Jan 07 2020 34 mins 4
Welcome to the second in a new mini-series of PRmoment podcasts where we interview the authors of books relevant to those who work in PR and communications. In the last year or so there have been a number of books launched by people I really respect in PR. Frankly, I don’t have time to read them all so, partly for selfish reasons, I thought I’d interview them on this show. Today I’m interviewing Kate Hartley, the author of Communicate in a Crisis: Understand, Engage and Influence Consumer Behaviour to Maximize Brand Trust. The book looks at the psychology of a crisis from the consumers’ perspective and focuses on how modern society engages/voices its outrage through social media and the implications of this for brands. Kate is the MD of independent PR firm Carot and the co-founder of crisis communications modelling training company Polpeo. Communicate in a Crisis: Understand, Engage and Influence Consumer Behaviour to Maximize Brand Trust is, needless to say, available from Amazon. Here is a summary of what Kate and I talk about: [00:02:18 ] How do ordinary people behave in a crisis situation and why do they respond in that way? [00:02:31 ] Why organizations often think about themselves in a crisis, what their response should be and how to protect their own reputation - but what they fail to do is to look at how people are behaving and the drivers behind that. [00:03:11 ] Why society is becoming more and more angry. [00:03:15 ] How as people we're becoming very polarized. [00:03:29 ] How social media has made these behaviors more visible; given them a digital footprint. [00:04:07 ] Why social media algorithms are driving anger in society. [00:05:01 ] Kate talks us through the ‘outrage cycle’ of social media. [00:06:33 ] The role social media plays in a corporate crisis. [00:07:27 ] How has social media changed the way that we behave as people in a crisis? [00:09:49 ] The echo chamber of anger that Twitter has become. [00:10:38 ] Why the traditional way of responding in a crisis of defining your message and then spamming that out across every possible channel is outdated. [00:15:44 ] How businesses need to have different scales of crisis. [00:17:19 ] Why the management of issues and the management of a crisis are different and businesses should respond differently to each. [00:19:33 ] How, for the five biggest corporate crises in the last few years, four out of five of the CEOs of those businesses didn't have their job six months later. [00:20:18 ] Kate talks us through the various stages of a corporate crisis: programmable, the crisis ark and recovery. [00:21:40 ] Why a company’s share price will normally recover quicker than its reputation post-crisis. [00:22:23 ] The truism that the "reputation you have going into the crisis is the one that sees you through it.” [00:24:18 ] Why, in a crisis situation, you have to communicate before you know everything. [00:25:03 ] Why silence in a crisis creates a gap for misinformation and fake news. [00:26:44 ] How to rebuild trust post-crisis. [00:27:58 ] How you can measure the impact and recovery from a crisis. [00:28:53 ] How can brands prepare for a crisis? [00:31:41 ] What early warning systems work to pre-warn you about a crisis?
