Chapter 18
Online Crisis Management
In the era of 24-hour news, social media and mobile devices, news spreads quicker than ever before. Organizations don't have as much control over their marketing messages and, as a result, news of a crisis can travel in seconds. This chapter explores the increasing risk of an online crisis and offers advice, guidance and examples on how to identify and respond to an online crisis efficiently.
With the increasing popularity of forums, social media and 24-hour online news, our fans and followers out there are now liking, commenting and sharing our content around the clock. This is great when things are positive, but in times of crisis it can cause a problem. The growth of citizen journalism can make it feel as though everybody has a voice and they are just waiting to criticize.
The most worrying aspect is that a controversial story can be trending before you have even sat down at your desk. News spreads instantly and often isn't properly checked and doesn't abide by the rules that traditional media do.
A crisis can rapidly result in damage to stakeholders, losses or, even worse, the end of the organization. Handling the communication around a crisis effectively is critical and PR practitioners should form an integral part of any crisis management team and, more importantly, should understand the ethics and rules of digital media.
A crisis can be damaging to the value of the organization. A report by the Oxford Executive found that firms affected by catastrophes fell into two distinct groups; recoverers and non-recoverers, with the initial shareholder loss at approximately 5% for recoverers and around 11% for non-recoverers.152
Defining a crisis
A crisis is defined by Wikipedia153 as:
“Any event that is, or expected to lead to, an unstable and dangerous situation affecting an individual, group, community or whole society. Crises are deemed to be negative changes in the security, economic, political, societal or environmental affairs, especially when they occur abruptly, with little or no warning.”
Crisis management has been developed to help protect an organization from threats and to reduce the impact inflicted by those threats. It can be separated into three stages:
An online crisis154 typically creates a spike in comments, shares and engagement and the conversations are characteristically negative. The modern practitioner needs to learn how to monitor a brand's reputation, track what is being said and respond immediately.
A summary of the issues to consider when preparing for and managing a crisis
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1. Create a plan and run test exercises.
2. Use tools like SMS, Yammer, blogs and private groups to liaise with the crisis team.
3. Build a dark site in preparation.
4. Create a response strategy for negative comments.
5. Use social monitoring tools – track the sources of comments and check who is influencing whom.
6. Acknowledge any issues and be prepared for negative responses no matter what.
7. Assume people are intelligent.
8. Use pay per click (PPC) advertisements to combat negative websites.
9. Use repetition to ensure people remember positives.
10. Have a friendly network of online influencers, to help you disseminate messages.
11. Don't engage everybody – target the influencers and keep a record of who you engaged with.
12. Using video content is more authentic than written statements.
13. Don't get involved in arguments. |
Crisis planning
The pre-crisis phase is focused on preparation and prevention. The best way to prepare for a crisis is to avoid one altogether and PR professionals are doing this on a daily basis, you just don't hear about it because they are doing their jobs successfully.
Effective preparation means creating a crisis management plan, selecting the response team and conducting a number of exercises to test the team's adaptability.
Brand monitoring
One of the most valuable elements of social media is that you can listen to what people are saying about your brand both retrospectively and in real time. There are a plethora of monitoring tools that enable you to listen to the thousands of conversations occurring on blogs, forums, news sites and Twitter. You may have had calls from organizations like Brandwatch, Radian6 and Sysomos and the truth is they are all very similar, but they are useful for tracking sentiment and the sources of online influence.
This type of qualitative analysis used to be expensive but with digital tools pricing becomes competitive. Listening, analyzing and understanding the overall tone and feel for the crisis could be invaluable when crafting your response.
The response to a negative comment on the Bodyform Facebook Page by its PR team was brilliant;155 they listened to the response from the crowd and gave a tongue-in-cheek reply which had a phenomenal viral effect and will now shape its marketing campaign for the next few years.
Crisis management plan
A crisis management plan should act as a reference document and contain all of the necessary contact details, the process to follow and any templates required. The plan saves time by pre-assigning tasks and collating important information. All members of the crisis team should understand their roles and be given autonomy.
