Preparing a Brand for Crisis

When a celebrity has acted out of character, you likely heard a family member or friend say “Wow, that’s off-brand for them.” These kinds of comments get to the root of what a brand is. It is far more than just your colors, font, and logo.

An organization’s brand is a living organism. It’s the human perspective and personality that people see externally. It helps an audience understand the org’s voice, personality, tone, visual style, and more. Above all else, it signifies what the organization stands for.

So, how can you react to a crisis while being “on brand?”

In a public relations sense, a crisis is defined as a major event or situation that can negatively impact an organization’s perception and reputation. This damage can extend to sales, shareholder or donor confidence, and credibility.

When a crisis pops up, an organization is usually put on the defensive. There’s an innate need for a response, whether it be due to audience demand, regulatory forces, or legal issues. Without a doubt, preparations can be made to ensure folks are ready for crisis, but as the old saying goes, no plan survives first contact with…well, the general public, the law, or the government.

The need to respond and handle the situation leads to some tough questions. Does your brand:

• Cast aspersion?

• Place blame?

• Accept responsibility?

Some options are better than others, and when tensions are high, the plans made might fall through. A great example of this is the BP oil spill from their rig, the “Deepwater Horizon.” This spill happened in 2010, and the response from environmental activists and government regulators was harsh. The impact on wildlife and workers was significant, causing a third of fishing waters in the gulf nearby to close, and around 8,000 jobs lost. How did BP respond to this, you might ask?

Poorly.

Not only did BP executives blame just about everyone but themselves, but the CEO came off as insensitive and childish - not the best image for a brand that portrays itself as “improving people’s lives.”

This provides us with a fantastic case study and lesson for how deviating from the brand an organization has established can sour public perception. When you deviate, you risk tarnishing your brand for years to come. Here’s how we can avoid that.

One of the most essential elements of crisis response to keep in mind is that you do not respond to the situation. Your brand is responding. This can seem small, but if your personal feelings or perceptions come out instead of the entire group’s response, you risk alienating your audience. Taking it back to our example, when the BP CEO claimed he was tired of responding to the crisis and would like to get back to his life, what do you think people said about that?

Nothing sympathetic, that’s for sure.

Were the executives responding and commenting on the issue tired? Probably. Were they being hounded by reporters? Without a doubt. Should they have uttered a word of that to the media? Hell no!

For their brand and outward appearance, this came off as wildly out of touch and just plain selfish. It didn’t portray a cutting-edge, innovative company seeking to reach net zero carbon emissions. Sticking to basics will help your brand recover rather than outlandish statements or the blame game.

Basics do not mean refusing to innovate. It does, however, mean knowing and utilizing what has worked in the past. For example, does your organization tend to not use social media often? Maybe you don’t see its value or it isn’t where your audience is. During a crisis, don’t start blasting out 20 tweets (or X’s now, I guess…?) about how sorry you are and how you’ll handle the crisis. Utilize what has been done in the past effectively, and keep your toolbox consistent. This will help your brand appear to be in control of the situation, and not spiraling out of control. You know how to respond, and what to use in response. But, what do you say?

When a crisis dampens a brand’s reputation, the response should match that. First is the accountability side. For example, how do you handle a crisis over car recalls due to a safety defect? Well, a brand should take accountability for it by focusing on how its goal is to provide a safe vehicle for its customers, and will not let this oversight happen again. This helps show how the problem was recognized by the organization, and the accountability comes from the brand itself - the thing people connect to.

Finally, you need to find out how to improve or remedy the situation in a way that’s in line with your organization’s values and ethos. The solution shouldn’t come out of left field; rather, it should feel like the logical and best way your brand could respond. With the car recall example above, a solution shouldn’t just be how to fix the problem. If the brand is all about safety in the car, then go a step further and provide owners of recalled vehicles with tools designed to diagnose any future problem that the recall was based on. But - why does any of this matter?

A crisis can spin out of control and permanently tarnish your reputation and brand image. It’s like a pestilence, it’ll spread to all corners of your organization if you are not careful about how you handle it.

People may have short memories, but we can be a bitter species. To this day, people still discuss the BP spill on places like X. One way to keep the conversation about a crisis positive for your brand is if people notice that way you plan to improve, and how your brand can still connect to people even when unfavorable situations happen.

When you don’t spin a success out of failure, you can just as easily spin more failure out of failure. Taking accountability, providing a change plan, and recognizing what happened will help pave the way forward for greater success in the future.