When a crisis strikes your agency or one of your clients, those charged with managing it should have three primary objectives:
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
“Think of a crisis plan as a flashlight: It doesn’t solve the immediate problem (the lights went out,) but it helps people find their way in the dark so they can discover the real problem – a blown fuse, a tripped circuit or a downed power line – and then begin to solve it.”
– Steven Fink, author, Crisis Management
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
One of the best ways to help you and your clients maintain control and minimize damage when a crisis strikes is to have a flexible crisis management plan in place.
An effective crisis plan:
If your agency or your clients don’t have a written crisis plan, now is a great time to create one. If you have plan, be sure it is updated regularly.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
One of the most important things an ad agency can do in a crisis situation is help its client see the reality of the situation and what needs to be done.
The agency also needs to help the client keep the situation in perspective and focus on the long term.
It’s easy to panic and develop a siege mentality when an organization in crisis is under intense scrutiny from the outside, but that only makes matters worse.
Properly managing the crisis is vital, because facts alone don’t win in the court of public opinion—perceptions do.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
When I was growing up in Indiana, one of my friends and neighbors was a boy named Billy. We were both around ten years old at the time. One day Billy was playing with matches in his bedroom and set the curtains on fire. He tried putting the fire out, but its flames quickly spread. Billy was so overwhelmed by the situation that he walked out of his room, closed the door and started watching TV in the living room.
For a few minutes, he didn’t have to deal with the awful reality of what he had done, and he was able to go about life as usual. However, it wasn’t long before the entire house was engulfed in flames. Fortunately he and his family escaped, but the house burned to the ground.
When I tell that story, people usually are amazed at such irresponsible behavior, and rightfully so. Yet, I find that many companies with intelligent, well-educated leaders often take the same approach to dealing with a crisis in their organization.
Rather than face reality, they try to ignore the crisis or put a lid on it.
More often than not, the crisis grows and becomes consuming, and in the process devours valuable time and resources. Sometimes the organization’s reputation is severely harmed, and out of the ashes investigations suddenly appear. The pity is that engaging the crisis in its early stages would have made it more manageable and less damaging.
As Henry Kissinger put it, “A problem ignored is a crisis invited.”
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
For years I’ve kept files on some the best and worst examples of PR. I find it helpful to have some of these examples on hand so that I can quickly illustrate a point I’m trying to make about how to handle (or not handle) a particular situation.
One of my worst PR examples comes from the president of an ad agency who took out a full-page “open letter” ad. I’ll leave the parties’ names out because they really aren’t necessary to make my point.
In his letter, the agency president derided the chairman of a large bank that was trying to acquire a smaller bank his agency represented.
“Obviously the aggressive and highly effective ad campaign has helped (bank’s name) turn things around has jolted you and your friends…” he wrote. The agency president then went on to lecture the chairman about how his bank should be emphasizing some of the benefits it offers, such as greater resources and its capacity for lower mortgage rates.
Then, he ended with this zinger: “And maybe you could use the help of a growing Georgia ad agency to tell the story. We’d be happy to help. You’ll remember us as the agency that did the…advertising for (second bank’s name). Those were the campaigns that helped (second bank’ name) grow so big you bought it.”
I imagine the ad agency president felt pretty good about himself the day this letter ran, and he probably had a few laughs and high fives with his staff and colleagues.
But was his approach really smart – or necessary?
I don’t know how things turned out, but my guess is the larger bank declined his suggestion to move their business with his agency. In fact, I suspect quite a few people who read the letter, even if they agreed with his position, would not want to do business with him.
Arrogance is not winning a position, especially in a highly competitive industry. There are ways to make a point, even when being critical, without being condescending and needlessly alienating others.
It’s been said that while friends come and go, enemies accumulate. And accumulating enemies is not a good way to keep an ad agency growing.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
Most PR people would agree that it’s generally best to avoid making off-the-record comments to the news media. That’s because we recognize the danger of having an executive or clients say anything to a reporter that they wouldn’t want to see in print or on the Internet, or have aired on radio or TV.
Yet, for some reason, normally prudent executives and even some PR professionals sometimes write all kinds of things on Twitter that could prove embarrassing to them. Recently the VP of a large PR firm, who had just arrived at a city where he was about to make a presentation to a large client, Twittered the following: “True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say I would die if I had to live here!”
