How to Manage a Brand through a Crisis

Most of what I’m going to say is common sense. But it is amazing how many brands confronted with a disaster or crisis either hide their head in the sand with the hopes it will all blow over or just do stupid things. Today, with the advent of online media and social marketing, a small issue can turn very big in a matter of hours.

If you think your business and your reputation are in danger, then it's time to act, whether the problem is widely known or acknowledged by your employees, your customers or the media. If handled well, a crisis response can actually enhance reputation and spur some needed dialogue and change.

Tim Hortons (see Brand Note below) has found first hand how quickly things can go south. An employee firing became national news and had over 488 online posting. Two weeks after this incident, a good Samaritan bought breakfast for a pregnant homeless woman at a Tim Hortons – then was scolded by a restaurant employee unhappy that the homeless woman stayed in the restaurant to eat. This story was the next in a line of negative media for Tim Hortons.

It seems that the media is ready and eager to report the next Tim Hortons crisis. All it takes is a disgruntled customer or employee to voice their concerns online or directly to the media.

Almost 26 years ago, in a space of three days beginning Sept. 29, 1982, seven people who took cyanide-laced Tylenol died. This event triggered a national scare that prompted people to throw medicine away and stores nationwide to pull Tylenol from their shelves. Today, every time you open a bottle or package (of medicine, food or drink) there is a tamper proof lid or seal because of this highly publicized Tylenol crisis. Johnson & Johnson, owner of the Tylenol brand, was praised by the media at the time for its handling of the incident. While the market share of Tylenol collapsed from 35% to 8%, it rebounded in less than a year, a move credited to J&J's prompt and aggressive reaction. They didn’t hesitate or waffle. They saw the urgency to respond quickly and they did.

While in 1994, Intel’s Pentium microprocessor chip was discovered to incorrectly divide certain floating-point numbers. This was a case of ignore it and it will go away. Not so, it quickly became a media crisis that Intel had to handle but again they took the approach that it wasn’t a major issue (they had no intent of replacing the chip). Media press continued and IBM, one of their largest customers, responded by stopping the shipment of computer’s containing the Intel Pentium chip. Eventually, Intel replaced the chip but only after the damage had been done to the company’s reputation and ultimately to the brand.

The most important element to protecting a brand under crisis is to have a proactive plan. You should anticipate a number of scenarios such as: employee misconduct, product liability/misuse, manufacturing or design mistakes, accidents, or a simple community/media misunderstanding. Unprepared organizations flounder under the stress of the immediate need to communicate internally and externally. Their struggle can be interpreted as hiding and perceived as admitting guilt. How you eventually respond should be guided by the brand’s values.

Key elements in building a crisis communications plan:

- Define who is responsible for what during a crisis
- Identify key spokespeople (the more senior the bigger the issue – ultimately the CEO)
- Develop rules of how information is released
- Develop specific steps of action to correct/fix the problem, mistake or mishap
- Provide background information on specifics
- Execute clear communications tactics for employees, customers, stakeholders and media
- Be transparent; give the facts, admit your mistake and apologize
- Communicate, communicate, communicate

JetBlue, a low fare airline suffered a major brand crisis last year after an ice storm hit the Eastern United States and the airline failed to properly respond due to a communications meltdown. Nine planes sat on New York’s JFK tarmac for six hours or more. Nearly a quarter of its flights had to be canceled, even days later and service to 11 cities was shutdown entirely. The result was a consumer revolt, media frenzy and a stock collapse.

Immediately after the incident The JetBlue posted a video clip on ‘You Tube.’ where the CEO, addressing key stakeholders. Here is what he said.

Rebuilding reputation is important to rebuilding the brand. What JetBlue did was have the CEO apologize then designed a crisis communications plan to avoid or quickly address the issue and any further crisis’ on the horizon. One of the first things they did was launch a customer bill of rights that promised to compensate customers for delays. Respecting customer’s time, what a novel idea! I wish more airlines would do this.

Make sure you communications are sincere and meaningful. Sending out a news release with sorry doesn’t cut it. Syncrude Canada Ltd., who operates the largest oil sands mine in the world, recently cooked in hot water when 500 ducks died in the toxic sludge of an oil sands tailings pond. There solution: print a full page newspaper ad with an apology. Syncrude says it's committed to making sure such a "sad event" doesn't happen again. I’m sorry, but this type of tactic doesn’t come across as sincere or believable. They should have saved their advertising money and spent the time on a clear action plan. While advertising is good at getting messages out quickly, advertising can’t build credibility.

The fortunate thing for most brands is customers have short memories. In most cases, things will go back to normal unless your company was Enron or WorldCom.