Everything you used to believe about crisis strategy is evolving

By Robert Wheatley

Yesterday I had the extraordinary opportunity to speak at the annual conference of the Pulp and Paper Manufacturers Association in Milwaukee. My deepest thanks to Dick Kendall for inviting me. This organization represents leading companies that make paper products and the components that go into them. The theme for the conference was “The Road to Recovery.” And part of the agenda was devoted to disaster and what to do when it strikes.

My part: to present the case for an entirely new approach to crisis communications strategy, emerging from the growth, influence and realities of social and digital media.

Here’s the deck I presented:

Just before I got up to talk, two gentlemen with Packaging Corporation of America, Ron Zimmerman and Bruce Kummerfeldt, led a heart-rending review of a recent plant disaster that claimed the lives of three of their colleagues following the explosion of a large storage tank. They chronologically described the unfolding events from the moment the ground suddenly shook like an earthquake through the days and weeks that followed. Media was on-site at the plant within 20 minutes of the explosion.

You could feel their pain as they described and maybe re-lived — the unnerving conditions and loss of life. Some of the activities in response to press and other agencies (OSHA) followed a well-worn path that those of us in crisis response have been down so many, many times before. But all of that is changing. Right now.

It’s Now Disaster at the Speed of Light

Early in my career I worked on the aftermath of the Bhopal disaster in India that claimed at least 10,000 lives. I got involved downstream (1984) with a team assembled by Ogilvy & Mather, agency for Union Carbide, to address mounting community relations challenges in areas where their domestic plants operated. In those days, we spent time in due diligence, research and planning, and our work with media followed this effort using the familiar tactical tools we had come to rely on in the TV generation of sound bites, fact sheets, third party expert interviews, etc. The materials and tools we developed became the grist for stories written or produced by trained journalists. We all understood the rules of engagement.

I love this quote from Rupert Murdoch that just nails the evolutionary moment we are in: Technology is shifting the power away from editors, publishers, the establishment, the media elite. Now it’s the people who are in control.

The traditional media world of rules of engagement has given way to information, images and video uploaded by anyone (not professional journalists) at anytime to platforms that are instantly global. And those pieces of communication may or may not convey the facts correctly. Perception indeed leads reality.

My message: you are not in control anymore. And events unfold at speeds approximating the nanoseconds of digital transmission. Social media can help create and help solve crisis events. But the time to get involved in social media is not at the moment of crisis, but now.

The crisis communications toolbox has forever changed. There are advantages to social media communication in our ability to listen more quickly, effectively and to distribute information directly to stakeholders and by-pass the once exclusive filter of traditional media. But that comes, too, with responsibilities founded on honesty, humility and transparency.

It’s a new world, requiring a new recipe. Are you ready? Says Jason Baer of Convince and Convert blog: If you can’t get a video of your CEO on YouTube within 3 hours, anytime of day or night, you are not ready.

It’s time to overhaul the crisis response protocols. You agree?