Demand for corporate and crisis communications counsel continues to rise as the pandemic enters its second year, according to research carried out for PRovoke, the PR industry news platform.
 
As well as looking at business confidence and recovery, the global study, which attracted 326 respondents, asked in-house practitioners around the world which PR services they were seeking from PR firms now.  Demand for crisis counsel is up sharply, with 40% of in-house respondents saying this was a service they needed from their agencies now, compared with 27% last March, 24% in May and just 19% last August, when Provoke also researched the market.
 
Perhaps this is not surprising given the context of the most disruptive global crisis of our lifetime. But to me, it also speaks to a more recurring trend, which I noted in the ‘pre Covid days’:  the neglected need to be crisis ready at all times. 
 
Every year, my former employer, Burson Marsteller, then one of the best-known crisis communications agencies in the world, would publish research into trends in crisis communications.  When I last presented in the results in Geneva some five years ago, the bad news was that in our research base in Europe, Middle East and Africa, some 40% of firms surveyed had no crisis preparedness plans in place.  It is to be hoped this number has increased since then.  However, a more recent PwC survey in 2020/2021 said that if the 2800 business leaders surveyed, 95% said their crisis management capabilities needed improvement, and just 35% had a crisis response plan that was very relevant.
 
While it would be churlish to lambast any organisation for not being adequately prepared for Covid 19, it is probably the case that many organisations do not, until it is perhaps too late, keep their crisis preparedness and response mechanisms up to date.  A Deloitte survey in 2018 into crisis management asked companies that had recently undergone a crisis what lessons they had learned: 33% said they would improve detection and early warning systems, 27% said they would invest more effort in prevention and 26% said they would do more to identify potential crisis scenarios.
 
So, what should companies do as a minimum to improve early warning systems and be better prepared for a crisis? Here are five top tips for baseline preparedness:
 

1. Audit your organisation’s own preparedness and capabilities.  Do you have a plan? Has it been updated recently? Do you have a crisis team in place?  Have they been trained?  When?  Has the plan ever been used, and what worked/did not work?   When we audit clients’ crisis preparedness and strategies we will not only point out areas of need but also make recommendations for improvements, which is clearly the fundamental reason to audit in the first place.
2. Compliance: Make sure that your products, services and procedures are compliant with all respective laws and regulations and that your business operations and activities would pass muster not only legally but in the ‘court of public opinion’.  This sounds obvious, but really, many crises would simply not arise if organisations thought about one key aspect of the reputational pyramid: what you do, and how you act.
3. Monitor Issues within the business regularly and at a senior level.   As Henry Kissinger said, “An issue ignored is a crisis invited.” There are various ways to do this, and again we can advise on structures for this, but it is essential to create a senior forum to identify emerging issues before they strike, assess potential risks surrounding an issue and decide how to manage issues and at what level.  Good representation from across the business is vital: lines of business, geographic, as well as functional areas.
4. Ensure robust, swift monitoring mechanisms are in place. Media monitoring should cover print and electronic media and social media.  Consider also regimens for monitoring regulatory change, political change, activity in the NGO arena, and competitive and industry issues
5. Outline potential crisis scenarios and rate them according to likelihood and damage potential.  Workshop the most relevant scenarios and establish mitigation plans within the business.  Clearly you cannot plan for everything, but you need to be prepared for the ‘clear and present dangers’

 
By no means is this list exhaustive but should be considered a good baseline for preparedness, and companies that put thought into crisis preparedness often ensure that issues remain issues and don’t escalate into full-blown crises.  How prepared is your organisation? 

I am delighted to announce that TechNovus, a cutting edge Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence company based in London, has hired us for a global communications campaign.   TechNovus develops and deploys innovative, disruptive digital solutions that leverage artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, the internet of things and other emerging technology trends.  Much of its cutting-edge technology is used in the areas of digital health, retail, and e commerce.
 
TechNovus is an ideas lab and has created a wide array of leading edge applications such as the Dream Machine platform that allows sufferers of depression and PTSD to practice mindfulness within a VR game – covered recently by the BBC.  In retail, the firm has created an app, Mezura AI, that lets customers instantly match their body measurements with desired clothing items as they browse fashion web sites, allowing perfectly fitting garments to be sent to them directly.  Attracting much attention at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, the app was covered by the Telegraph and the firm will announce a major UK retail tie up in the summer. 
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I am delighted to work again with Jamil El-Imad, CEO of TechNovus Ltd, a serial entrepreneur as well as a senior research fellow at Imperial College – and his super talented team.  This kind of work is in the agency’s  ‘sweet spot’ – telling a story about cutting edge technology that is genuinely of interest to the global business media.

The public has turned to more trusted news sources in the wake of the global pandemic. And more people than ever are paying for news from leading organisations, according to the Digital News Report from Oxford’s Reuters Institute. At a time when we all want to read the latest facts and when we want our information sources to be accurate and unbiased, there is a shift towards trusted news brands such as television news and national newspapers.
 
To me, this has accelerated a trend that was already happening as the public, confounded by the fake news epidemic, started to look to respected and trusted news sources for information.  It’s certainly one reason why many of my clients prioritise gaining share of voice with the global tier one news media such as the BBC and the Economist. This is why my new consultancy is focused on executive communications services in this area, from storytelling techniques to media relations and, in preparation for this, media training,  because while a great article in the FT is clearly desirable, it is never easy to secure one. 

So what should be front of mind as you prepare for a media interview?

1. Assess if you really want to do the interview.  Is the interview in a publication that it relevant to your business?  Who are its readers?  What is its circulation?  Is it influential? Is the publication unbiased, independent, and likely to report what you have to say accurately? But don’t be overcautious.  As my old mentor Harold Burson used to say,  “If you don’t get out and tell your story, someone else will and you won’t like the way they tell it.”
2. Know who you’re talking to.  What is the focus of the publication you’re talking to?  Who reads it?  Where are they located?  What are they interested in?  How knowledgeable about your business are they?  From this research you may be able to anticipate angles, questions, points of view and be able to prepare more effectively.
3. Know about the interview. Ask questions, or get your PR team to ask the reporter, about the context of the interview.  Is it for a news piece?  Or a general feature or a market overview?  What is the angle?  If it is for TV or radio, will the interview be live or pre-recorded?
4. Know what you want to say, and be able to say it clearly and succinctly. This is the absolute foundation of the interview.  We use techniques such as the message house to prepare strong and quotable messages for interviews.  We put time into helping trainees hone their messages – and we test them in realistic, sometimes tough interviews.
5. Practice sticking to this story through the tough questions journalists can throw at you. In our training session, we run through techniques to address some of the media’s tricks of the trade.  I work with Mike Dempsey on this in practice interviews – as a working journalist for the BBC he knows how to put a spokesperson on the spot. We offer intensive coaching and we have already researched the toughest questions you’re likely to get before the training starts.

 
Engaging with the top tier business media, while challenging, is often the holy grail for many communications campaigns.  In April, we are hosting free 30 minute one-to one sessions to answer questions on how to handle the media, prepare your spokespeople and what it takes to get cut through in the elite business media.    If you want to reserve a slot, please email me at [email protected].