How to Manage a Brand Crisis

Addressing the shock to your brand system…

On January 11th, 25-year-old aspiring dancer Orla Baxendale from the UK, who moved to New York in pursuit of her dream, died tragically from anaphylactic shock after eating a mislabeled cookie that contained an allergen, peanuts, at a social gathering. The cookies were a private label product from the regional, seven-store grocery chain Stew Leonard’s based in Connecticut. Here is NBC Today Show’s report, re-distributed on Tik Tok.

It was sad and devastating outcome for a young person showing so much promise and for her family, amid circumstances that appear preventable.

The tainted cookies were made by Cookies United, a private label vendor to Stew Leonard’s, who is claiming the addition of peanuts to their recipe was widely reported to staff at the Leonard’s chain. Litigation likely will emerge in various directions and could refire another news cycle downstream. The sudden outcome of this debacle prove again how unforeseen events can lead to life altering impacts, challenging everyone involved to look closely, critically at what transpired.

Crisis doesn’t wait for you

The event serves as a cold reminder of the nature of crisis. It comes at you from around the corner, often without any warning. The impact of crisis to your brand is likely be very public and repeated widely in media settings. In this case, the cookie tragedy is everywhere. It can have an impact on brand reputations, trust and will likely spur a variety of sea changes within the organizations involved.

• How should you prepare for this?
• What is the nature of crisis and what are the rules of behavior in these things?
• What are the steps that should be taken when an event like this unfolds?

Do the words “stock tanking” or “brand under assault” give you chills? What is true: crises of various kinds are a fact of life for any business, and as the word implies, tend to emerge when you aren’t expecting it. The nature of crisis management has changed drastically in the digital and social media era, where negative narratives can circulate at the speed of light and instantly inherit a “bandwagon effect” — as various channels simultaneously spin-off of each other, spreading news of the unfolding chain of events. The future of your business and brand can hang in the balance.

More than ever, careful planning and a keen understanding of the nature of this threat are vital to corralling the fallout from recalls, fatalities/injuries, litigation, celebrity talent misfires, self-inflicted gaffes, accusations of misconduct, complaints and cascading natural disasters that come busting through the door of your company reputation and business.

Here we will discuss a few rules of the road and provide insight on the steps to successfully tell your story, especially when it appears the odds are stacked against you.

Temptation to go underground

Every brand, every business today lives in a glass house. “What can be known, will be known” is an unavoidable fact in the digital age. While you can construct an outbound message, you cannot dictate the chain of external events that will apply a developing, evolving narrative to the situation you face. As vexing as it may be, you still need to participate in the conversation.

Some may be tempted and abetted by over-zealous legal counsel to close-down external avenues of communication in the hopes that it will all blow over. But that rarely, if ever, occurs while the outside forces at work proceed under their own inertia. The unfolding story is in the hands of others — rarely a good thing as the human condition is to always assume the worst. Indeed, negative stories make for good headlines and often lay the groundwork in the court of public opinion. If you participate you have a path to balance the message.

There are important rules here that give everyone a fair shot at adjusting the odds if followed with resolute energy and commitment. Fear, however, can have a debilitating impact and crisis conditions offer the precise moment when courage is job one and resolute belief in truth is always the starting point.

Honesty is the best policy

Square one is always the same. Seek the truth. There’s an old saying, where there’s smoke there’s fire, and that means whatever has occurred in the background to precipitate a crisis will surface — eventually. The human capacity for forgiveness is nearly always underestimated and so admitting a mistake may feel hard to do or embarrassing, but the moment of discomfort is worth the reputational gain from honesty, by acknowledging a misstep and saying you’re sorry.

Note: messages of empathy and sorrow when real human impacts exist are important. However, the message must be pure and without parallel defensive arguments that tend to ameliorate and dilute the effort to extend grief solidarity with those involved. Litigating the details of an event in the same breath is disrespectful to the character of the message. There are other venues and paths for sorting truth.

