Contents

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Introduction to Crisis
Causes of Crisis Situation
Importance of Crisis Communication
Handling Stakeholders
Crisis Communication Strategy
Case Study

Introduction
Any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or
property, seriously interrupt business, damage reputation or negatively
impact share value is crisis.
Any situation that threatens the integrity or reputation of your company,
usually brought on by adverse or negative media attention.
By definition, Crisis Management, is the act, manner, or practice of
managing, supervising or controlling a situation, protecting a
companys name, brand and consumer loyalty, preserving its reputation
as much as its shareholder stock, and mitigating or minimizing to as
much a degree as possible negative consumer public perceptions.
Internal and external forces can create a crisis. If handled correctly the
damage can be minimized.
Crucial aspects in a crisis is tell it all, tell it fast and tell the truth. If
you do this you have done all you can to minimize the situation.

Causes of Crisis Communications Situations

Classic situations involve an inappropriate response to an issue that has now

gained some media attention. Some well-meaning people or company
representatives can make a simple situation very bad, very fast.
This can occur by ignoring a simple fact, strictly adhering to legal or company
policy in the face of a common sense alternative, or by simply making a
natural mistake and trying to cover it up.
Another example of a crisis communications situation would involve an
emotional or controversial issue where the other side has over stated their
position in the public media and created the need for your response.
A serious case of a corporate crisis would be a product or service that has
caused harm to or even death of the public.
Other causes are unauthorized procedures, inadequate supervision, inadequate
safety procedures, inadequate quality control, misuse of confidential
information, errors in judgment, improper standard operating procedures,
human error or simple mistakes.

Importance of Communicating
During Crisis
Since most crises are newsworthy events, reporters from the region,
state, nation, and, perhaps, world, will quickly gather at the site of the
crisis. They will expect statements and explanations about the cause
and effects of the crisis from the very earliest moments of the event.
Organisations that cannot or do not provide information during crises
force its publics, such as reporters, employees, government officials, and
members of a community, to turn to other, often less credible, sources of
information. Many public relations practitioners are aware of the wellknown axiom that in the absence of information, misinformation
becomes news.
These second- or third-hand sources of information can usually only
speculate about the details of a crisis and, as a result, often provide
inaccurate information.
The misperceptions, caused by the inability of the organisation to
provide quick and accurate information during the crisis, may directly
translate into significant organizational losses.

Cont.
Inaccurate information not challenged by an organisation may cause
employees to quit, customers to switch brands, shareowners to sell
their stock, government agencies to increase regulation, and
reporters to conduct further investigations.
Managers, however, too often ignore the importance of communicating during
a crisis. Communication is frequently tolerated as a secondary issue much less
important than managing the crisis.
Crisis communication has this low status for a variety of reasons. In many
organizations, the corporate communication or public relations departments
are synonymous with media relations.
These departments are responsible for generating publicity or providing
information. They are staffed by former journalists who are rarely seen as
managers or counselors to senior managers.
Organisations that focus on the general public at the expense of more specific
publics often suffer unnecessary financial, emotional, and perceptual damage.

Handling Key Stakeholders

Employees: Companies that do not provide frequent information to its
employees during a crisis risk significant effects such as lower morale, trust,
and productivity. This dissatisfaction can translate into higher employee
turnover (and recruiting and training costs), as well as a higher likelihood of
strikes.
Government officials: Organisations that ignore politicians and other
government officials during a crisis risk increased supervision and regulation.
Shareholders and customers: Not providing information to these publics
during a crisis can cause investors to lose faith in the organisation. They can
sell their stock, sometimes, very large amounts. Companies also need to
immediately provide customers with explanations and information during a
crisis that go beyond the basic information provided by stories in the mass
media. The damage to a products or companys reputation can be
significant.
Members of the community: This public is not the same as the general
public. It includes specific groups that form around very specific issues.

