Corporate Crisis Management Blog

Suppose one of the many risks facing your organization emerged as an actual crisis tomorrow. How long would it take you and your team to respond? Would there be a lag as you scrambled to gather the appropriate information and contact the right people? Would the crisis worsen as you rushed to initiate the response? Or, would you be able to respond in real time?

When was the last time you reviewed your crisis plan?

I had conversations recently on this topic with two well-known and visible 

corporations.

Their answers? Seven years and ‘we don’t have a current plan’, respectively.

To be fair they were talking to me because they understood that, in the words of 

Mr. Zimmerman, the times they are a-changing.

But it makes you wonder just how many other organizations have crisis plans that 

are way out of date, if they have one at all.

This has been a vintage year for crises and there is plenty to suggest that it’s not a one-off.

Fundamental shifts have taken place that increase scrutiny and accelerate threats 

to brands and organizations.

We are entering the golden age of crisis.

We talked in previous blogs about two of the shifts that brought us to this 

moment.

First, social media has come of age in the way that information is shared and 

conversations proliferate. However, this is not matched by the way organizations 

rigorously update their crisis planning to reflect this new world.

Crisis management has evolved significantly over the last several decades. In our modern digital age, many of the threats that organizations such as yours face are inextricably tied to internet technologies. In fact, the 2017 Horizon Scan Report from the Business Continuity Institute lists the top three threats to businesses as cyber attacks, data breaches, and unplanned IT outages.

It is clear that 2017 is going to be a vintage year for crises.

We are not half way through yet and the roll call of brands that have faced challenges and rafts of bad publicity include GM, Lockheed Martin, Nordstrom, United Airlines, Delta, Spirit, Adidas, Pepsi, Target, Wells Fargo, Samsung, Uber and Price Waterhouse Cooper, to name but a few.

Get used to it.

There are fundamentals in the way that issues arise and then have the flames of controversy fanned by social media that means this year is not an anomaly – it’s the shape of things to come.

We are entering the golden age of crisis.

These days, when a consumer wants to share a complaint or compliment about an organization, more often than not, he or she heads to social media. As of 2016, 83 percent of Americans had a social media account, and nearly half of that total were using such a platform to interact with companies or institutions.

So, what was your favorite crisis so far in 2017?

Was it the Presidential tweets which roiled entire industries – notably automotive and aerospace – and the odd department store?

United Airlines and Dr Dao was a doozy, especially as American, Delta and Spiritall followed United into the harsh spotlight.

Maybe it was the ‘luxury’ Fyre Festival with its tents, cheese sandwiches and porta-potties?

In the 2017 Horizon Scan Report from the Business Continuity Institute, respondents reported a daunting array of business disruptions that they had experienced over the past 12 months:

• 72 percent had an unplanned IT or telecom outage.
• 43 percent experienced adverse weather, such as a tornado, flooding or snow.
• 40 percent saw their utility supply interrupted.
• 35 percent were hit with a cyber attack.

Once you become aware of the emerging risks to brands from cultural issues such as gender, race, politics and polarizing social issues, you keep tripping over them everywhere.

This is true whether brands choose to step into an issue publicly or not. We talked in the last blog about Target and the year-long controversy after a blog that merely confirmed its policy regarding transgender use of its restrooms and changing rooms.

Another example is Chick-fil-A whose culture is strongly influenced by its founder’s, Truitt Cathy, southern Baptist beliefs. This can range from hungry customers getting grumpy because the chain does not open on a Sunday to more strongly held opinions, on both sides of the issue, about the causes that Chick-fil-A has chosen to support in the past.