You walked in to work this morning, coffee in hand, ready to take on another week. But your colleagues are doing (what look like) sprints, papers are flying and your Blackberry’s buzzing like a chainsaw.

You know it’s bad. All signs are pointing to a corporate crisis.

Now’s not the time to lay blame. And until time travel’s perfected, it’s up to you – the PR pro – to help your organization weather the storm.  

You’re used to leading teams and guiding organizations down the right path. You try to keep a clear head about the whole thing but the office uproar is distracting.

To help you stay focused, here are some simple Dos and Don’ts to keep in mind when dealing with your crisis:

The last thing you want to do in the throes of a crisis is make things worse.

Remember to always refer to your crisis communications plan. But, if it gets lost in the chaos, you can fall back on these 5 reminders.

Most companies have crisis management strategies in place that management can deploy when an event threatens its brand and reputation. However, for most companies, these crisis strategies are developed within the framework of managing its own issues. It usually sounds something like this, “If it happens to us, we’re prepared to manage it.” 

But what should an organization do when a competitor is hit with a crisis or issue? What if the crisis is significant enough to affect not only the competitor’s brand but the reputation of the entire industry?

Although these types of catastrophic events are rare, such moments present significant challenges to a company that is not equipped to deal with the situation. It’s not enough for companies to have crisis management strategies in place so they can manage their own issues; companies should also have them ready when a competitor is hit with a crisis.

On January 13, 2012, a catastrophic event took place as the cruise ship, Costa Concordia (a subsidiary of the Carnival Corporation), ran aground and partially sank on the western coast of Italy. Although most of the 4,200 passengers and crew were rescued by the heroic efforts of the Italian Coast Guard, several people lost their lives and many are still missing.

Oil recovery workers pass in front of the Costa Concordia cruise ship Photo: REUTERS

Within hours of the tragedy taking place, Costa’s Communications team deployed their crisis management plan, setting up an assistance hotline and an information feed directly on their website. However, Costa has a major PR task ahead of it as it deals with the embarrassing revelation that the vessel’s Captain abandoned ship early claiming he “tripped into a lifeboat.”

Unsettling images of the tragic event have been broadcasting on TV stations, appearing in newspapers and streaming on news websites across the globe. This media coverage will have a destabilizing and potentially negative long-term effect on the reputation of not only Costa, but the cruise line industry as a whole. Consumers that were previously considering a cruise vacation may now seek the perceived ‘less risky’ choice of an all-inclusive resort or hotel getaway.

The fact is: this issue won’t just affect Costa and the Carnival Corporation; it has serious implications for all major cruise lines.

In response to this event, the Communications teams from Carnival Corporation’s competitors should be proactively communicating their commitment to safety to the media, their agency partners and their customer base. As tragic as this event is, this crisis presents an opportunity for competitors in the cruise line industry to unite, review and take group action to ensure the enforcement of safety regulations and evacuation best practices so that events like this never happen again.

A similar response was taken during BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil disaster in 2010, when industry competitors Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and ConocoPhillips, teamed up to put together $1 Billion USD in funding to develop technology and response plans for capturing and containing oil spills.

Communications teams are responsible for managing the reputation of their organization and must not ignore the impact that a competitor’s crisis might have on their reputation. In situations like the one above, Communicators cannot solely rely on media monitoring tools and clipping services to effectively manage the impact of a competitor crisis.

With a brand management solution, organizations can effectively manage multiple issues at the same time and Communicators can strategize, develop and implement an effective crisis management plan to mitigate the negative impact on their corporate reputation – even if it’s in the wake of a competitor’s crisis.

An executive has two primary responsibilities: secure revenue and protect the reputation of the organization. Interestingly, there can be tension between these two responsibilities, as the lure of budget cuts for shareholders often conflicts with the need to meet customer expectations.

So who is fundamentally responsible for corporate reputation? Traditionally, organizations have delegated this responsibility to their Corporate Communications or PR teams. However, corporate reputation isn’t solely determined by PR pros (although they’re major influencers) – it’s more often shaped by the business decisions made every day by an organization.

Reputation management is all about understanding perceptions and using that insight to shape a company’s actions and decisions. Let’s look at an example.

Recently, a Papa John’s employee was fired for printing a racial slur on a customer receipt at one of the chain’s NYC restaurants. The customer, Minhee Cho, posted a photo of the receipt and tweeted about it. As expected, Papa John’s took swift action – publicly apologizing for the incident and firing the employee in question.

In situations like the one above, it will be the after-the-fact business decisions made that will greatly affect an organization’s corporate reputation. The entire organization, from the top-down and the bottom-up, needs to understand these decisions and the follow-up actions being taken to address the backlash.

