Why planning for a crisis is so important for brands in 2024

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you’ll know that a prominent TV presenter has been having a *slight* reputation management issue. As a middle-class woman of a certain age, I have many opinions on this, but I save those for the Christmas party!

What I want to look at in this blog is the importance of a solid crisis comms plan for businesses and brands and how to use social media to help (not hinder) the situation.

Business crises can range from product recall or a scandal, through to more serious scenarios such as employee or customer injury and death. How a brand handles the situation can make or break its reputation. With social media, responding quickly, effectively and transparently has never been more critical. The objective is always to minimise damage to the company’s reputation, and maintain trust.

A proactive crisis comms plan ensures that you’re prepared to react swiftly and strategically when disaster strikes. Plans include:

• Identification of all potential crises scenarios

• Establishment of a crisis management team – this team can be external for example via a marketing/PR or comms agency

• Drafts of pre-approved statements

• A flowchart of comms channels for all stakeholders – both internal and external

I’ve worked in crisis comms for over 20 years and below are my top tips….

Keep your cool - Crisis scenarios are high-pressured but clear, transparent and calm interactions will be reassuring to employees, investors, and customers. Remain in control at all times.

Quick response and acknowledgement of the issue - Burying your head in the sand always makes a problem worse, acknowledging the issue even before you have all your ducks in a row can stop the rumour mill from going into overdrive. Everybody needs to know you take the issue as seriously as they do.

Consistency of message - All your comms in a crisis must be fully aligned so whether stakeholders are seeing social media posts, internal emails or press statements they are saying the same thing. Being inconsistent can confuse people and amplify the situation.

Multiple updates - Regular and real-time communications are a must to keep all audiences updated. Silence, particularly on a brand’s social media platforms speaks volumes and can cause frustration and suspicion.

Offer REAL empathy - Genuine empathy can rebuild trust, and taking time to understand the impact of the situation on your brand’s stakeholders is important, people want to feel heard and understood.

Don’t underestimate the reach of social media - Social media has the power to amplify a crisis. This means that you need to monitor every social platform your brand has a presence on, to understand the conversations that are happening and enable you to gauge the sentiment and react / engage accordingly, in real time.

Both positive and negative information spreads very fast across social platforms and therefore real-time monitoring and reactivity is key. Without responding to chatter online things can very quickly escalate to an unmanageable level. The key with this though is to have pre-planned and agreed/considered messages, shooting from the hip may well be speedy but it can also be disastrous (just ask the aforementioned TV presenter!)

Social channels also enable companies to talk directly to their customers and efficient and personalised engagement can ease people’s frustrations –dedicating customer services teams to help with this will show customers you’re committed to listening and resolving the issue.

Transparency on social platforms is vital. Being honest about mistakes, giving solutions, and being empathetic are essential for maintaining trust. The public calls out many brands on social media if they believe they are insincere.

Once a crisis has been successfully managed and passed, social media remains key to a brand’s recovery. Businesses need to take the opportunity for continued communication, sharing positive news, future plans etc to maintain transparent engagement with customers.

Today, crisis communications is more than just responding to negative press—it’s about having a speedy but strategic approach across all stakeholder touchpoints.

If you need some advice on putting a crisis strategy together for your business or executing a crisis comms plan, we’d be happy to help!

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