Crisis management team
Time is saved by creating a team because they already know who will do the basic tasks required in a crisis. Each crisis is different which means the team will have to make important decisions.
Pre-draft updates
The team can pre-draft templates for messages, tweets or blog posts with blank sections for when everything is confirmed. Legal teams can pre-approve the use of the messages which lets the communications team send them quickly on whichever platform they wish.
Using a holding statement should never be underestimated – as often saying “We are going to release a statement at 4pm” can stop the floods of tweets, messages and calls flying in.
Communication channels
Although video replies have become the standard in online crisis management, if a discussion starts on Twitter, try to keep it there and don't move it to another social channel – you could be spreading the issue rather than containing it. Twitter has an immediacy that can be used to your advantage if statements need to be shared immediately.
Online newsrooms or corporate blogs
If you have an online newsroom or blog, it must have some form of social shareability and should help to bring all of your networks together, making it easier for your readers to find you.
If the crisis is minor, sometimes the best place to deal with it can be within your newsroom, as here you can control the statements, tone and offer materials. However, you should be cautious – if the crisis is likely to be protracted you don't want it to take over your newsroom. You may want to portray an external image of it's “Business as Usual”.
Create a terms of use policy
Make sure you have something that outlines how people can and can't behave across your channels. This should sit in your “About Us” section and be clearly labelled. If you have a policy, you can direct people to it and warn them before taking things further.
Scoop up those negative domain and user names
Make sure you have considered all of the domain names that could be created to attack your company and buy as many of the negative versions as you can such as www.ihatestarbucks.com. You may have to incur domain name referral fees annually but it could stop you from having a high authority site with an easy to remember name sharing destructive stories about your company.
Try to guess the usernames that could be used against you. Use a free tool such as Namechk156 to check which names are available. Make sure your team has registered as many of these as possible. If you control them, they can't be used against your campaign.
Dark sites
A “dark site”157 is an online hub which remains unpublished or “dark” until a crisis breaks. Organizations create them so there is a ready-made online resource to respond and direct the conversation. It usually contains a few pages such as a message from the CEO, emergency contact details and statements on what is being done to resolve the crisis. The team can utilize the social media channels to drive the conversations towards this site.
Key parts of the site are usually blank until details are confirmed. The site must have enough bandwidth ready to handle a colossal amount of hits in an extremely tight timeframe.
Mobilize your team
Skype can be considered when organizing your response team if it is spread out geographically. It's one of the safest channels for peer-to-peer communication and the sharing of sensitive information.
Targeted advertising
Advertising can be a useful weapon in reputation management if it is used intelligently to control the search results delivered by Google or Bing. Using advertising can be a bold statement and you must be sure your messages are correct and fit with the rest of your strategy.
In June 2010,158 following the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe,159 BP used huge amounts of PPC advertising to try and control which search results were delivered for searches such as “Oil Spill”.160 Although it was a clever tactic, the execution was rather clumsy – the BP dark site felt like it had been written by robots rather than human beings. It initially focused on the amount of money that was being invested in the area and the public felt it lacked the more personal, sympathetic touch that was required.
Internal communications
Employees will need to know what happened, what they should do and how the crisis will affect them. Don't underestimate the power of them at times of crisis, as people will ask them for their opinion. Keep them in the loop on the intranet or using internal messaging systems such as Yammer.
Crisis response
The initial response must always be quick, accurate and consistent; when a crisis occurs, people want to know what happened. The online and broadcast media will attempt to fill the information vacuum as our news channels are 24-7 and they require their angle.
A statement released early may not have much “new” content but you have positioned yourself as a vital source and this should indicate that you are now in control.
The crisis team needs to share information so that spokespeople can deliver consistent messages. They should be briefed on the key points you want to get across and any other instructions.
Genuine expressions of concern help to lessen reputational damage and could reduce financial losses. If a company has a history of similar problems, or an existing bad reputation, the threat will be increased.
Don't be afraid of the #hashtag
If a crisis does go viral, a campaign #hashtag can create a genuine opportunity. After all, if all of the conversations are using it you can use it too, even if it is a negative one. If you use the #hashtag to reply, you can start to steer the conversation to direct people to your dark site or hub.
