The Covid-19 pandemic is a reminder that much of what happens to us in life is beyond our control. The times of emerging threats, such as the one that has been taking place are, as a rule, ideal for rethink or reformulating the communication strategies in times of a company’s crisis management.
In this case, there have been varying degrees of crisis management, which differ from company to company. However, some situations are directly related to the spread of the virus and arise from cases of contamination within the company. But, in most cases, crisis management may be insufficient just because the companies’ communication offices feel overwhelmed and little prepared to communicate a situation of this dimension, first to their employees and then to the outside world.
Thus, there are some steps that must be taken into account when facing crisis communication situations:
1 – Anticipate the event
The biggest change that needs to happen is related to the way of thinking of companies, regarding crisis management, which should, whenever possible, change their perspective of reactive communication to plan possible scenarios proactively.
While most companies may be prepared to deal with a crisis communication, some may not anticipate equally important strategies, such as mapping the risks of each option and communicating the recovery phases after crisis management. Prevention strategies can be especially important in communication for social networks, where feedback is direct and immediate and, in which digitization encouraged a change, not only in the speed of response but also in the content, channel and tone.
2 – Using technology in favour of the company
In times of crisis, digital tools may not be perfect, but they have a preponderant role when it comes to preserving data and, above all, they are extremely important in remote work situations, for example.
Analytics tools, whether predictive or not, can help the company prioritize potential system hacks as they help determine the likelihood of attacks. In this sense, companies that invest in technology to safeguard their cybersecurity are better prepared and are able, more easily, to understand what went less successful, what resulted and how to build better partnerships and alliances for the future.
3 – Preserving the company’s core values
The company’s culture and values are important pillars that help prevent a crisis and guide your response to one. Attention to detail and what is most essential to the organization’s culture can make the difference between effective damage control and more unfavourable situations.
So thatmanagers can help others within a company, it is necessary that they have support as well. In this sense, assigning specific roles, in a crisis communication situation may be important so that, at critical times, everyone knows what their role is and when it is necessary (or not) to involve someone else to guide work and help them succeed .
4 – Investing in Creative approaches
Different companies will face different challenges. In this context, it is important to invest in internal communication and solidify the corporate message, in a clear, but creative way.
Creativity can be the right way to overcome obstacles, whether referring to the company or its customers, in order to reach a target audience with transparency, empathy and honesty, preserving the human nature of the message.
5 – Prepare the return
It is essential that, from the beginning, in the crisis strategies to be implemented, possible post-crisis scenarios are also contemplated, so that organizations are able to derive insights on how they should prepare to become more robust in this return.
As we all know, in all crisis, there are companies that can adapt more quickly, recovering more easily or having less significant impact than others. According to BCG, for example, about 14% of companies increase revenues and margin in times of crisis.
In this way, there are several examples of companies, which anticipated scenarios and changes in behaviour and sought to take advantage of them, changing their business model to face the drop in sales and respond to new needs in times of pandemic. If they used to make 3D prints or car parts, now they manufacture visors. If they used to produce textiles or beer, now they make disinfectant.
Regardless of the scenarios, it is essential that organizations do not underestimate the importance of preparing and creating an effective crisis management strategy, because only then will they be one step ahead of their competition.
A new year means new and surprising ideas. Because we believe that communication is, increasingly, a central pillar for any brand, we try to regularly find new opportunities to rethink traditional standards and to bring our clients and partners the best insights. We had the possibility to introduce something first-hand, a unique and disruptive vision of TrendWatching, a company that works with the identification of consumer trends in several sectors, with a network made up of more than one thousand spotters, distributed throughout more than 50 countries.
At BloomCast we believe these insights and unique visions to be essential to innovation processes, allowing us to create products and services that anticipate and answer to consumers’ needs. With them, we can develop faster communication strategies, more efficient communication plans and create more effective content that’s targeted at the desired audiences.
In this sense, the partnership with TrendWatching was established with the goal of knowing what global trends are occurring and what is the impact they may have. As examples we bring three trends identified by Henry Mason, TrendWatching’s Managing Director, at the presentation we did at the end of January, in Lisbon.
A-Commerce: with Artificial Intelligence becoming ever so more important in the market, its only natural that it is regarded as one the best solutions of services to the final customer, allowing, for example, a totally automated retail experience (some cases were mentioned such as Revolut, with their automatic trip insurance or Alibaba’s partnership with Ford and their automatic car vending machines).
M-Commerce: or Magic Point of Sale it’s a new way to provide new possibilities of personalized client services through technology such as Augmented Reality (AR) or Social Video (an example of this is TaoBao’s idea of having “livestreamers” that promote clothing pieces live on social media).
Virtual Assistants: Even though we have heard a lot about Siris and Alexas already, there’s still a huge amount to explore in this area, specially when it comes to health. Here there were given two examples: a virtual assistant that works keeping company to kids that are in hospital or a Samsung Robot (Bot Care) that specializes in managing and keeping in check the users physical health.
Technology is evolving in a way never before seen and, daily we see countless new ideas that promise to revolutionize the way we live and interact with each other, which also implies a new way of establishing connections between organizations, consumers and citizens. In this way, it is important to always be in the front line when it comes to knowledge and retaining as much information as possible. This is the only way we can provide the best possible service to our customers.