CommCore Consulting Group was recently featured in the New York Times article “Who’d Create a P.R. Crisis on Purpose? Well, Only the Sweat Was Real” by Sapna Maheshwari. The article explores CommCore’s crisis simulation training step-by-step, and discovers why every organization should prepare for a crisis situation.
Just as I was stammering out some version of “no comment” to a reporter from BuzzFeed, my editor was about to field another a call from The New York Post. Our company’s reputation was careening out of control, and we had no idea how to stop the damage — or slow the seemingly endless torrent of social media posts that were berating us for our ties to the world’s largest polluter.
Thankfully, the situation was entirely fictitious. It was created by a crisis communications firm that regularly simulates dire circumstances for companies in hopes of preparing them for when real public relations disasters hit. The setup is a bit like “Choose Your Own Adventure” for corporate America, where the adventure is in fact a social-media-driven nightmare.