When faced with a sensitive, difficult or uncertain business situation, you are unlikely to have time to think through a plan to deal with it – if you can think clearly at all. A public relations crisis plan will facilitate prompt action that will protect your franchise brand and key stakeholders, ensure clear, consistent messaging and outline the roles that leaders will play.
What is crisis PR?
Crisis communications is a specialty practice within the PR industry that helps organizations or individuals protect and defend their reputation and business performance against lawsuits, consumer complaints, natural disasters and more.
Crisis PR professionals help their clients formulate crisis communication plans that can serve as a guide when a situation is moving quickly and it may be hard to know what to say or do. A crisis plan typically details messages for the public, media and stakeholders such as employees, franchisees, board members and others; designates who will speak to the public and media; and lists preferred channels of communication.
How does crisis PR protect the brand?
In a crisis, protecting the brand and its reputation, as well as franchisees, employees and other stakeholders, is the goal.
That’s accomplished by controlling communications and messaging. In a public relations crisis plan, stakeholders are identified and messages are crafted for each of them, reminding them of the brand’s solid reputation, why the brand is important to them and what the brand is doing to protect them during this crisis. For example, if you are closing a troubled franchise location, messaging for other franchisees would note that you are acting to protect the brand and the franchise system as a whole – including their interests.
The good news is that PR has a cumulative effect – so if your franchise has had positive coverage for some time, one unflattering news story is unlikely to outweigh all of your previous good news stories and a strong brand reputation.
What should the message be?
Effective messaging in a crisis emphasizes the franchise brand’s good reputation and is clear, consistent and credible.
Remind stakeholders that they can trust you and that you are acting in the best interest of the brand and its stakeholders. Ensure that the communications for all stakeholder groups and the public – including the media – are clearly articulated and consistent.
Your PR team will draft factual key messaging points to serve as the basis of all communications. Fact-check your message points, because if you’re caught in a lie, you lose all credibility. Additionally, in a crisis, it’s more important than ever for communicators to stay on message: The last thing you need is for your spokesperson to tell a reporter something different than what you’ve already told your franchisees and board members.
You can help those who are responsible for delivering the messages by brainstorming questions that may come up and drafting the answers, Q&A-style, in your crisis PR plan.
Finally, be ready to regroup if the crisis unfolds differently than you expect or if something changes – for instance, if you unearth new information that changes your action plan. Remember, the ultimate goal is to protect the brand and its reputation.
Who should the spokesperson be in a crisis?
In a crisis, people want to hear from the person in charge. Usually, that means your CEO or another top franchise leader will be responsible for speaking publicly. For that reason, your crisis plan should designate who speaks for your brand in the event of a crisis, and who will fill that role if the top person is not available.
Additionally, your PR team can help with media inquiries, especially if they have established relationships with reporters who cover your company or industry.
Anyone who could be designated to address the media or public should have the authority to speak for the company, be credible and be equipped with media training.
With a crisis communications plan in place, you can be confident that you are as prepared as you can be should a crisis arise. The hard work of putting together a crisis public relations plan will help you position your brand to begin to recover and move forward.
