Your Crisis Plan is Never Finished
Note: For this edition of The Burrow, we welcome the thoughts of Haley Harrison-Lee. Haley is the Senior Public Relations Director at Trozzolo, our parent company. Enjoy.
Your crisis plan is never finished. In today’s complex issues management landscape, brands that fall behind are the brands that fail to plan, test and review crisis situations.
An industry peer who is a hospital system communicator recently shared their team’s response to a series of back-to-back crises just days apart. Thanks to a quick review and recalibration following the first crisis, they were able to apply lessons learned to the second, more significant crisis. My friend also credits ongoing unplanned crisis drills for preparing their team to handle a barrage of misinformation, media requests and complex internal and external communications. By design, their crisis plan is never finished.
This should be true for any industry. In March, I connected with a writer for the Craft Industry Alliance’s C-suite publication read by executives at leading craft companies like Singer. In the article, “Why you need a crisis PR strategy,” I share corporate considerations that should guide difficult decision-making before, during and after a crisis. In the end, brands aren’t judged by the crisis, but by how they react to it.
About Haley Harrison-Lee. A storyteller at heart, Haley is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist and media expert. She currently serves as Senior Public Relations Director at Trozzolo following an impressive 16-year career as a TV news anchor and reporter. On behalf of our client partners and prospects, Harrison-Lee leverages opportunities to tell powerful brand stories through the media, helps grow relationships between brands and media members, provides media relations training and guidance, and leads clients through crisis and issues management projects.