Does your Brand Need a Crisis Triage Plan?

Posted on March 4, 2010 by Kathleen Carpenter

The 2010 Winter Olympics are over. This year was filled with memorable moments and a record number of Olympic Medals. Above that there was another standout moment. That moment was one truly memorable commercial, The Nike Human Chain. The commercial is a minute of pure inspiration with one simple message: Learning how to fall and get back up is the centerpiece of athletic greatness. And that lesson is indeed one of the most important lessons that today’s business crisis management teams need to master.  The recent allegations made by Floyd Landis, coupled with recovery from a nasty crash at the Tour of California, Lance Armstrong has proven himself to be an authentic Zen Master of Crisis Triage.


 

With a plethora of social media, real time information flow, it's a whole new reputation management game. This is vividly illustrated by the unraveling of the Toyota brand as well as the rapid fall of Tiger Woods.

Crisis management experts' standard advice is that the key to a successful handling of a crisis is preparing beforehand to respond early and take control of your story. In some cases, however, a company that lacks major crisis experience or has simply taken the "ostrich approach" in the early stages of a crisis and then things explode. At that point the hawks are circling, the blogosphere is buzzing, and perhaps the company is even facing criminal liability. What any business needs at that point is a Crisis Triage Plan. And that plan needs to be an agile and adaptive enterprise between executive management and a trusted team to manage the legal, public relations and social networksphere aspects of the crisis.

Where does the triage team start?

Triage usually starts with determining the greatest need at the immediate time that will stop damage from escalating. The starting point of Crisis Triage is to start taking responsibility in a credible and authentic way and stop hiding. Stop hiding documents that will eventually be revealed anyway. Stop hiding the fact that the Company may not have all the answers. The legal team is a critical part of the team, but don't let the message sound like it was written by a lawyer or a spin doctor. Create a simple message and get that message out. And that's just the start. "Everybody Get's Knocked Down, but How Quick are your Going to Get Up?

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