Three top crisis communications lessons from a disaster manager

I’m stepping down this month as vice-president, crisis communications, at Kenyon International Emergency Services after 13 years. It’s a part-time role in this global company alongside my own crisis communications and training practice. 

For more than 120 years, Kenyon has been attending the aftermath of incidents involving loss of life or injury, often on a mass scale. From air crashes, terrorism – including 9/11, and natural disasters to Grenfell, Kenyon has been there to support the companies and organisations involved and point them towards doing the right thing. 

We were the first in our sector to create a crisis communications service. We saw that clients were doing all they could to support everyone affected, but still could find their reputation damaged. It’s not always enough to do the right thing. You have to tell the public what you are doing. A formidable associate team based in every continent stands ready to respond. 

It’s not for the faint hearted, and when Kenyon is activated, it’s never good news. But clients have trained and rehearsed. 

Here’s my latest crisis comms tips:

WHAT IS A CRISIS?

The first tip is to define what constitutes a crisis in your organisation. Crisis is the most over-used word in the English language. Almost all the situations labelled as a ‘crisis’ are in fact issues. Adding the word ‘crisis’ to a social media post is intended to provoke clicks. I think people are weary of it. 

The word ‘crisis’ has only one purpose in your organisation. It’s a signal that the plans you’ve prepared for such an event need to be activated immediately. If you’re not doing this, and if the CEO is not in the room, you’re dealing with an issue. Maybe a big issue, but it’s an issue, not a crisis. 

VICTIM FOCUSSED 

Secondly, all communications in a crisis must be victim focussed. All crises have victims. If there are no victims, you don’t have a crisis. Your ‘victims’ might be customers who are not receiving a service they paid for, or shareholders who are suffering a financial loss because of a mistake the company made. 

There are older people across Europe who lived in penury after their pensions disappeared in the 2007 financial crash. Review all your communications and read them through the eyes of someone affected by the crisis. At Kenyon we call them “people directly affected”. I use the term “loved ones” in a fatality incident. How will a promotional post about your business look to someone who has just lost a loved one? If in doubt, bin the post.  

Robert A Jensen, the redoubtable former owner of Kenyon, puts it: “If someone just lost their loved one, or had a life-changing injury, you can’t make it better. Your job is to make sure you don’t make it worse”. By the way, in a crisis your approval process for social media posts needs to be upgraded. It’s where mistakes happen. 

AI THREATS 

And thirdly, AI. It’s not coming. It’s here. I was a comms practitioner before the advent of the mobile phone, and I was the chief media spokesperson of the BBC for a decade. I know all about how technology has changed PR. 

We’re already anticipating the benefits of AI in crisis communications. For example, AI will help us rapidly identify people across the world who are affected in an incident (this task is harder than you think). AI will free up resources that are currently used in many routine tasks. 

By the way, please do not, ever, use AI to write to a bereaved person or someone who has been harmed in a crisis. Learn how to write a proper letter or hire someone to draft it for you. If you don’t, you might find yourself forever regretting the hurt and pain you’ve caused. 

Alongside great benefits, I’m confident AI carries potential threats to crisis communicators way beyond the ability to create realistic fake videos. It will create new and powerful ways to influence the narrative, and this will happen without us knowing it. It’s bigger for crisis comms than the invention of social media and we need to be constantly up to speed. 

As I focus on my own crisis comms practice, I’ve been reflecting on how important it’s been for me to stay up-to- date and professionally competent. At the CIPR, we have so much resource to help us. Never take it for granted. The world is changing faster than it’s ever done. That’s my warning from the front line. 

Donald Steel is a practitioner in crisis communications response and training. He works with a wide range of clients, from FMCG and health to government, NGOs and UN agencies, across Europe, North America, the Middle East, Far East and Australasia. He was for a decade the chief media spokesperson of the BBC in London. He has just stepped down as vice president, crisis communications at Kenyon International Emergency Services, the global disaster response company, where he worked alongside his own global practice.