Saying “No Comment” Can Say a Lot

Saying “No Comment” Can Say a Lot

“If your business has the potential to attract media attention, you need to have a plan in place for handling any publicity you get, good or bad,” says Stephen Leslie, a marketing expert and owner of local marketing consultancy business, The Perfect Angle Ltd. “If something goes wrong, adopting a ‘no comment’ approach while hiding behind your voicemail and ignoring your email is not an effective PR plan. People will always draw their own conclusions and, if you let them, they’re most likely to misinterpret the situation when they do.”

Stephen Leslie has been watching the unfolding crisis at Paraparaumu’s Monteiths Brewery Bar over the last six weeks and says that other local businesses should be taking notice and learning from the situation.

“It’s a really sad result for everyone involved,” he says. “No-one likes to see a local business fail, especially one that employs a large number of people. Unfortunately it appears that the magnitude of the issue meant the owners were unable to save the business and that’s a real tragedy for them, their staff, their suppliers and business partners, and the local community.”

Stephen says that when your business is facing a PR crisis, it’s almost certainly too late to be developing a plan for how you’re going to deal with it. “It’s just like the ‘Get Ready Get Thru’ campaign the Government is running around natural disasters – you need to have a plan in place before it’s too late.”

“Peter Elliott keeps asking us, ‘if a disaster happened now, would you be ready?’ – well is your business ready for a PR disaster?”

When it comes to a business ‘disaster’, Stephen says you need to act, and fast. “The media isn’t going to wait for you to get your story straight, so you need to have strategies in place before it happens to manage the situation as best you can when it happens,” he explains. “And social media can be even more brutal. These days it’s rare that you can simply hide and wait for things to die down – you need to take responsibility for minimising the risk of misunderstanding or misinterpretation.”

“Using the clichéd ‘no comment’ approach hands control over to someone else and gives them the opportunity present the story they want, using information they get from people who do want to say something. It can also give the impression that you’re hiding something – those two little words can actually say a lot to the people who are asking the questions. Remember, just because you’re not talking, doesn’t mean no-one else is.”

“In the case of Monteiths Brewery Bar, the journalist talked to the Council, the Police, and the bar staff and customers, then presented their side of the story. And their story could very well be right, but it could equally be distorted or even completely wrong - I guess we may never really know. But at the end of the day, perception is reality for many people.”

And it’s this perception that can destroy a business, he says. “Saying nothing may give the impression you don’t care. If someone ignores you, especially when you believe you have valid reasons for having their attention, how do you feel? It’s the same with your customers and suppliers. People want reassurance that you’re doing everything you can to resolve the situation, with as little negative impact on them as possible. People will be more forgiving if you keep them informed and show them you’re trying hard to resolve the problem.”

Stephen says there are a number of things a business should do in advance to improve the chances of “getting thru” a business disaster:

1. Create a Crisis Management Team: bring together a small team of key senior staff and advisors who can provide good advice when a crisis arises – if you don’t have internal expertise in certain areas, such as media relations or legal advice, bring in external support;
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3. Appoint (and train) an Official Spokesperson(s): it’s important that only the company’s appointed spokesperson(s) speaks on its behalf. Make sure they’re appropriately trained to handle crisis situations and that they’re kept properly informed when one arises;
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5. Have a Central Contact List: if something bad happens, people need to be able to contact your Crisis Management Team immediately – create a single directory of all the contact details for each team member (mobile phones, landlines, emails) and let your staff know where to find it;
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7. Identify Key Stakeholders: your staff and key business partners deserve to know what’s going on as a PR crisis can often directly impact them. They can also be your best advocates so communicate with them regularly throughout the crisis to show them you need and value their support. They’ll be talking to other people about what’s going on, so work with them to make sure they’re delivering the right messages;
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9. Understand your Audience(s): as well as key stakeholders, you need to identify all the key audiences (customers, media, community groups, the public, etc) who’ll be interested in what’s happening – create a list and work out what they’ll be most interested in hearing and how to get the message out to them;
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11. Identify your Media Channels: it’s not just the media you need to consider during a PR crisis – how else do you interact with customers, staff and stakeholders? Identify every channel you use (for example, Facebook, Twitter, email, website, direct mail, etc), then put plans in place for how you’ll manage them when the time comes;
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13. Know your Holding Position(s): each situation will be different, but that doesn’t stop a business from developing a series of pre-determined statements for use at the very beginning of a crisis. Identify some of the more likely situations that could arise, then write some brief statements you could use in those situations;
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15. Monitor the “Chatter”: it’s always important to get customer feedback, and during a crisis is no different. Make sure you spend time monitoring comments being made by customers, staff, suppliers, etc and then look for ways to respond to any negative sentiments. Social media offers a low cost way of using crisis situations to demonstrate you’re working hard to fix the problem; and,
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17. Brief your Team: a PR crisis management plan, no matter how good, will only work if your people know what to do if disaster strikes. The key is to ensure your staff are aware of the protocols around such a crisis, and what to do when one strikes (as well as ongoing activities, such as handling media enquiries).
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Finally, Stephen says it’s equally important to have a system in place to carry out a full debrief and assessment of the situation and how it was handled, and to apply the key learnings to your plan so that you’re even better prepared if there’s a “next time”.

“Being prepared to act quickly and decisively gives you the best chance of limiting the damage and restoring your reputation. And it can mean the difference between opening your doors tomorrow or closing them forever.”

ENDS

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