Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message

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Shaping Your Crisis Communications Message

As stated earlier (but it is a point worth repeating a thousand times), when there is a difference between perception and reality, perception always wins. Behind the scenes, you and your crisis management team may be doing a bang-up job in wrestling with a megacrisis: successfully keeping disaster at bay, saving towns from impending environmental doom, and protecting shareholder value. But if no one knows about it, your critics and aggressive plaintiffs’ attorneys will have a field day belittling your efforts as too little, too late. Worse, they may accuse you of doing nothing and putting people or the company at risk by your lack of action. It’s no different from the proverbial tree falling in the ...