Basics of a crisis communications plan

Five ways to get photography working for your organization

Five ways to make your web site work harder

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Basics of a crisis
communication plan                

For many organizations, the complete destruction of all public and communication infrastructure has driven home a classic tenet of public relations:  every organization needs a crisis communication plan.

How many organizations actually have a crisis communication plan? Very few. In 22 years of PR working in major Canadian corporations, professional services firms, government, and non-profits, I have only seen two crisis plans. Interestingly, these were at a freight railroad and an electric utility—presumably organizations that, from time-to-time, would have need for crisis communication. What about other organizations?

Five categories of crises

Proactively, figure out a range on bad things that could happen to your organization. There are five categories of crises:

1.  Natural & physical disasters:  fire, earthquake, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.

2. Accidents:  the company jet goes down with six of the company’s most important executives. Fire at a convention.

3. Product & service failure:  whether by malicious tampering (Tylenol), poor quality (product recall) and misuse (Firestone tires that were under-inflated on Ford Explorers).

4. Scandal-style crises:  One of your executives is charged with a criminal offense. One of your employees goes berserk and kills 17 people.

5. Unintended consequences:  A problem in a third-party organization deeply affects your company.  Right now, thousands of Canadian stores are without fall fashions because of the wildcat strikes by truck drivers at the Vancouver Port. And in England, there is a lack of cheap underwear because of changes in UK-China tariff agreements.

An organization could have 30 to 50 bad scenarios. Communication professionals also need permission to do this in large organizations. There are three reasons why permission is indeed the stumbling block:  1) people are not sufficiently pessimistic, 2) writing these plans takes a lot of time and involves a lot of people, and organizations are reluctant to devote this time to a crisis communication plan, and 3) writing a crisis communication plan involves examining management, operations and safety, and all too often, and organizations don’t want PR people examining their management practices.

Writing the plans, do you write specific, highly detailed information such as which doors to exit from if other doors are blocked, or “broad strokes” plans. Any plan needs to have some specifics—dialing 9-1-1 is not enough.

Contact lists

At the most basic level, you need to know where to get help and where to get a hold of people. And the lists have to be somewhere other than in the burning building, or the server that just got flooded.

Today, communication departments seems to sweat the content at nauseum (ever notice how a simple news release or brochure can go through 17 sets of changes?), but somehow most organizations have forgotten about photography.

Some of the reasons I’ve heard from organizations as to why photography has been abandoned include:

1. "Words are more important than pictures."

2. "Our photos don’t get used."

3. "We don’t have the time."

4. "It’s a lot of bother."

5. "It’s expensive."

For me, these are the effects, rather than the causes, of insufficient thinking about and planning for photography for a brochure, an annual report, a newsletter article or a news release. Or a web site.

Here are some ways to help turn your thinking about photography inside out:

1/ Pictures are (still) worth a thousand words.

Pictures have been around longer than words. Prehistoric man drew pictures on the sides of caves in Lescaux, France 40,000 years before the earliest writing. In fact, Egyptian hieroglyphics are based on pictographs. Early languages such as Cuneiform, Linear B and Sanskrit subsequently used symbols rather than pictures, early precursors of today’s modern alphabets.

Visuals are more important than ever and every organization can leverage them to great advantage. The job of the photo is to get people to read the story.

Fashion is an industry entirely dependent on photography, both stills and film. Music is no longer just for the ear, but has a huge visual component in music videos. Today, some organizations spend the equivalent of the GDP of small countries on branding everything from candy bars to fancy cars.

Today, photography is more important than ever precisely because of the Internet. Each of us is now a skimmer, not a reader. A good photo accompanying a news story, for example, or a good shot on a brochure cover screams: "Read me, now!" A photo will increase attention on what you’re promoting or selling, and therefore increase the likelihood your story will get read.

2/ What do you want the photo to communicate?

It seems like a blinding flash of the obvious: What do you want the photo to communicate? If photography is an after thought, or if not a lot of thought goes into it in the first place, the results are predictable: "garbage in, garbage out." Really think about what you’re communicating. This is hard work. Explore several ideas before you settle on the final one.

• What is the most important idea or concept you’re trying to promote or sell?

• Can this story be expressed with one idea, and therefore one visual concept or photo?

