Crisis management PR

The key principle of effective crisis management is to act before the issue gets out of control and negative views become entrenched.

By taking the “bad things can happen to good companies” approach and being prepared, a company will, however, minimise the risk, reduce any damage and often mitigate any lasting effect on its reputation all together.  Companies that are good at this can often come out of a crisis with their reputation enhanced rather than damaged.

Some organisations say they have nothing to worry about.  However, an attack on your reputation can be baseless, undeserved, and plain unfair – putting your head in the sand won’t make it go away.

Every crisis has a similar life-cycle where they can escalate very quickly given fuel and oxygen, much like a bushfire. What starts off as a spark may burn your house down.

Regardless of where the crisis arises, it is how you react to it that is important. Having a ‘holding statement’ in your top drawer is not sufficient – when a crisis starts it is likely that your processes and resources will be overwhelmed. If you are overwhelmed, it is likely that the news cycle will roll over you and negative views will be entrenched before you can react effectively. The exercise then becomes one of reputation recovery rather than reputation protection.

Putting together a high quality crisis management team is critical for any business.

De Wintern is expert at helping organisations respond to a crisis, but our preferred approach is to help you avoid one in the first place. We are experienced crisis management consultants.

Our proprietary tool sets include:

• Vulnerability audits
• Issues Management Frameworks
• Crisis Preparation and Response
• Reputation Management
• Reputation Recovery

If you need pro active help with crisis management services please
contact De Wintern to catch issues before they become crises.