Thinking of Every Crisis as a Red Alert
When the threat got really serious in the old Star Trek series — like when the Romulans were about to attack — Captain Kirk invariably upgraded the ship’s status from yellow alert to red alert. I advise my clients to treat any PR crisis as a red alert. The keys to doing so are to
_ Make the situation a management priority.
_ Have plans in place before crises happen. If you wait until they happen before creating a plan, you’re too late.
_ Respond with same-day speed. “Tomorrow” isn’t good enough. In crisis plans for large corporate clients, we say that every one of the top management people is always “on call.” If a crisis occurs, every key decision maker must be available within two hours — by phone, if that’s the best they can do, but preferably gathered in the same room. After they’re in the room (or connected with the people in the room via speaker phone), no one leaves until consensus is reached on what’s to be done. The person managing crisis communications should have the home phone numbers of all executives in the group and shouldn’t hesitate to call them at any time of the day or night. Not having the team together slows decision-making, which can be devastating for PR purposes — the media’s job is to investigate and get at the truth, and their deadline for doing so is tomorrow (for print), tonight (for broadcast), or even now (for the Web). For example, one American shoe manufacturer was faced with a rumor that a street gang wore its sneakers. They responded like a snail rather than in a flash, and the brand was destroyed.
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