We’ve got a PR crisis. What do we do?

1. Assess Calmly

First, don’t panic, and assess the situation. What happened? Have we been accused of some misconduct? Is it a false accusation or have we erred in some way that demands public accountability?

2. Understand Impact

Once you understand what happened, then you want to find out what is happening. Monitor the digital media environment for mentions of the incident. What kind of spike in activity are you seeing? How much of the audience demographic is considered your core constituency? What is the sentiment favorability ratio? What response are you seeing from influencers and mainstream media?

Analyze the trajectory of this data over time and make a risk assessment of what you expect will happen if you continue not to respond. Then decide on a course of action. Crisis is a word that gets thrown around but it’s actually a medical term that means the patient is either going to get better, or they’re going to die. In many cases, inaction is your best course of action.

3. Communicate Effectively

A PR crisis is civil litigation in the court of public opinion. There are three principal actors: the villain (presumably your client), the victim (the person or entity claiming damages against your client), and the vindicator (the audience representing the court of public opinion). To survive a crisis, you must appeal to the public’s sense of justice.

Justice demands that a debt of blood or treasure be repaid. If my client steals $10 from the victim, and then compensates them $10 in return, that will balance the scales. But they don’t necessarily need to give them $10. They just need to give them something worth $10. My job is to convince the vindicator that what we are offering the victim is worth $10.

4. Make Empathetic Decisions

Crime victim studies have shown that the most important aspects in a victim’s sense of justice are restitution and rehabilitation. In a PR crisis, restitution is a problem that can usually be solved with money. Rehabilitation typically calls for the villain’s admission of fault or acknowledgment of harm, a relatable or understandable explanation for actions resulting in harm, and a sincere apology or commitment not to repeat those actions going forward.