Corporations use logic in the boardroom to make business decisions but consumers use emotion to make judgments about businesses. Companies must identify this gap and understand the implications when developing their corporate strategy. When an issue arises, companies must provide assurance to its customers that the company can exercise judgment and will act in their best interests.

Papa John’s needs to deal with this issue on a broad scale, reiterating to its employees their customer service protocols and best practices. Most importantly, the organization should focus on preventing this sort of thing from happening again.

In today’s fast-paced world of information delivery, companies need enterprise tools to help them identify and figure out whether stakeholders trust them; what drives this trust; and what leads to customer outrage. To properly build and protect corporate reputation, organizations need to fully utilize these tools to allow them to focus on building enterprise-wide reputation competence.

An organization’s corporate reputation exists in the actions of its employees and the perceptions of its customers. Each corporate action should focus on securing trust equity in the mind of its stakeholders and the impact of these decisions should be closely tracked, measured and understood by its executives and Communications professionals.

Organizations need to continually focus on the role that trust plays in revenue and reputation. Only by recognizing that corporate reputation exists in the many and not in the few will companies be able to truly protect their brand. Corporate reputation is hard to build and easy to destroy.

An essential component of any media relations effort is the creation of a media list.  A media list is, as the name suggests, a list of journalists and bloggers that you plan to connect with about your news.

Why use a media list

First rule of everything: Know your audience. The action of building a media list allows you to think long and hard about who will be receiving your news, and how you might approach each individual differently to ensure they see value in covering it. A media list also ensures you haven’t forgotten someone essential and it is a handy reference for follow-up purposes, or subsequent related campaigns.

How to put together a media list

Create your media list once you have identified the campaign’s objectives and the ultimate audience you are trying to reach.  Depending on your news, you can use an online media directory to target your list by media outlet, type, geography and beats covered. Contact information in media directories is usually up-to-date, giving you one less thing to worry about. But remember, you need to supplement the information you can pull from a database with your own research.

Aim to collect the following information:

• Name, Title and Publication name
• Contact information: email, phone number, Twitter ID if you have it
• What story angles would be of greatest appeal?
• How does the journalist prefer to be contacted?
• What materials does he or she usually need or like? (video, photos?)
• What’s the best time to connect?
• What story angles are of greatest appeal?

Enhance your media list by:

• Reading each journalist or blogger’s body of work to determine whether your news is appropriate for their beat, their publication or their interests. (Refer to any articles that seem relevant to your news – but don’t pitch a journalist on a story he or she has recently written.)
• Learning whether anyone in your organization already has a relationship with anyone on your list

• Reviewing your organization’s past lists for similar campaigns. Recheck and update old information.
• Taking a look at who has written about you in the past and who has covered your competitors.
• Determining which contacts will require multimedia assets with your news.
• Considering a media group, like local or ethnic media that you haven’t before.
• Refining to ensure you only have one person from each media outlet or beat that you will contact.

Now what?

Well, get going!  Start some conversations!

Using a newswire to distribute a news release ensures all media outlets have simultaneous access to your news, so don’t feel compelled to replicate this service with a mass email to your whole media list.  Besides, the most effective pitches are individually prepared for each journalist or blogger on your list and should be handled separately according to their preferences. To save time, you can prepare any outreach emails in advance so you only need to hit ‘send’ on each one when ready.

Once you reach out, don’t forget to track your interactions in your media database. This information will come in handy next time.

Here are some resources for effective media relations that cover the next steps:

• Getting on the Radar: Tried & True Media Relations Best Practices
• 13 Ways to Keep Your Pitch From Getting Deleted

MediaVantage is packing up and going on tour; the conference circuit tour that is. Here where we’ll be this summer!

2011 MARCOM Annual Forum – Ottawa, ON June 1-2, 2011

Touted as the premiere educational forum for public and not-for-profit sector marketers and communicators, MARCOM 2011 will feature workshops and sessions on how the marketing landscape has transformed and how we can adapt in a timely fashion. The emphasis will be on how to socialize in the most authentic ways, mobilize through persuasive marketing, and communications and current technologies to revolutionize our approach and achieve measureable results.

Come visit the MediaVantage booth on the trade show floor at spot 104 to learn more about what we’re up to these days, and well, just to say hello! Who knows, you just may walk away with a brand new Amazon Kindle!

IABC 2011 World Conference – San Diego, CA June 12-15, 2011

The MediaVantage team is off to sunny San Diego for this year’s IABC World Conference. More than 1,400 communications professionals from around the world will be heading to the annual event that brings together fresh ideas, winning case studies and best practices in communication.

This year’s conference will look at how business communicators are adapting to global economic conditions by achieving more with less – maintaining the basics while capitalizing on the resources they have in unique and deliberate ways.

Join the MediaVantage team in the Exhibit Hall at booth spot 208.  Stop by, say hello and you may be heading home with an exhibit prize as well.

