In times of crisis, how and when you communicate is as important as what you say. Is a medium fit for purpose yesterday, before the crisis, right for a crisis today? You must be able to answer that question before you set sail on the crisis communication journey.
The medium you choose and your speed to communicate send a very clear message. Crises can get out of hand quickly with the 24-hour news cycle, AI, the internet, or social media. While these change the speed at which information spreads, they don’t change the fact that you must understand what is happening here and now.
That has always been the case with crisis communication. You must know what is going on around you and what is affecting your stakeholders. Importantly, know where impacted people will be heading for information, and how to reach them at any given time.
In his book Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously wrote: “the medium is the message.”
He used a light bulb as an example of a medium, surmising that the electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message. It is a medium that has a social effect in that it enables people to create spaces during bleak times that would otherwise be shrouded in darkness.
When the crisis occurs, you need to know whether the light will be turned on or off by the medium you choose. That medium differs for stakeholders at different times. You can’t be everywhere for everyone.
You need to determine who you must reach, when you must reach them by, and what medium will send the right message at the right time. The right choice of medium is vital to deliver the message that you are concerned enough to make contact.
Anyone who has heard me speak or read any of my writing will know that I am a fan of "the medium is the message" theory as a critical strategic approach to crisis communication. If you know your stakeholders as well as you should, you will know how they get their information at different times on different days, and can therefore effectively communicate with them.
Choosing the right medium at the right time
One of the problems of working in crisis communication is that using real case studies invariably breaks confidentiality, so my examples are 100 per cent fictitious.
Say you are a promoter of a music festival, and on the first morning, you are informed that several patrons have collapsed at the event from what appears to be a potentially fatal reaction to a pill they may have taken. The police inform you that recently, a bad batch of drugs was brought into the city. You have a crisis.
Your key stakeholders in the first instance are those on their way and at the festival. You must get to them, the other patrons who may take these pills, before you try to manage the potential reputational fallout.
At the venue, you stop the video feed to the big screens and post a message. You hijack the social media feeds, hashtags, and online commentary surrounding the festival. You post a picture of the offending pills online, on Reddit, TikTok, and on the event’s owned channels.
All this must be done before you worry about the impact of this news on your reputation. Remember the golden rule of crisis management: people first, then reputation, and then dollars.
By using the media that matters most to your most important stakeholder in this situation - those at risk of taking the pills - you are well down the path to managing the crisis. Now you can attend to reputation, but you have already taken the first big step in managing the event’s reputation by prioritising people, understanding your audience, and communicating with them immediately through their preferred medium.
When people look back on how you acted, they will see a responsible, knowledgeable, and caring organisation. That goes a long way in protecting a reputation and ensuring the best chance of survival for the event.
Now, let's take a corporate example. A major telco goes down. Obviously, customers can’t be contacted by phone, and when the phones go down, some people are imperilled. They are out of contact; they have devices that rely on being connected. They are scared to be isolated. How does the telco react?
It could happen to any telco, but fortunately, there are three major suppliers in Australia. If one goes down, the obvious best medium is the other two.
Work with them to contact their users and inform them of the details surrounding the other telco outage. The word will spread. People who know vulnerable people will try to contact them. Using word of mouth is not ideal, but it is the fastest and most effective medium in this scenario.
Again, the medium is the message. You reached out quickly through the best way possible in an emergency. A general blast to all media and fast updates to ensure all owned media have up-to-date information prominently displayed, will demonstrate your commitment to customer safety.
Your medium and speed have put people first and are the first steps in protecting reputation. If your competitors are unwilling to cooperate, the media have an even bigger story that doesn’t revolve around you.
Let’s go to a final fictitious example.
Your organisation has been accused in the media of covering up bullying and harassment by a highly ranked executive. This is an example of people in power behaving badly.
Does this crisis affect the organisation or only the individual? Is the individual given the presumption of innocence as prescribed by law? Does the organisation absorb the blows to protect the individual and risk the consequences, which are invariably accusations of ignoring the victim?
Everything is alleged, and nothing is proven. This is an all-too-common occurrence for people and culture professionals and boards. It invariably is left to the communication professional to “do something.”
How can the medium be the message in this circumstance? The number one stakeholder is the workforce. People first. Nothing short of a commitment from the top to get to the bottom of the matter, without staging a witch hunt, will suffice.
Every organisation should have an effective way to connect quickly with employees during working hours, and in many cases, after hours when needed. In this case that’s your medium of choice. It shows you are trying to get ahead of the issue.
What is the most accepted way for top management to communicate with staff? Where do they expect to hear from the top brass? That is your medium of choice. At a time when employees need to hear from the top, reach out to them through the medium they expect you to. Don’t change and don’t improvise. Rely on muscle memory.
In prioritising employee communications, you are respecting that this is an issue which impacts them and that they are the most important stakeholders. Everything else can wait. Remember, people first, reputation second, and dollars last.
People first, always
You have established that you understand that this is about your people, and you care about and respect them.
In each of the examples above, I have touched only on initial moves that not only put people first but, in doing so, lay the groundwork to protect the reputation of the organisation when the inevitable inquisition begins.
The medium you choose to communicate with your most important stakeholders, and the time it takes for you to react to a situation, will be scrutinised just as closely as the words you use.
Douglas Wright is Chief Executive Officer of Wrights, providing strategic counsel to boards and executives navigating complex reputational, stakeholder, governance and public policy challenges.
With more than four decades experience, he has advised leading corporations, industry bodies, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations across Australia and internationally. Prior to establishing Wrights, he founded and led Ogilvy PR Australia.
Douglas is Deputy Chair and a Fellow of Communication and Public Relations Australia (CPRA), a Chartered Public Relations Practitioner (UK), a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Certified Practising Marketer.
He combines commercial judgement, strategic insight and an ability to shape outcomes in complex environments.
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