Best Practices: Damage Control

Controlling the message that gets out to the public about how a company is handling a potentially damaging public relations issue is important. How important?

The Restaurant: Yours. Your franchisees'. Your brand!

The Opportunity: Control the story! There are essentially two kinds of PR. Good PR and bad PR. It has yet to be proven that "any PR is good PR." Many a stock has plummeted due to the snail's pace of a corporate public relations department waking up to a story that has gotten far beyond their control. Protecting the company's image and controlling the story provides the ultimate opportunity...future employment.

The Solution: So how does one control the story?

• Stay Awake: There is only one way to keep a handle on what is going on, and that is to pay attention. There is an enormous amount of news out there, and with the advent of the internet, control of the media is quickly becoming the job of the general public. News agencies can still be the origination point for most news, but where it goes after that is no longer in their control.
  
  So, how do you stay abreast of any and all news about your own company? Use the internet. Google, Yahoo, MSN, and most of the news websites out there have news alerts and breaking news alerts services that can email you any time a story breaks with your company's name, a person's name, or any portion of any phrase you can think of. When the public gets control of a story, where do you think they are getting it from? You can see the story at the same time or before they do and get on top of it quickly. You can also wake up every morning and check the major newspapers and stock market sites. Always a good source of inside information about the business world, become an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal.
• Planning: If there is even the slightest chance that you can foresee a situation where you will need to control damage or essentially "own" a story, then prepare for it. It is astounding how many major corporations don't prepare for the inevitable heartbreak of bad PR. Write template press releases that offer comments, feedback, and sources, so that the company can quickly respond to a situation. These kinds of releases are often viewed as "corporate-speak," but getting them out quickly shows that the company is prepared and concerned. Planning can also involve an advertising strategy that allows a company to cover bases like internet search engines and keyword activity so that complete control of a story does not become the possession of the general public.
• Strategy: While planning, come up with an over-arching damage control strategy. Don't just follow the same game plan every time a negative story breaks. Each news item can take on a life of its own, and generic comments make a company look genuinely unconcerned. Your strategy should include important protocols for the release of information, and most importantly one point of contact! There is nothing worse for a company than a PR manager who has a controlled release of information planned, and the CEO then takes calls from reporters and issues their own statements about how they feel.
• Lawyering Up: Obviously when a situation has the potential to have a negative impact on a company's earnings, or potential litigation, it is always advisable to seek counsel's opinion for comments on stories. What isn't a good idea is to maintain a practice of "lawyering up," which not unlike TV crime-drama, is a good way to tell everyone that you are scared and that you probably did something wrong. Don't tell the public that "counsel has advised against comment at this time." Tell them that you are "looking into the matter with every available resource, and as soon as we know something, rest assured that you will also know something."
• Put on a happy face: Find someone within your advertising, marketing, or executive level management to speak on behalf of the company. Honestly, there is nothing more disconnected then a millionaire CEO who is obviously uncomfortable on camera, providing apology after apology for what has essentially been sloppy PR. Control the story.
  
  There are so many other things that a company can do to manage the image of their business. Regular press releases that are about positive things companies do in their communities, giving programs, and most importantly, projects that the employees of the companies either initiated or participate in, gives life to an otherwise faceless corporation.

The Final Verdict: With all of the resources available to PR and marketing executives today, there is absolutely no excuse for losing control of a story to the new "public media." You can learn a lot from the mistakes of companies that have not stepped up to the PR plate over the last few years. You will find that with the most minimal of efforts— research, planning/strategy, and the face that you put on your company—you can help to make sure your organization does not end up branded by bad PR.