Crisis Management Strategy

1.Identify Your Crisis Communications Team: A small team of
senior executives should be identified to serve as your
organization's Crisis Communications Team. Ideally, the team will
be led by the organization's CEO, with the firm's top public
relations executive and legal counsel as his or her chief advisers.
If your in-house PR executive does not have sufficient crisis
communications expertise, he or she may choose to retain an
agency or independent consultant with that specialty. Other team
members should be the heads of major organization divisions, to
include finance, personnel and operations.
2.Identify Spokespersons: Within each team, there should be
individuals who are the only ones authorized to speak for the
organization in times of crisis. The CEO should be one of those
spokespersons, but not necessarily the primary spokesperson.
The fact is that some chief executives are brilliant business
people but not very effective in-person communicators. The
decision about who should speak is made after a crisis breaks

Cont..
3. Spokesperson Training: All stakeholders internal and
external are just as capable of misunderstanding or
misinterpreting information as the media, and it's your
responsibility to minimize the chance of that happening.
Spokesperson training teaches you to be prepared, to be ready to
respond in a way that optimizes the response of all stakeholders.
4. Establish Notification System: It is absolutely essential, precrisis, to establish notification systems that will allow you to rapidly
reach your stakeholders using multiple modalities. There is
technology that can be set up to automatically start contacting all
stakeholders in your pre-established database and keep trying to
reach them until they confirm that the message has been received.
5. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders: Identify who are the
internal and external stakeholders that matter to your organization.
Employees are also among the most important audience,because
every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for your
organization whether you want them to be or not!But, ultimately,

Cont..
6. Anticipate Crises: If you're being proactive and preparing for
crises, gather your Crisis Communications Team for long
brainstorming sessions on all the potential crises which can occur
at your organization.There are at least two immediate benefits to
this exercise:
You may realize that some of the situations are preventable by
simply modifying existing methods of operation.
You can begin to think about possible responses, about best
case/worst case scenarios, etc. Better now than when under the
pressure of an actual crisis.
7. Develop Holding Statement: While full message development
must await the outbreak of an actual crisis, "holding statements"
messages designed for use immediately after a crisis breaks
can be developed in advance to be used for a wide variety of
scenarios to which the organization is perceived to be vulnerable.
"We have implemented our crisis response plan, which places the
highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and staff.
"Our hearts and minds are with those who are in harm's way, and

Cont..
8. Assess the Crisis Situation: Reacting without adequate
information is a classic "shoot first and ask questions afterwards"
situation in which you could be the primary victim. But if you've
done all of the above first, it's a "simple" matter of having the
Crisis Communications Team on the receiving end of information
coming in from your communications "tree," ensuring that the right
type of information is being provided so that you can proceed with
determining the appropriate response.
9. Identify Key Messages: With holding statements available as a
starting point, the Crisis Communications Team must continue
developing the crisis-specific messages required for any given
situation. The team already knows, categorically, what type of
information its stakeholders are looking for. What should those
stakeholders know aboutthiscrisis? Etc.
Thus, keep it simple have no more than three main messages
for all stakeholders and, as necessary, some audience-specific
messages for individual groups of stakeholders.

Cont..
10. Riding Out the Storm: No matter what the nature of a crisis;
no matter how carefully you've prepared and responded, some of
your stakeholders are not going to react the way you want them
to. This can be immensely frustrating.
Take an objective look at the reaction(s) in question. Is it your fault,
or their unique interpretation?
Decide if another communication to those stakeholders is likely to
change their impression for the better or worse?
If, after considering these factors, you think it's still worth more
communication, then take your best shot!

