Crisis Communication

This is my forth post about communication in a responsible business and all the things that involves this subject. It’s been a pleasure talk about it, because I believe it affects directly our lives. It’s not just about advertise, sell and buy a product or a service, but our company’s choices and what we use daily is affect by business communication.

It is important specially now days when we have so many medias and channels to receive and share information. We can access and learn about anything at anytime; in the same way companies can reach us (the audience) in different ways. I talked about this on my last post when I came with the concepts of Integrated Marketing Communication. However I didn’t give examples how an organization can use the IMC.

If you read the earlier posts you already know, but if you didn’t I’ve been using Mack Trucks as an example for all the concepts talked lately here. This is a big company and provides you reader to see better what I’m talking about. Going back to IMC and how a company can uses it, I’ll show how Mack Trucks uses it. Looking for communication web content I found that Mack uses different types of medias channels to reach it stakeholders.

Mack has a good web site where I could discover where they are sharing the message. The company has social network fan pages, youtube channels, flickr profile and has been doing a good on line jog. And off line? Mack also uses the traditional media channels to reach the audience, one good example of how to integrate the communication is that Mack is present in lots of events related to company’s market, this is a closer relation between company and audience. Futhermore, Mack produces videos about those events and share this message via TV, Youtube and their own web site.

So the message that Mack’s stakeholders receive at the event, is the same that people into their houses have access trough TV or Internet. This channels integration makes the same message goes further and reaches a higher number of company’s stakeholders.

Each organization’s stakeholders are and use different channels to receive and/or respond the message. This stakeholder selection is called segmentation and on Mack’s website each link has as its function reach a different segment. There are links for suppliers, commercial partners, consumers, media, investors, employees and future employees, etc. Splitting each segment make the task of spread and communicates the message easier and more efficient for Mack. And the stakeholder segmentation works and has to be done with the traditional media channels also.

The IMC and stakeholder segmentation are important in very different ways to an organization, on point that is really important is not to create a misunderstanding and lose stakeholders trust what can be an issue for the company. In business many external and internal aspects can influence for the beginning of an issue or even a crisis and communication is one of them.

Problems with factory, employees’ conditions, natural disasters, stock market, bad communication, global economy, etc, are points that can start a problem for the organization.  To manage a crisis each company should have a Crisis Communication Plan (CCP). This plan is essential in crisis times, the primarily function of communication n in those times is to containing the negatives stakeholders and media reaction to anything that went wrong with the organization and preserve the company’s reputation.

Crisis and issues communication is extremely related with ethics in communication. During difficult times, companies must be aware how they are going to respond to the public, stakeholders and media about what is going on. How the organization is going to communicate and care about it’s image has to be an ethical response, because the audience, media, stakeholders and even the market opponents will be watching and listening. There are a lot of people involved in this process and they depend on this crisis answer, with that said the organization must be open to the truth in crisis time, take the responsibility for what happened and walk the talk to fix the problem.

An issue or a crisis can happen with at any company in many situations, however the organization has to be ready to deal with those problems. Sometimes an image company can be better after a crisis if it communicates and acts wright.