Communicate in a Crisis

Understand, Engage and Influence Consumer Behaviour to Maximize Brand Trust

Kate Hartley

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780749486822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Relations publiques

Communicate in a Crisis is the definitive guide for any PR or marketing professional to recognize, plan and respond to a sudden wildfire of consumer-led reaction, 'manipulated outrage' sparked from interaction on news feed algorithms, fuelled by social media and the constant demand for an instantaneous response.This book turns the traditional crisis management approach on its head, starting by understanding changing consumer behaviours and the new 'threat' for brands, then outlining practical steps to prepare, synchronize and execute a coordinated brand response across all channels - under pressure. It reveals why we love to hate our favourite brands, how to recognize a day to day problem from a crisis, and offers valuable advice, such as using influencers and brand advocates to address social media trolls, rumours and the impact of fake news. With unique case studies, interviews and anecdotes from global leaders, Communicate in a Crisis will embed a bottom-up culture of long-term reputation management, always ready to face the unexpected.

PART ONE

Understanding how consumer behaviour has changed

Introduction

There are some fantastic books available to corporate communicators that give advice on the best ways to manage communications through a crisis (Adrian Wheeler’s Crisis Communications Management Practice Book for the PRCA, for example). I wanted to write a book that focused on the way that ordinary people behave in a crisis, how they respond to brands and organizations and how that has changed with the rise of social media and digital communications.

Organizations today face an unprecedented level of scrutiny by consumers, and are judged – rightly or wrongly – for every action they take. The balance of power is shifting. Ordinary people are putting pressure on companies and institutions at a level we have never seen before, holding them to new ethical standards and demanding complete transparency in communications.

This is changing how organizations behave. We’re seeing the rise of ‘purpose-driven’ marketing – no longer the domain of a few, niche companies, but seen as a competitive differentiator, a way to attract consumers who want to know that the companies they buy from meet their own values. But the businesses that fail to meet these new standards have far to fall in a crisis. Those same consumers who demand more from organizations are swift to judge, and to condemn. Social and digital media give them the tools to express their outrage, organize boycotts, join campaigns and influence others at scale.

So, while the principles of crisis communications may not have changed, the environment in which a crisis plays out has changed beyond recognition.

I have spent the last 25-plus years working in public relations, reputation management and crisis communications. I co-founded Polpeo with Tamara Littleton in 2014, to train and rehearse companies in how to manage a crisis, by simulating a crisis as it unfolds on social and digital media. We’ve worked with some of the biggest brands in the world across Europe, the United States, the Middle East, Asia and Africa in handling a crisis. I have learned that the organizations that understand not just how consumers behave, but why – the motivations and imperatives that drive them – are better equipped to navigate and manage a crisis successfully.

01

Kick a brand when it’s down

Why we love to hate our favourite brands

It’s like we’re breaking up. We can either be friends or hate each other. Maybe we’ll even get back together, but not right now.

(ASHLEY SCARPA, FLORIDA RESTAURATEUR)1

Anyone who has been through a break-up will recognize the feeling. You thought you knew the person you’d committed to. And then they did something that made you question everything – who they are, what they believe in, what they stand for. You’ve been betrayed and your judgement is in question.

But Scarpa wasn’t going through a relationship break-up. She’d bought a Volkswagen, just before news broke that the car firm had falsified information on emissions – a scandal that cost the firm at least €30 billion (the equivalent of more than two years’ worth of operating profit for the firm), and from which it took two years for its share price to recover.2 Scarpa is an environmental campaigner, so the car she drives is a statement. She felt let down: Volkswagen had broken her trust. So she hit back, by talking publicly about the betrayal.

Passion brands and betrayal

The idea of having a relationship with a brand seems strange. But some brands inspire passion. We want to be associated with them – it gives us social currency. They become part of our social identity.

Mostly, we’re indifferent to brands. Our loyalty to everyday brands is declining. But some really get to us. Passion brands are those for which we feel ‘loyalty beyond reason’ (a phrase coined by Kevin Roberts, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Saatchi & Saatchi and author of LoveMarks3). Try to persuade a Mac user to switch to a PC, or a Harley Davidson owner to trade for a Honda, and see how that goes.

Passion brands are the ones that create real connections with people: Apple, Coca-Cola, Google, Netflix, Nike, Harley-Davidson, Ben & Jerry’s. The kind of brands that stand for something. The kind you might have tattooed on your arm. But when those brands betray us, that passion turns to anger.

Gill Green is a clinical psychologist and lead consultant at business psychology firm OR Consulting. She works with businesses on areas such as conflict resolution and the effects of trauma. ‘We don’t just have a written contract with brands we use. We have a psychological contract with them,’ she says. ‘We believe we have a deal with them, that they stand for something. It might be something that we infer from the brand, rather than something it outright claims.’

This was certainly the case with Facebook, which in 2018 found itself the subject of intense scrutiny after personal data was shared with Cambridge Analytica without users’ permission. It was alleged that, at worst, the data could have been used to influence political election outcomes; at best it was a breach of trust. Most people – or at least most adults – know that by using Facebook you are giving it permission to use your data to target advertising to you. When you know, more or less, where that data is going, and you see advertising for brands you’ve indicated you like, that seems like an ok deal.

We trust Facebook to look after some of our most personal and precious things: private conversations, relationship information, memories, photos of our children. When it broke that trust, it broke a psychological contract with its users. The backlash was swift. Facebook fell out of favour with many: an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll in March 2018 showed that its favourability among Americans had plunged, and in the United Kingdom a reported one in five people deleted their Facebook account after the scandal.4

Facebook knew it had messed up. Just look at Mark Zuckerberg’s change in tone from this statement when he was speaking at the Crunchie Awards in San Francisco, 2007, a decade before the Cambridge Analytica scandal: ‘People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people… That social norm is just something that has evolved over time’5 to this public statement on Facebook on 21 March 2018, after the scandal had broken: ‘We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you.’6

Another stark example of betrayal of trust by a brand came from Boohoo.com, an online fashion retailer that prides itself on its animal welfare policy, and is endorsed by the animal rights campaign group PETA. Boohoo.com opposes the fur trade, and sells faux fur clothes and accessories. But in December 2017 it emerged that Boohoo.com was one of a handful of British companies that were selling animal fur as faux fur (as reported by Drapers Record in 2018).7 ‘That led to a huge sense of betrayal,’ says Gill Green.

The issue was in Boohoo.com’s supply chain, and the retailer quickly discontinued trading with the offending supplier. It’s a great example of how a company can have strong principles, but if its supply chain doesn’t adhere to those same principles, they can backfire spectacularly. ‘Provenance is so important,’ says Green. ‘People who care about these things are into the detail. They will track back anything in the supply chain. There are some things that are so emotive – the environment, animal welfare, children’s rights – that they go right to people’s core belief systems. Betray those things at your peril.’

Emotional ownership

I talk to Gemma Storey, a creative copywriter with whom I have worked for many years, creating scenarios for brands to rehearse how to manage a breaking crisis. In order to create those scenarios and make them realistic, she meticulously researches how people behave towards brands in crisis. ‘As a brand, you want people to be a fan of your product, but some people get so attached to it, they feel ownership,’ she tells me. She points to an example in the literary world. I...