal and informal leaders,
opinion leaders, influentials to clarify the
situation
• Avoid referring to the rumor in the process
of combating it
• Conduct meetings to dispel the rumor at the
grassroots level
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Crisis Evaluation
• Crises should be evaluated in terms of the
damage done or the risk of future damage
• Much of the evaluation is based on
communication
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Crisis Evaluation Questions
• What was the cause?
• What strategies, policies could be
developed that would prevent a similar or
related crisis?
• Did the crisis plan work? Are changes
needed?
• How did involved personnel perform?
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Successful Crisis Handling
• Early detection
• Incident containment
• Business resumption
• Lessons learned
• Timely decisions made on facts
• Improved reputation as a result of
appropriate response
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Points to Remember
• Credibility always at stake in crisis situation
• Public perception of honesty, openness is
essential
• Failure to be available or prepared
damages credibility
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