Between the current flood of information and “fake news”, crisis communication is now commonplace. What to do ? Can we anticipate? How to react ? Elements of response with Sophie Cambazard, media training specialist.
A crisis is part of normal business life. The structural crisis, in general, consists of layoffs, tax embezzlement and other relocations. The event crisis follows natural risks (disasters, floods, earthquakes, etc.), technological risks (industrial and nuclear disasters), linked to conflicts or health risks (avian flu, influenza A, coronavirus, etc.).
A well-managed crisis can be a real opportunity. In fact, 80 % of crisis management fall under the responsibility of communication. The objective is to keep control, to see the glass half full to, in the end, transform the attempt.
The main thing is not what happened, but how the public perceived the reaction of the structure in question. Hence the interest of the incriminated company to occupy the media field and not let the crisis unfold without it. " I am working, for example, on the crisis communication adopted in 2022 by the company Korian in the face of “Cash Investigation”. The director of Ephad finally agreed to give an interview, on the condition that it be done live to avoid any risk of cuts in her speech. »
Avoid fake news
Occupying the media field allows you to take a step back which offers a double benefit: escaping the position of being accused and avoiding fake news.
In fact, the fake news travel six times faster than real ones on Twitter. As proof, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), a global network of fact checkers (in French décoders du monde) reported more than 50,000 misleading posts on Facebook relating to Covid-19 for the month of April 2020 alone. Created in 2015 by the Poynter Institute, an American journalism research organization, this network brings together several hundred media and organizations – including Agence France-Presse – active in fact-checking. The AFP launched the project “ Factual » dedicated to fact-checking in 2017 and inspired by the CrossCheck collaborative project carried out as part of the French presidential elections the same year.
More and more anonymous accounts are spreading fake news. Many of them are bots on Facebook and Twitter. At least 15 % accounts link to robots. And the more fake news is repeated, the more legitimacy it acquires. However, as Jacques Attali notes, in Media Stories, a person who sends a message to 5 WhatsApp groups of 255 people can reach 1.4 million individuals after just 6 repetitions. It's even more on Twitter and other networks.
Constructing the message: non-verbal and paraverbal
Once the crisis has been declared, it is a matter of choosing one of 3 strategies:
- recognition: rarely used, it is nevertheless the strategy that works best. It’s about expressing one’s incomprehension; if true, to extend responsibility to external actors, such as regulatory authorities; to dissociate things by relieving those responsible if necessary; to limit the crisis to an object, a place, a time;
- refusal: making this choice risks losing all credibility. This strategy consists of remaining silent from the start of the crisis, stopping speaking from a specific moment, advancing the principle of the missing link or minimizing the effects of the crisis;
- the lateral project is an effective strategy if tangible elements are available. It's about counter-attacking, shifting responsibility outside, communicating more strongly on another level, emphasizing the fact that the worst has been avoided.
Then, we apply the answers according to the chosen strategy. We must also build a strategy of allies, with relays and spokespersons. And determine a strategy with prescribers (intermediaries).
Build a strategy with relays and spokespersons
We start from the principle that it is better to rely on various experts than just one. For a company, the relays can, depending on the case, be a community manager, a customer, a supplier, etc. As for the spokespersons, they are called upon to alleviate the pressure on the manager facing the media. Depending on the subject, this may be an HR director, an operations director, a sales director, an IT director or any other specialist who can provide another perspective on the crisis.
Please note: the construction of a crisis message is certainly worked with words, but also with the body and the voice. In a communication, 25 % goes through the verbal (content, substance), 55 % through the non-verbal (signals emitted by the body) and 20 % through the paraverbal (voice, tone, intonation, etc.).
Good crisis management can be anticipated
As a sensitive situation has a high probability of occurring, the company must implement an anticipation plan. This takes the very simple form of concrete actions to be carried out such as:
- work on potential crisis scenarios;
Example scenario
I illustrate in images a scenario in 5 steps, which concerns a foreign pharmaceutical laboratory having been denounced for having illegally inoculated a serum into a group of humans. During a press conference, the CEO adopts a posture of compassion towards the families, then he claims to have no knowledge of these actions, announces the opening of an internal investigation, before placing the blame on a member of the team of researchers. Finally, he diverts public attention by announcing the appointment of a new manager responsible for tracking the anti-serum brigades behind a muscular gathering that degenerated (when in reality, it is his company which organized this demonstration).
- study the “jurisprudence” of similar cases, in the past of the company or that of competitors.
All employees likely to communicate in a crisis must be trained. Whether it is management, a manager, a security manager or a marketing director.
If this anticipation part has been correctly carried out, management errors will thus be avoided.
We thus avoid responding in an emergency, being defensive or in a position of justification, or even reacting in an overly emotional way.
And after the crisis?
The post-crisis period is a stage to be taken care of. Internally, the company must honestly answer questions such as: have we kept control? Have we managed to give a positive image of the company? How ? Have we transformed the essay? And, if so, at what cost, human and financial? We also use a dashboard to measure the impact of communications with the media, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In particular through semantic analyzes of messages according to the media, the number of interviews granted, the impact of public support for the message, the measurement of the leader's image and, ultimately, the incidence of press coverage. on sales.
What you need to remember: well-conducted crisis communication can become an opportunity for the affected company under certain conditions: adopt the right strategy and stick to it, choose your target carefully, use a clear and embodied message in relation to this target, and train in media training to avoid the pitfalls of non-verbal, paraverbal and language errors.