Crisis management guidance

Speed (of light)

Lightning fast is how the world works now in the face of unfolding crisis. This is not the time to be figuring out your response strategies. The plan and process for crisis response should already be in hand and blessed by the leadership team. This includes:

• Risk assessments of where crisis could originate
• Process for investigation and discovery/analysis on the scope of the problem
• Channels of approval for messaging
• Approved spokesperson
• Legal consultation
• Infrastructure for rapid news dissemination
• Same for company social channel activation and content creation
• Stakeholder audience consultations and status advisories

Fairness and balance in reporting

As media weigh in, your effort to seek fairness in the reporting is in direct proportion to your ability to provide factual, verified information and credible sources that attest to its voracity. Media often look to third party subject matter experts to weigh in as “analysts” of what has transpired. Have you already identified expert sources that can serve in this role? It matters because media will look for these voices.

For the most part. media will be respectful of the need for balance. It is in the fabric of journalistic integrity. Should you run into a media outlet bound and determined to tell a one-sided story and actively ignore your efforts to offer important information and perspective, then it may be necessary to remind executives at a media organization of their responsibility to avoid filing “malicious and reckless” reporting that steps them into precarious territory.

Credible third-party assessment and evaluation

When crisis strikes and company behaviors, policies, standards or actions are involved, it’s important in many cases to have an outside, third party evaluate what has occurred and provide recommendations to mitigate and improve policies and practices aimed at preventing similar events in the future. The value of an outside resource for this work is important to avoid “fox guarding the hen house” assertions. “Conducting an internal investigation,” while important to do so (quickly), needs to be done with consideration of trust and credibility for the outcomes.

Training, message and sound bite

In the midst of crisis is not the time to be figuring out who the spokesperson should be. In most cases, the CEO owns this role. There may be support from an internal expert who can provide added context, but the lion’s share of attribution in any crisis situation should come from the top. That means the leader has been through rigorous media training and knows the rules of the road of how to respond to reporter questions, especially when they are probing and may be designed to elicit an emotional or off-message, speculation style answer.

Messaging could not come at higher stakes. This is where professionals in the crisis space are vital. Words matter. The balance between empathy and fact-based answers is nuanced. Truth remains paramount. Evasive statements tend to backfire. You are not obligated to answer any question when you don’t yet know the details. You can state, “I don’t know the answer to that question, but I will get back to you.” Some reporters may attempt to push you off your messaging and answer with speculation or even impatience or anger. Don’t bite. Ever. Unflappable is the right tone.

For broadcast know that your attribution is likely a soundbite and so planning for that statement should be a facet of your preparation.

Of note, employees should not be granting interviews and if approached, should know who to refer the reporter to for any conversation. Employees should be instructed to convey they are not authorized spokespeople. Message clarity, truth and facts matter and thus important for the channels of internal, organizational communication to remain clear and defined at all times.

Special conditions — opposition media analysis

In the case of litigation where another party may be actively courting media on an ongoing basis, it’s helpful to have your crisis media experts do an analysis of potential opposing story angles and possible deployment of third-party sources, so you are actively prepared with a response strategy.

Strategy in response to crisis

As stated earlier, brand reputations are involved. When the overall balance of media attention in aggregate swings in favor of positive news, it can help provide a measure of protection for your most valuable asset, your brand. That means a surgical media strategy in other channels aimed at positive storytelling can help sway the balance of public perception down a different path, one that supports your equity and value proposition. When and where this makes sense should be considered within the media environment you’re dealing with, and with respect to status of the current news cycle.

Crisis happens. It doesn’t mean you are at the mercy of uncontrolled events, even though it may seem that way in the moment. If you always land on the side of the angels with respect to truth and honesty, in the right hands with the right message, you can achieve a balanced and fair narrative even in the most difficult times.

This is by no means a complete download on what sits between the bookends of crisis strategy. However, if this conversation creates questions around your crisis preparedness and response readiness, use the link below to launch an informal conversation with a team of experts who have been down this trail many times before.

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Bob Wheatley is the CEO of Chicago-based Emergent, The Healthy Living Agency. Traditional brand marketing often sidesteps more human qualities that can help consumers form an emotional bond. Yet brands yearn for authentic engagement, trust and a lasting relationship with their customers. Emergent helps brands erase ineffective self-promotion and replace it with clarity, honesty and deeper meaning in their customer relationships and communication. For more information, contact Bob@Emergent-Comm.com and follow on Twitter @BobWheatley.