“Safety is our top priority” is the most overused cliché in crisis communications and public relations.

What concerns me is that many corporate leaders believe their past safety record makes them immune to a crisis. Hence, they fail to invest time and money in the crisis communications plans and tools they need.

Just because it hasn’t happened to your company in the past is no indication it won’t happen in the future.

Why?

Many of your potential crises are essentially beyond your control. A case in point — two multi-day crises that were managed by Russ Roberts, formerly the Americas Operations Manager for ExxonMobil.

During his 20 years at ExxonMobil, there were two high-profile pipeline breaches that happened because of what most would consider outrageously bazaar events beyond the company’s control. Neither crisis would have shown up on anyone’s list of vulnerabilities.

Roberts was kind enough to share the lessons he learned with us during our May 1, 2023, Master Class on Crisis Communications. You can watch the entire program in the Master Class section of the SituationHub blog.

Among his best insights from the Master Class are:

Have a plan and follow the plan

During a pipeline spill, as team members assembled in the crisis command center, Roberts says numbers of smart, young engineers were verbalizing ideas about how to respond. After about five minutes of endless chatter and ideas, the veteran Incident Commander stood on a chair and dropped a large red binder on a table. It created a thunderous thud that cause the room to fall silent. The incident commander then shouted, “Follow the damn plan!”

He explained that the plan was written on a calm day with clarity of thought and that such a process helps to override the anxieties and fog of war that happens during a crisis.

The Braud Communications website offers great options for crisis communications plans that are designed to be read, followed, and executed in real time during a crisis. As a bonus, Braud Communications practices the “Sprint” process, which allows a company to complete a plan in one day, rather than the usual six months to one year.

Rely on news release templates

Working with the ExxonMobil lawyers, the public relations team had numerous preapproved templates with language that had been previously cleared as safe to use by the legal team. This helped to speed up the approval process.

At SituationHub, we’ve taken this concept much further, by creating hundreds of event-specific templates designed to be tested and preapproved by a company’s legal team. The templates generated a fact-based, ready-to-use news release in as few as 90 seconds. If you haven’t seen SituationHub in action, you really should schedule a private demo.

The Golden Hour has become the Golden Minute

For decades companies practiced the public relations rule that a statement should be released to the media and other stakeholders within the first hour of your crisis becoming public knowledge.

Roberts points out that the proliferation of mobile phones and social media means a company can lose control of a crisis in the first minute, as an on-looker adds photos and video to social media. We agree, which is why we built SituationHub to write a crisis communications news release at the speed of social media.

Sadly, most companies struggle to meet even the one-hour rule. You can learn more about the concepts of the Golden Hour and the need for speed in our Master Class with Doug Levy, author of The Communications Golden Hour.

Conclusion

It has been said many times that “If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.” We agree.

If you need help with your crisis communications, writing a plan, or subscribing to SituationHub, we invite you to set up a private call.

To set goals, talk about your needs, and formulate a budget, schedule a complimentary, confidential call with me https://calendly.com/situationhub

Crisis communications and media training expert Gerard Braud, CSP, Fellow IEC is based in New Orleans. Organizations on five continents have relied on him to write their crisis communications plans and to train their spokespeople. He is the Founder of SituationHub, the President of Braud Communications, and the author of “Don’t Talk to the Media Until…”