Between the current flood of information and "fake news", crisis communication is now commonplace. What can you do about it? Can we anticipate? And how do you react? Sophie Cambazard, a media training specialist, explains.
A crisis is part of the normal life of a company. Structural crises generally involve redundancies, tax evasion and relocations. Event-driven crises are caused by natural hazards (disasters, floods, earthquakes, etc.), technological hazards (industrial and nuclear disasters), conflicts or health hazards (avian flu, influenza A, coronavirus, etc.).
A well-managed crisis can be a real opportunity. In fact, 80 % of crisis management falls within the remit of communication. The aim is to stay in control, to see the glass as half full and, ultimately, to turn the crisis into a success.
The most important thing is not what happened, but how the public perceived the reaction of the company in question. That's why it's in the interest of the accused company to take the media field and not let the crisis unfold without it. “ I'm working, for example, on the crisis communication adopted by Korian in 2022 in response to "Cash Investigation". The director of the Ephad finally agreed to give an interview, on condition that it was live, to avoid any risk of her speech being cut.
Avoid fake news
Occupying the media arena allows us to take a step back, which has two benefits: it helps us to avoid the posture of the accused and it helps us to avoid 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 decodeurs du monde) has reported more than 50,000 misleading posts on Facebook relating to Covid-19 in April 2020 alone. Created in 2015 by the Poynter Institute, an American journalism research organisation, this network brings together several hundred media outlets and organisations - including Agence France-Presse - active in fact-checking. AFP had launched the " Factual "The project was inspired by the CrossCheck collaborative project carried out during the French presidential elections that same year.
More and more anonymous accounts are spreading fake news. Many of them are bots on Facebook and Twitter. At least 15 % of accounts link to bots. And the more a fake news story is repeated, the more legitimacy it acquires. As Jacques Attali points out in Media storiesFor example, a person who sends a message to 5 WhatsApp groups of 255 people can reach 1.4 million people 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, you need to choose one of 3 strategies:
- Acknowledgement: rarely used, this is nevertheless the strategy that works best. It involves expressing incomprehension; if it's true, extending responsibility to external players, such as the regulatory authorities; dissociating matters by relieving oneself of responsibility if necessary; and limiting the crisis to a specific object, place or time;
- refusal: making this choice risks losing all credibility. This strategy consists of remaining silent from the outset of the crisis, stopping talking at a specific point, putting forward the principle of the missing link or minimising the effects of the crisis;
- the lateral project is an effective strategy if you have tangible evidence. It involves counter-attacking, shifting responsibility to the outside world, communicating more strongly in a different register, emphasising the fact that the worst has been avoided.
Then we apply the responses according to the chosen strategy. You also need to build a strategy of allies, with relays and spokespeople. And determine a strategy for influencers (intermediaries).
Building a strategy with relays and spokespeople
We work on the principle that it is better to rely on a number of experts rather than just one. In the case of a company, this may be a community leader, a customer, a supplier, etc. As for spokespersons, they are called upon to relieve the pressure on the executive in the media. Depending on the subject, this could be an HR manager, an operations manager, a sales manager, an IT manager or any other specialist who can bring a different perspective to the crisis.
Please note: building a crisis message requires not only words, but also the body and the voice. In a communication, 25 % comes from the verbal (content, substance), 55 % from the non-verbal (signals emitted by the body) and 20 % from the paraverbal (voice, tone, intonation...).
Good crisis management takes time
Since there is a high probability that a sensitive situation will occur, the company must implement an anticipation plan. This takes the very simple form of concrete actions such as :
- work on potential crisis scenarios;
Example of a scenario
I use images to illustrate a 5-stage scenario involving a foreign pharmaceutical laboratory that has been denounced for illegally inoculating a group of humans with a serum. During a press conference, the CEO adopts a posture of compassion towards the families, then claims to be completely unaware of these actions, announces the opening of an internal investigation, before shifting the blame onto a member of the research team. Finally, he deflects public attention by announcing the appointment of a new manager to track down the anti-serum brigades behind a violent demonstration that got out of hand (when, in fact, it was his company that organised the demonstration).
- study the "jurisprudence" of similar cases, in the company's past or that of competitors.
All employees likely to communicate in the event of a crisis need training. Whether it's management, a manager, a safety officer or a marketing director.
If this anticipation part has been carried out correctly, management errors will be avoided.
This prevents you from responding in a hurry, from being defensive or in a position of justification, or from reacting too emotionally.
What about after the crisis?
The post-crisis phase is one that needs to be carefully managed. Internally, the company needs to answer questions such as: Have we kept control? Have we managed to project a positive image of the company? How have we done this? Have we turned the tables? And, if so, at what cost, both human and financial? A dashboard is also used to measure the impact of media communications, both quantitatively and qualitatively. This includes semantic analyses of messages according to the media, the number of interviews granted, the impact of public acceptance of the message, measuring the image of the executive and, finally, the impact of press coverage on sales.
What you need to remember: crisis communication done well can become an opportunity for the company affected, provided certain conditions are met: adopt the right strategy and stick to it, choose your target audience carefully, use a clear, embodied message that is relevant to that target audience, and take part in media training to avoid the pitfalls of non-verbal communication, paraverbal communication and language errors.
