Crisis Communications

‘What’s Crisis Communications?’
We get asked this a lot, but essentially, it’s dealing with a situation if you have negative media – for yourself or your company.
Your business life, your personal life or the actions of your staff and the people around you can affect your reputation.

Often, it comes out of the blue and sometimes you know there might be some trouble – we can work fast in both situations.
The more notice we have though, the better we can prepare.

We’re trained and experienced in working with the media to give the right facts, at the right time, to dampen down or extinguish the story. This experience comes from working across the NHS, Police, charity and private sectors – we’ve probably almost, seen it all!

It’s rare to have to fend off a negative story from the media, but if it ever happens to you or your business, it’s worth having a number in your phone of someone you can call night or day, to take care of this often quite unnerving and fast-moving situation.

Working with you confidentially, we’ll find out what the story’s about, what angle they want and work out how to dampen down the story, present the facts and work towards damage limitation. Often you can’t stop journalists from running a story, but we can work with them to ensure it’s accurate. The last thing they want is a ‘declined to comment’ because it makes for a dull story – they want more information and to work with you…as we already said, they’ll run it for you anyway unless we can blow it out of the water due to unreliable information, so you might as well have an input.

If you need to face the cameras or give a radio interview, we can help to ensure you say the right things, in the right way and at the right time to protect your reputation and that of your business too.

Confidentiality is key – sometimes, you will have to let us know very private information from you or your business for us to be fully informed and ahead of the media, but we are your trusted colleague, on your side, even though we may only just have me!

Pop our mobile number in your phone now – just in case.

Manage the media

Being prepared for media interest can reduce your stress levels when the unexpected does happen. In the industry, we prepare what we call an ‘if asked statement’ – it’s what will be given to media should they be in touch.

It’s often written way before the press call because sometimes, you know the storm will come – at other times it’s written very quickly but with the utmost care to ensure you are prepared.

Imagine how it would feel to know that you have a pre-prepared and agreed statement in your back pocket for when that call comes in from media. You’ll look professional and won’t be worried about saying the wrong thing.

We can help you with tips and tricks to ensure the media call is genuine, as well as show you how to log any interest and what has been provided. I’ll also gather together anything that does get published, be it in papers or online.

Protecting your reputation is what is most important.

Check out some recent examples

Client 1

Confidentiality is the key to crisis communications, along with trust, which is why we can’t name the client. They came to us asking for help with managing potential negative media coverage around a member of staff who had recently been dismissed. We were immediately able to visit them, to give them prepared statements and also some guidance and set up a procedure for staff on how to handle media inquiries.

Client 2

This client was dealing with the potential death of a member of staff who had been taken ill and was in a critical condition in hospital. We worked the next day with them to write communications for staff and stakeholders to give a situation and condition update, plus we also wrote statements in the event of death – not an easy job but one that is done much more easily before a death that after when there are other more pressing jobs to do such as support staff and offer bereavement support.

We were on-call for media inquiries for this client.

Client 3

This client was facing some negative publicity ahead of an unfavourable report. We went to see them within 24 hours to find out the information, talk off the record and produce relevant statements that balanced the need for information and the resistance to say too much.
We also gave guidance on how to handle media inquiries and set up procedures to follow in the event of negative media coverage.

Get in touch

Call us

07748 631100