Hearing whispers about a Canada Party? We’re hosting some MediaVantage friends at CNW’s Canada Party at the Altitude Sky Lounge on Sunday, June 12. Find one of our team members at the conference on Sunday for a special invitation to the event you’ve been waiting all year for.

Not making it to either of those?

Our CNW colleagues will also be on hand at these conferences and available to speak with you about any MediaVantage questions you may have:

• CIRI National Conference – Lake Louise, AB June 5 to 7, 2011
• CPRS National Conference – Saint John, NB June 5 to 7, 2011

Check out CNW’s conference schedule on Beyond the Wire.

When I think of a traditional media coverage clipbook, my mind wanders to the set of Mad Men. I imagine a stack of paper piled high on a desk with an ashtray and a decanter. By comparison, today’s clipbooks have evolved to become leaner and greener.

The New Clipbook

Clipbooks have always been an important tool for sharing media mentions of campaigns and issues with internal audiences, usually senior management teams. In the past, the sheer heftiness of a clipbook was a satisfactory indicator of PR success and effort. In the not so distant past, clipbooks spoke to advertising value equivalents (AVE) or volume of mentions and focused on traditional print and broadcast media. Now clipbooks speak to an understanding of influence or relationship insight and focus on digital media such as blogs and social media, as well as traditional media.  As the popularity of AVE in measurement wanes, we are exploring new measurement possibilities for digital content, replacing volume as a key success indicator.

Digital means real-time global collaboration

In the past, the activity of finding and sharing news articles between groups in different regions presented a challenge for communicators trying to coordinate a cohesive corporate response. With clipbook content and publishing tools now available online, geographically disparate teams are benefitting from real-time collaboration. Groups can contribute to the clipbook during their working hours, regardless of time zones. Digital distribution makes it possible to share clipbooks at any time. A digital format is also easily viewed on mobile devices, keeping people in the field aware and up to date.

Saving trees and time

Digital means less paper and more trees saved, but digital efficiency also extends to workflow.  Today’s clipbook tools can and should be a simple extension of your media monitoring practise. Spending time cutting, pasting and formatting articles is almost as painful as it was to snip them out of newsprint and type up transcripts. So choose the tools that can make the tradition of clipbooks as lean and green as possible. And speaking of tradition, whatever happened to those office decanters?

What’s the role of a media clipbook in your corporate culture?  What is the balance between traditional media and digital media sources?

By Joanne Kern, Training and Education Manager, MediaVantage

When a crisis hits your organization, it’s integral to listen to how the media and your audiences are reacting to the issue. This will help you align your messages and adjust your plans as the issue unfolds.

In January 2009, salmonella contamination at a peanut manufacturing plant was linked to nine deaths and 691 reported illnesses resulting in the largest food recall in North American history. The industry association, the American Peanut Council (APC), looked to Argyle Communications to help weather the storm.

Argyle used media relations and digital strategies to provide accurate information to consumers, preserve confidence in the U.S. peanut industry’s products and practices, and to develop an industry consensus for a post-crisis recovery strategy. With Argyle’s help, the American Peanut Council emerged from the crisis as a leading source on food safety.

On Monday, April 11, 2011, Argyle president Daniel Tisch and vice president Alison George shared the secrets of their successful crisis management campaign as part of the CPRS National webinar series. You can listen to the archived webcast on the CPRS website here.

CNW connected with Dan and Alison to ask them some questions about media relations and crisis communications:

Obviously, media relations played a big part in managing this crisis. As the messages and information changed, how did you ensure your spokespeople stayed on message?

“While training and preparation were very important, our client’s success flowed mainly from never forgetting the most important principle: food safety must be a food industry’s number one priority. It was critical to be completely aligned with messages coming from federal regulators, and later to be direct and honest in condemning the unconscionable actions of the manufacturer at the centre of the crisis.”

How important was it to track media coverage? How did these insights affect your plans?

“We tracked both mainstream and social media every day, since this was one of the first major recalls played out on the social web. We quickly realized that our target consumer was going online for information about food safety, so we had to watch that channel and use it to reach her. Monitoring also told us early that broadcast media were more likely to get the story wrong, leading us to deploy our dietician spokesperson on TV.

Monitoring also told us we were turning around the story. We tracked a rapid decline in inaccurate stories and a rapid growth in stories featuring our client’s messages. Tracking of social web coverage on peanut butter showed a coverage balance of 18% positive, 33% neutral, 49% negative in the first 30 days, exceeding our expectations given the seriousness of the situation.”

Of course, the program went on to win a CPRS National Award of Excellence, but what made it successful in your mind?

“The most important legacy of our program was the facilitation of an industry-wide consensus to review agricultural and manufacturing practices, enhance collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration, improve training and education at all levels, and reaffirm the American Peanut Council’s role in leading food safety initiatives. This provided important reassurance to consumers and propelled the industry not just to a recovery, but to a new record in sales.”