"It Can't Happen To Me"

When a healthy organization's CEO or CFO looks at the cost of
preparing a crisis communications plan, either as a heavy
investment of in-house time or retention of an outside professional
for a substantial fee, it is tempting for them to fantasize "it can't
happen to me" or "if it happens to me, we can handle it relatively

CRISIS INTERVENTION STRATEGIES

Remain Professional --be a calming influence

Use the clients name when talking to him/ her
Repeat what client said --Clarify for understanding
Dont use any threats --theyre empty promises
Be conscious of non-verbal communication
Use a team approach if needed --ask a colleague to sit in or be available to help if
you need support
Dont take clients behavior personally
Set limits/ boundaries for yourself
AVOID A POWER STRUGGLE --Prevent burnout; decide not to engage in
unproductive debates

Case Study: Dominos A

Pizza Chain
Timeline of Dominos Response

1. April 12, 2009

Video posted to YouTube.
Video reaches 29,000 views within hours of posting.
2. April 13, 2009
Dominos is alerted to video by the Consumerist.com (Monday
morning)
Dominos identifies location of store where the video was filmed.
(Monday Evening).

3. April 14, 2009

Employees fired by Dominos
Health department and local police contacted by Dominos
Twitter traffic becomes noticeable
Between Tuesday and Wednesday, the video jumps from
29,000 views to 700,000.

Cont.
April 15, 2009
Video surpasses 1 million views.
Video is removed from YouTube by Hammonds.
Hammonds and Setzer face felony charges.
The hoax is found in 5 of the top 12 search results presented by
Google to users.
Twitter account is created by Dominos
Dominos CEO (Patrick Doyle) responds in a YouTube video.
Dominos video response has 330,000 views when first press
conference is held.
April 17, 2009
Wikipedia entry for Dominos was found to contain information
about the hoax posted by an unofficial individual.
April 20, 2009
A copy of the original video posted by Hammonds has 345,000
views.
The video remains accessible on the Internet in its entirety.

Case Study: Crisis Analysis

A new national study conducted by HCD Research found 65% of
respondents who would previously visit or order Dominos Pizza
were less likely to do so after viewing the offending video.
Dominos responded too late, about 48 hours, according to
AdAge, a trade publication. The videos were posted on Monday
night; a response didnt come from the company until
Wednesday.
While its internal team worked quickly to form a strategy on
Tuesday, its initial response was trying not to, since it didnt
want to alert more people to the story. It didnt issue a formal
press release to mainstream press.
The company decided against hiring an external crisis team or
to bring in its creative agency. It did eventually open a Twitter
account to deal with consumer inquiries. Then, it was decided
that making a YouTube apology would have to be necessary to

Cont.
In the video, Patrick Doyle, president of Dominos Pizza, says the
store where the videos were shot has been closed and sanitized,
and that the company will be conducting a review of hiring
practices to make sure that people like this dont make it into our
stores.
Dominos began looking for the rogue employees within three
hours of noticing the YouTube videos, communicating with Web
sites such as YouTube and bloggers to track them down and
working with the health department, police and district attorneys
office.
What it didnt realize, though, was that about 70% of the
conversation was happening on Twitter and YouTube, and their
not-so-public response wasnt enough, he said.
He added that the company could have been faster in figuring
out how to get the videos posted by the two employees, which
gained more viewers as time passed, pulled down from YouTube.

Cont.
Mr. McIntyre said that the company would have been 24 hours
earlier in creating a public video response.
The majority of people do recognize what this was, Mr.
McIntyre said. That this was a rogue act of two individuals who
thought they were being funny. That they do not represent this
brand. That they do not represent the 100,000 people who work
every day at Dominos Pizza all over the world.
Dominos executives said they are investigating the franchise
and could take the store away from the owner for hiring a
registered sex offender.
Tim McIntyre, vice president of communication for Dominos,
told a local TV news outlet: Our primary concern at this point is
regaining our customers trust and rebuilding our brand,.

For Your Own Mental Health

WHEN YOU MANAGE A CRISIS
WITH CLIENTS WELL, DONT
FORGET TO CONGRATULATE
YOURSELF FOR DOING A
GOOD JOB
--even if no one else notices!