The following is a guest post from frequent contributor Rick Kelley, director of crisis communications for Triad Strategies. Ryan Braun: Victim or Villain? To many who have listened to the sports pundits hammering major league baseball player Ryan Braun for winning an appeal of his 50-game suspension “on a technicality” after failing a drug test [...]
Can you survive a crisis? Every single business has potential problems, and the difference between whether they sink or swim in the aftermath of a crisis can often be determined in the critical 24 hour period right after it breaks. On March 1, Jonathan Bernstein will present, “Communicating in Crisis: The First 24 Hours,” a [...]
Play your cards close until the time is right Veteran reporters are wily creatures, and when it comes to determining whether the juicy lead they’ve got about a breaking crisis at your company is legit, they can read volumes from a simple phone call. A recent Pro Sports Communications blog post by Martine Charles took [...]
You can’t cover up, so just come clean Crisis management can be like presidential politics: If you don’t set the record straight immediately and honestly, you can be out of the running in a flash. Perception quickly becomes reality and the negative consequences snowball. Case in point: Herman Cain. By failing to address allegations of [...]
Does the evolution of tech and communication mean our methods must drastically change? Social media has already changed how we do customer service, and the rise of prominent posters, or powerful groups (who hasn’t heard of the mommy bloggers?) continues to affect the ways we handle issues. With infamous moves ranging from the sensational, like [...]
Know your plan and play your role Every company has a organizational chart – a ladder of power, but how this structure functions during a crisis must be clarified with all the stakeholders in the company; particularly the communications department. A crisis can hit at any time, and the company needs to determine secondary command [...]
What NOT to do Just as with businesses, it’s smart for prominent individuals to set up regular searches for mentions of their name on the web. While Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s got this part right, assigning communication director Sherriene Jones-Sontag to monitor negative commentary on social media, more than a few things were lacking in [...]
Say you’re sorry like you mean it It’s common to make mistakes. What’s far less common is an organization that knows how give a serious and genuine apology. Thankfully for these clueless companies, tech-based business consultant Anne Weiskopf published her “Six Keys to an Apology in Crisis Management” in a SpinSucks article: Address the issue [...]
How a dose of negativity can help your organization The natural reaction for most people when they start seeing negative sentiment about their organization arise is panic. Do I respond? Do I duck and hide? And most of all…how bad is this going to hurt? Truth is, the more devoted your stakeholders are, the more [...]
If you answered no, you’re fooling yourself. Even those in the most benign of industries are bound to encounter situations where their reputation is in danger. Let your reputation get hurt and you’ll soon see the bottom line follow. One of the best ways to prevent this is by doing regular vulnerability audits, a multi-disciplinary [...]
Jonathan L. Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of crisis management – crisis response, vulnerability assessment, planning, training and simulations.[Read more ...]
Erik Bernstein is a freelance writer and Bernstein Crisis Management's social media manager. He also edits Crisis Manager, a newsletter about crisis management.
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