Last month, we wrote about when to ask the CEO to serve as lead spokesperson or representative of the brand in a proactive, positive communications situation. What about a crisis or emergency?
CEO’s that come to mind who made a difference to a brand or organization in crisis: Jim Burke, at Johnson & Johnson during Tylenol, Rudy Giuliani (despite his current legal woes) as Mayor of New York following 9/11, and Mary Barra, the GM leader who guided the company through bankruptcy and back to profitability and currently as one of the lead communicators in the United Auto Workers strike against GM, Ford and Stellantis.
Asking the CEO to be the spokesperson-in-chief depends on the severity of the crisis, stakeholders impacted and media demands. If the crisis involves violence, serious injuries or loss of life, or severe reputation risk to the brand or products, the CEO should be involved from the start.
The organization’s leader brings credibility. In cases where the crisis starts small, simmers and then escalates, a crisis plan should have a check list and/or decision tree to help decide if and when the CEO should get involved.
In other situations, organizations can unintentionally turn a minor issue into a full-blown crisis by involving the CEO too early and blowing it out of proportion. Whether it’s one of many brands, or a manufacturing issue at one plant, there should be a deep bench of internal experts who can take the lead. The CEO can be saved for a serious escalation or with media pressure.
Do’s:
- Think about immediate and long-term objectives for customers, employees, shareholders and stakeholders. If having the CEO out front is the right move, go forward.
- Plan the communications and prep the CEO for interviews. Even for positive communications, there will be challenging questions.
- Develop multi-media plans for Social Media, Advertising, Influencers and business media.
- Seek outside experts to evaluate and ‘poke-holes’ in your plan to strengthen it.
- Pre-write messages, Q&A preparation documents, standby statements.
Don’ts:
- Don’t put the CEO out front just because she/he wants to be the face of the company/product. If you know in advance that the CEO will want to be first to publicly comment, have benchmarking research ready to show that it may do more harm than good.
- Don’t assume your company is inoculated from pushback or criticism from the public related to the CEO’s role and his/her ego.
- Don’t forget to monitor the media and social media for comments and decided whether a response is needed.
- Don’t leave the reputational management solely to your communications team. This has to be a group decision with input from relevant areas of leadership.
Schedule Your Employee Communications Skills Training
Do you have staff in management or leadership roles who could benefit from communications skills training? Are certain members of your team increasingly in the public eye – either internally or with external stakeholders, or the media? Those who often facilitate meetings, have frequent public speaking engagements (presentations, panels, short speeches), and spokespeople who appear on radio, TV and/or digital media interviews will benefit from this type of professional development.
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- Spokespeople
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