Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message

  • 5h 22m
  • Steven Fink
  • McGraw-Hill
  • 2013

There are few guarantees in business today. Unfortunately, one of them is the inevitability of a crisis having a potentially major effect on your business and your reputation. When your company finds itself in the midst of a crisis, the ripple effects can disrupt lives and business for the foreseeable future if public opinion is not properly shaped and managed.

Skillfully managing the perception of the crisis determines the difference between a company’s life or death. Because in the pitched battle between perception and reality, perception always wins.

Fortunately, there is a solution. Crisis communications and crisis management legend Steven Fink gives you everything you need to prepare for the inevitable—whether it’s in the form of human error, industrial accidents, criminal behavior, or natural disasters.

In this groundbreaking guide, Fink provides a complete toolkit for ensuring smooth communications and lasting business success through any crisis. Crisis Communications offers proactive and preventive methods for preempting potential crises. The book reveals proven strategies for recognizing and averting damaging crisis communications issues before it’s too late. The book also offers ways to deal with mainstream and social media, use them to your advantage, and neutralize and turn around a hostile media environment Steven Fink uses his decades of expertise and experience in crisis communications to help you:

  • UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC
  • PERCEPTION AND REALITY
  • CHOOSE THE BEST SPOKESPERSON FOR THE CRISIS
  • PROTECT YOUR BRAND AND REPUTATION THROUGH CRISES LARGE AND SMALL
  • MAKE WISE, VIGILANT, AND DEFENSIBLE DECISIONS UNDER EXTREME CRISIS-INDUCED STRESS
  • TELL THE TRUTH NO MATTER HOW TEMPTING IT MAY BE TO MISLEAD
  • USE SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT A CRISIS

The explosion of the Internet and, especially, social media, has added a new layer to the business leader’s skill set: the ability to handle a crisis quickly and professionally within moments of its occurrence. Livelihoods depend upon it.

With in-depth case studies of Toyota, BP, and Penn State, Crisis Communications provides everything you need to successfully lead your company through today’s rocky landscape of business—where crises large and small loom around every corner, and the lives of businesses and management teams hang in the balance.

About the Author

Steven Fink is the President and founder of Lexicon Communications Corp. (CrisisManagement.com), the nation’s oldest and most experienced crisis management and crisis communications firm. In addition, he authored the bestselling Crisis Management, the first book ever written on the subject.

In this Book

  • Crisis Communications—The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message
  • Preface
  • You Can’t Make This Stuff Up
  • Defining Our Terms
  • What BP Should Have Said
  • Attitude Adjustments
  • Toyota—On a Slippery Crisis Communications Slope with No Brakes
  • Understanding Your Crisis
  • Shaping Your Crisis Communications Message
  • Spokespersons
  • Social Media and Digital Communications—or, Truth/Lies at the Speed of Light
  • Shakespeare Was Right—“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
  • Protecting Your Brand
  • Telling the Truth
  • Say It Ain’t So, Joe!—The Penn State Crisis
  • Dealing with Death—Fatality Communications
  • Crisis Communications Strategies
  • The Good, the Bad, the News Media—or, Juggling Chain Saws
  • Senior Management—Your Own Worst Enemy?
  • Take Your Own Pulse—or, What Were They Thinking?
  • Internal Crisis Communications
  • External Crisis Communications
  • Reputation Management and Reservoirs of Goodwill
  • Issues Management
  • Crisis Communications for Publicly Traded Companies
  • Crisis Litigation
  • How to Break Bad News
  • The Blame Game
  • Crisis-Induced Stress
  • Making Defensible Decisions—Decision Making Under Crisis-Induced Stress
  • Apologies—Shakespeare—Still Right After All These Years
  • Crisis Advertising—Does It Work?
  • Crisis Communications Plans
  • The Failure of Business Schools
  • Speed Is of the Essence
  • Rising to the Occasion
  • Notes
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