One of the employees discovered the comment, was offended and replied – copying the agency’s and company’s leadership. Sounds painful, doesn’t it?
Perhaps Twitter gives some people a false sense of security, similar to what they might have if writing a personal journal they think no one will see. But remember, any one with access to the Internet–including reporters, clients, competitors and people who just plain don’t like you–can see every word you’ve written and use those words against you.
If your agency’s staff uses Twitter, it’s a good idea to remind them–and yourself–to be careful when using social media and avoid tweeting anything you wouldn’t want the world to see. Because it just might.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
“It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds.” – Theodore Roosevelt
A corporate PR executive who worked for a controversial company once suggested dividing one’s critics into two groups: the reasonable and the unreasonable.
The reasonable critics are people who have legitimate concerns and put forth constructive criticism in an effort to bring about improvement. These are people an organization can and should work with whenever possible. Sometimes, reasonable critics can even be won over to become allies.
The unreasonable critics, on the other hand, are never going to be happy, no matter what you do. They will be suspicious of your motives if you try to work with them, and any action you take will be found to be deficient in some way. You can waste a lot of time and energy dealing with unreasonable critics, and at the end of the day nothing will have changed. They’ll still hate your client or cause, so the best thing to do is simply ignore them.
Plus, by trying to work with these folks, you risk giving them more credibility than they deserve and raising their profile.
These days, advocacy groups and bloggers can put major companies in a spin. If one of your agency’s clients is under attack, start by evaluating which category the critic falls into before taking action. You may find not responding to the criticism is the best course of action.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
Several years ago, a well-known New Jersey PR executive wrote the following in a national public relations trade publication: “Virtually never, however, are releases reprinted verbatim by any responsible publication. It’s just not done, and I defy anyone to show me where this has happened.”
Not one to let a challenge like that pass, I sent a few samples of news releases I sent out that were printed verbatim in newspapers. The releases represented several industries, and as I noted in my cover letter, I have notebooks stuffed full of similar articles. I also noted that there wasn’t a geographical bias, either, as the samples I sent covered papers from California to New York.
I never heard back from the executive, nor to my knowledge did he ever acknowledge publicly that someone had proven his assertion wrong.
As newsrooms shed jobs and try to keep up with less staff, it’s still true today that a well-written news release can easily be reprinted entirely, or with very minor edits, in consumer and trade publications.
While this wouldn’t fly at The New YorkTimes, smaller papers tend to lack the resources to do as much original reporting as they might like, and they seem to appreciate a well written, newsworthy release from a trusted source.
This does not mean, as some have suggested, that journalism is in a state of decline, or that such newspapers are irresponsible.
Over the years, I’ve worked to develop good relationships with editors and reporters where my clients have operations, as do all good PR executives. I believe we are viewed by many media outlets as extra sets of arms and legs that bring valuable news items to the table.
As long as advertising agencies get their facts straight, focus on relevant topics and not try to pass off advertising disguised as “news,” they can provide an important service to these papers—and help their clients look good in the process.
Normally my objective with a news release is to generate enough interest among reporters so that they will want to schedule an interview and do their own stories. But, when staff limitations prohibit that, I’ll gladly take a reprint of my release any day.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
During my days as an editor for a healthcare magazine, I received some interesting mail. Here’s a news release headline a well-meaning hospital PR executive sent me one day:
CDH TO HOST LAPAROSCOPIC HERNIORRAPY PRECEPTORSHIP
Huh? I’m guessing one in a half-million or so people would have a clue what that headline was about. And ask yourself: how much interest does it generate? The release itself was fairly well written, and once I read the first few sentences I realized the hospital was hosting a seminar about advancements in hernia operations.
Trouble is, most reporters wouldn’t get past the headline – the release would end up in the recycle bin before the first paragraph was read. Why not just say in the headline, in simple terms, what the seminar is about?
Headlines are vital to attracting interest and getting people to read the release or article, similar to how the wording on a subject line can make the difference between you reading or deleting the e-mail. Make your headlines readable or you risk having the release discarded before it even gets read.
Don Beehler provides public relations consulting services to small- and medium-sized advertising agencies and businesses.
The Art of Telling Your Story 