• If not, what aspect of the idea best lends itself to photography? [Sometimes, an illustration might be a better option than a photo.]

• The concrete and the specific beats an abstract every time.

• If you can incorporate people in the concept, so much the better. People always like looking at pictures of other people.

• Don’t discount the category of "PR stunts." The Cheese Boutique, a popular deli in Toronto’s trendy Bloor West Village, rolled a 200-lb wheel of Parmesan from Bloor Street to announce the move to its new location on Ripley Street six years ago. The shot made it into the community newspaper. Wasn’t that cheesy? Exactly.

• Differentiate your photo.

Everyone is looking for the unique, the special, the different. News editors have hundreds of photos to choose from daily, and they want interesting ones. Boring photos don’t get used. End of story.

But if you put in some effort to differentiate your photos, they stand a very good chance of being published. You can even do this with cliché shot:

• Ribbon-cutting: for the opening of a daycare, have the toddlers do the ribbon-cutting with kiddie scissors. For a garden centre, have a large pair of hedge shears. For a hospital, have surgeons dressed in hospital greens use forceps or scalpels…. You get the idea.

• Ground-breaking ceremonies: forget the gold-plated shovel. Instead, rent one of those tiny Mitstubishi diggers and put your VIP in it. Or, rent an auger from Home Depot and have your whole executive team hold it in position as it breaks the ground. Hard hats and safety boots required.

• Cheque presentations: ditch the giant cheque in favour of a large paper-maché piggy bank with the amount of its contents written in big letters on its side. Or, get a wheelbarrow full of change with a caption: "$2,000 in change, just a portion what Consolidated Diversified Inc. is donating for XX cause." Or, better yet, use a photo of what the money will be used for [computer equipment, food for the homeless, clothing to keep kids warm in winter, etc.]

• Corner stone unveiling or building dedication: have your VIP put the final stone in place with the trowel and mortar, with a stone mason helping. (I always thought those little curtains or drapes set up in the middle of no where were really out of place.)

• Award presentations: go for a tight head shot of the winner alongside (above, below or side by side) with the actual award. This is better than those medium-length shot of the winner, with several hangers-on. Focus on who won the award; this might be a formal, studio portrait, with the actual award in the background.

This consists of two parts: show editors what is available in thumbnail photos via e-mail. Next, give them the exact URL address on your website where they can download photos with resolutions they need.

People love looking at pictures of those they know and those they don’t know. Captions always get high readership. So, list each person in your photo with (correct spellings and titles) for news editors. If professional communicators don’t do this, news editors don’t have the time. The photo may run, with an obscure caption that will not acknowledge all your people.

Other than building signage, delivery trucks and business cards, the main "storefront" or public persona for your organization is your website. It is now expected that anyone in business has a website—and most organizations do.

There is a world of difference between those that just "do" and those that "do them well." Here are five ways to make your website work harder for your organization:

1. Keep your website current. This seems a blinding flash of the obvious, but there are a surprising number of websites that have been created and then abandoned. The last time they were updated was sometime in July 2002. In Internet time, that’s the equivalent of when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. Flag new items as such, or better yet, put them right on the Home Page. First rule of journalism: don’t bury the lead.

2. Give your public a reason to come back. Something new is good, but something new that’s topical and that people can use, or better yet, act upon is even better. Industry-specific commentary or insight, with a "to-do" or "how-to" list is useful.

3. Include names, addresses and e-mail of your contact people. Many websites don’t contain addresses let alone e-mail links to specific people in your organization. Frequently, it is impossible to tell if an organization is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio or Brussels, Belgium. Like voicemail, your website can be an anonymous front for your organization, but guess what: people like to know who they might be doing business with and where those people are located.

4. Include photos of your people. Many websites don’t feature any photos of people—anywhere. The ones that do typically use stock photography. While models may be better looking (and have better haircuts), they aren’t the real people that help drive your organization. Besides, using photos of real employees is a wonderful employee communications opportunity that many organizations miss.

5. Don’t give in to mediocre graphic standards. Many websites are over-designed. Others are so stringent about adhering to their graphic standards that communication and graphics are working at cross-purposes. Images are blurry, headlines are too small, and body copy is way too small for the target audience to read. The intent of the website is to communicate with your public, so make it easy for them. If you make it hard for them, your prospects or publics rightly assume than you aren’t in tune with their needs.