A Crisis Communications agency
CAN PLAY AN ESSENTIAL ROLE IN HELPING YOU PLAN YOUR CRISIS MANAGEMENT STRATEGY
Crisis Communications Strategies
Putting a Crisis Management Strategy in place is considered a vital component of any business plan today, more than ever.
Peppermint Soda’s Elite Crisis Communications team creates robust crisis communication plans so you can keep a cool head in times of crisis.
Working with a Crisis Communications agency is a sound business investment as Crisis Communications is probably the most difficult element to design of any communications strategy.
going viral
This is because when negative stories about your business are posted online, they have the potential to cause real, lasting, widespread damage very rapidly. It’s called “going viral”. The outcome can be potentially devastating for the public and company directors, and cause the share price of a public company to tumble, frightening investors and — for both private and public companies — resulting in consumers abandoning your products and services forever. Meaning the end of your business.
The problem with knowing how to respond to a crisis is no one knows exactly what shape a crisis will take, nor when a crisis will hit. Crisis preparedness is critical to implementing an effective crisis response designed to suit any scenario.
Peppermint Soda will be able to prepare you in case of any eventuality to:
Guarantee a speedy yet calm response
Reassure your high-level internal and external stakeholders
Manage your business’s response to the media effectively
Peppermint Soda
the Crisis Communications agency favoured by leading brands
Our amazing Elite Crisis Communications team has in-depth experience working with high-profile brands and situations which have required an immediate, sensitive, yet controlled response in a crisis to minimise damage to reputation. Everything from covering news stories in war-torn zones to dealing with contaminated consumer brands that could potentially pose a real threat to life.
Crisis Communications Strategies are more nuanced and complex than ever to design, as they now include online reputation management and social media management. As an extreme example, just think about the $5M awarded against Donald Trump recently: half of the Award was for defamation. In a similar vein, what one of your employees may consider ‘just a tweet’ — once online ֫— could be considered libellous, and company directors held personally responsible as a result.
Crisis Preparedness
Your business may hope a crisis never hits, and maybe it won’t
The reason any business invests in crisis preparedness is simple. Crisis Management is also known as Reputation Management, and there’s an old adage: they say a reputation takes a lifetime to build, but once lost, it can never be regained. That’s why high-level external and internal stakeholders often insist on seeing a crisis management plan incorporated as part of any business plan before they will consider investing.
Although phones, mobile devices and tablets can offer good quality video filming and video editing facilities, there are several reasons why you should consider using our professional video production and video editing suite services to tell your story.
Customers need never know about your contingency plans and, indeed, should not.
No one wants to find themselves immersed in a crisis situation that is a result of a senior spokesperson’s faux pas. Remember Gerald Ratner, the former CEO of Ratner’s Jewellery?
He made a joke in one of his speeches about how cheap his products were, and it ended up back-firing on him so badly that it cost him his business. Customers hate a whiff of disaster and fled the company.
Where they had previously thought
“value,”
the CEO himself told them he thought the products were
“c**p”
One throwaway remark destroyed his business in an instant
The question you need to answer is
are you taking your business’s Reputation Management seriously?
Reputation management is a critical component in a crisis situation; it will require an immediate yet sophisticated crisis response if you are to minimise potential damage to your brand and any threat of legal action and maintain business continuity.
Peppermint Soda’S
3-point plan for successful crisis and reputation management covers:
Summarising your current communications strategy, senior spokespeople, company messaging and products or services, vertical markets and customer segmentation
How to avoid blame or, if and when you should simply “fess up”. No two situations are the same. Remember the contaminated bottled water and baby milk scandals? The CEO tried to duck the issue and came out worse off. All the expert analysis afterwards dictated that he and the company would have come out stronger and better placed if he’d simply admitted the problem.
Building out the framework for a ‘rapid response’ plan to make sure you are prepared for any eventuality so you will be able to minimise any potential fallout to your brand’s reputation in case of emergency
Crisis Preparedness
Our workshops comprehensively and forensically cover all eventualities, such as:
Is this a no-fault scenario?
Does a works site have to be physically closed down because of contamination or danger to life?
Is a product recall required?
Do Public Services need to be immediately notified?
How will you brief the switchboard?
What will you direct them to say?
Who is available on the rota for that 2.00 a.m. call local time?
Should you issue an immediate statement to the press?
Who will brief the media?
What spokespeople are available?
Is the situation containable, or is it a question of damage control as it’s already gone viral?
Who will field calls?
To whom should they direct calls?
Get in touch
Call a member of Peppermint Soda’s Elite Reputation Management team now for a no-obligation, in-confidence discussion
There is a reason we win awards that cover issues relating to brand management. While you may not think your brand may ever be exposed in this way, Reputation Management should be seen as something that is like insurance. You take out a policy knowing you are covered but hoping you won’t ever have to call upon it.
Let’s get you prepared for every eventuality with a plan that your stakeholders and investors will love but that we all hope will never have to be implemented — [email protected]