Is there anything you would have done differently?

“The major thing we would have done differently is being not just web-savvy – which we were – but also “web-ready.” We had to put a lot of online resources in place very quickly. With online and social media so much more advanced today than in 2009, it’s critical for all industries to have Internet tools ready for a crisis at any time.”

What key lessons or tips would you share based on your experience with this crisis?

1. Make sure you understand your client’s business, the policy and regulatory environment surrounding it, and the drivers of consumer attitudes and behaviour.
2. Know and anticipate the triggers of controversy.
3. Understand the decision-making process — both within the organization and within government and other stakeholders that could affect the outcome.
4. Build relationships with stakeholders early – not just when you need them.
5. Accept that you can’t control everything. Control what you say, and try to influence others with timely, accurate information – proactively and responsively.
6. Be web-savvy and web-ready.
7. If change is going to be thrust upon you, try to lead that change.

Media monitoring has evolved beyond a package of clippings that arrives on your desk the week after a launch. With online communications proliferating daily, communicators – and government communicators are no exception – need to keep their ear to the ground, listening for media mentions, social media conversations and online news.

But listening is only half the battle. Reporting on and analyzing your monitoring results can help you detect trends, nip a crisis in the bud, or adjust your communication strategy on the fly.

The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) uses MediaVantage for monitoring and reporting. Here’s what Mathieu Larocque, CATSA’s Senior Advisor, External Communications, had to say about why reporting is crucial to their team:

“Monthly reports that we produce using MediaVantage are an integral part of our dashboard reporting approach. We use the information to evaluate and adjust both our proactive and reactive media relations strategies. They are also used more broadly to evaluate the work of our branch. The data generated by MediaVantage is incorporated in a larger dashboard that includes many other indicators. The reports are also used at the end of each proactive campaign to evaluate reach and the overall effectiveness of a specific campaign. Likewise, we also use the reporting function to analyze a particular situation or episode related to our operations.”

For more on how reporting on monitoring results can give you the intelligence to analyze why and when to adjust your strategic communication plans, download our white paper, Continuous Measurement and Analysis.

In January we announced significantly enhanced online media monitoring capabilities within the MediaVantage platform. Today, we’ve got more good news to share. Powered by Lexalytics, a leader in sentiment analysis, MediaVantage now offers automated tonality scoring and sentiment analysis in English and French.

The French speaking community is an important audience for Canadian organizations and inter-listed US companies. Now, even if you don’t speak French, you can understand how the market is responding to your brand online and in social media.

Here’s what Nicole Guillot, CNW’s Vice President of Product Management and Operations, had to say about the announcement:

For more on this announcement, check out our Social Media Release. And if you’re still scratching your head on what the heck sentiment analysis is all about, check out these recent posts:

• What the Heck is Sentiment Analysis Anyway?
• How public relations and corporate communications can leverage sentiment analysis

I was recently invited by the Carleton Communications Studies Undergraduate Student Society (CUSS) and the Algonquin College Public Relations program (ACPR), to speak with students and share my experiences as a communications and PR professional. These are the type of events that I personally love to attend, as I find it to be very important to give back to students who are preparing to enter the workforce.

While I had the pleasure to share my thoughts on various topics, many of the questions revolved around career path and work opportunities. I’m summed up my recommendations in the following three points:

1. Get active on social networks. Remember this cliché? ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. In comms and PR, this is amplified by 10. Your networks are crucial going forward so it’s never too early to start making a name for yourself. Web 2.0 is the way of the future for practitioners, and establishing your digital profile is important. Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging are great ways to connect with others and help you develop your skill sets.
2. Get involved with extra curricular. I hate to break it to some of you, but if you’re hoping to land your dream job by browsing Jobboom and Monster, it’s probably not going to happen. Once again, good contacts have to be developed, groomed, and over time, will help you elevate your status. To get there, nothing beats getting involved with extra-curricular activities. For example, volunteering your time with local associations (CPRS, IABC, etc) will give you the chance to meet other professionals. If you do a good job, it will be easy to approach them to discuss work opportunities, and many of them will likely go to bat for you. Remember, most people who are on the board of such associations are usually well connected comms/PR practitioners…wink wink.
3. Make a short list of potential employers. You have to ask yourself ‘Where do I want to work?’ Agency? Non-profit? Public sector? Make a short list and start doing the ground work. If you don’t have the contacts, your first step can be as easy as contacting the HR department and finding out when they will be hiring next. If they say three months, call back in two and half to be sure the date hasn’t changed. The logic behind this is to do the leg work before the job posting goes up. By doing this, you’ll give yourself a running start over other applicants.

While there is no perfect science in successfully landing a PR job or internship, implementing these three points will give you traction and the best chances of landing your dream position.