Use your online advocates
Encourage your online advocates to share constructive stories about you on their channels during the crisis. Try and ask them for their own opinion because, if you can get them talking actively about your organization, it will help to spread some positive vibes across the social web.
The Asda Chicken Licking video161 was created by a disgruntled former employee and included a series of nasty short clips at the Fulwood branch of Asda supermarket in Preston. The clips were posted on YouTube and quickly went viral as they showed him hurling raw eggs at the wall of a stockroom.
In other scenes, Ayub, who was dressed in an Asda uniform, entered the staff room and slit holes in other employees' clothing and was later seen urinating in a bin. The scene that disgusted most was of him peeling back the film around a fresh chicken and licking it before placing it back. The clips made national news, with coverage all across the country.
The response from Asda's PR team was swift and clever as it included an interview with the store manager, a security guard and several other workers talking about their personal disgust that a former employee could even do something like that. The reason this response was especially well thought out was because it used an informal video to get a simple but important message across. Asda's staff were seen to care and were clearly shocked. The video response was covered in various places and received positive responses from almost everyone. The fact that it didn't feel forced or scripted clearly helped its credibility.
Moderate commenting on your channels
If your blog or social channels are being overrun with negativity, you may consider changing your pages to allow approved comments only – turning off the ability for everyone to comment gives you a small element of control. After all, these are your spaces, so control them.
Post-crisis phase
The final phase is post-crisis, when a company returns to “business as usual” and the digital channels are used for more proactive communications campaigns.
Once it feels right, you can slowly and carefully return to your normal content programme, but be sensitive to the issue. If all goes well, open your pages back up for people to comment on and resume service as normal, monitoring and moderating carefully as you proceed.
You should ensure that all of the promises for information are fulfilled to maintain the trust with your contacts. You will need to release any important updates on the recovery and any investigations taking place.
This is a time for reflection and the team must go through what worked and what needed to be improved.
Appoint an evaluation team to assess the handling of the crisis and recommend changes in procedure. The evaluation team should be different from the original crisis team members. They should be asking themselves these questions:
- Did the plan work?
- What were the conversation triggers?
- Where did it fall down?
- What should be added?
- What was unnecessary?
- Which #hashtags did people use?
- Who should be in the next team?
While most crises start as a negative threat, effective crisis management can actually help contain the damage and, in some cases, provide a unique opportunity to even strengthen the brand. The best way to avoid and survive an online crisis is to prepare effectively.
Biography
Chris Norton (@chris_norton) is the founder of Dinosaur PR and an award-winning PR practitioner with more than 15 years' experience, having worked both in-house and in a number of international consultancies. He is a regular speaker and lecturer on online communications and his Dead Dinosaur blog on the evolution of communication is listed by Brand Republic as one of the most influential marketing sites on the planet. Chris sits on the CIPR Committee as its social media coordinator and has delivered online PR campaigns for clients such as: Ronseal, Sony Ericsson, Audio Technica, Ultralase, George Foreman, Russell Hobbs and Hallmark Cards.
Notes
152The Impact of Catastrophes on Shareholder Value – asse.com: http://cipr.co/WOVDaa.
153Wikipedia definition of crisis: http://cipr.co/WQRHT6
1543 Ways to tell a social media problem from a crisis – Convince and convert: http://cipr.co/WuzLB9
155Ibid
156Namechk: http://cipr.co/Z1rgAg
157Online Crisis Communications: Beware of the dark site, young Skywalker, Cision blog: http://cipr.co/WOV5Rm
158Wikipedia: http://cipr.co/WuA8vA
159The Peak Oil Crisis: Deepwater Horizon – FCNP: http://cipr.co/14EdXoO
160BP buys oil spill PPC ads: Nice idea, poor execution. Econsultancy blog: http://cipr.co/VVfRgQ
161BP buys oil spill PPC ads: Nice idea, poor execution. Econsultancy blog. http://cipr.co/VVfRgQ