No one wants to find their brand in a crisis, but proper handling of a bad situation can limit the damage and expense. Time and resources spent planning for a brand crisis can therefore have significant ROI. We recommend preparing for a brand crisis as soon as possible, so that you have advance plans in place and any crisis that arises can be quickly and tactfully extinguished. Here are our four steps to planning for and handling a branding crisis.
Each brand has a different personality and voice. So just like you might respond to trouble differently than your best friend or your great-grandmother, your brand should respond to a crisis in a way that’s both effective and uniquely its own. Our best recommendation when planning for a brand crisis is to clearly identify your brand’s voice, personality, and positioning, and create examples of how the brand might respond in potential crisis situations. That way, you can build a foundation that enables you to respond to a problem in a brand-aligned manner, rather than having to compromise or alter your brand.
When responding to a brand crisis, you need to make choices quickly despite stress, and there may not be any clear right answers. That’s why we recommend planning your response strategy before you’re stuck in a stressful situation. Decide now how your brand will respond to online comments, and who will be responsible. Determine what other avenues, such as social and traditional media, you’ll use to get your message out. Lay out guidelines for when you’ll be apologetic and when you’ll stick to your stance. Decide what to do if the crisis escalates, and when you should involve people like your CEO or legal team. These questions are of pivotal importance during a brand crisis, so we recommend planning for them while your head is clear and capable of targeting the potential problem in a brand-oriented fashion.
In the social media age, customers now have the ability to express their opinions about brands across public forums, which immediately increases the visibility of a brand crisis. The best data to monitor, therefore, are your social media platforms and interactions with customers. Social media monitoring tools alert organizations when sudden conversation spikes occur, when there’s an increase in negative mentions, or an unexpected hashtag starts trending. Receiving immediate alerts when problems arise allows brands to respond quickly, thereby mitigating the risk of a full blown crisis.
Assuming that your plan is already set up, you should be able to respond to an actual crisis in a timely and tactful manner.
In 2012, KitchenAid swiftly and apologetically handled a social media crisis before it was able to create a true storm. A staff member posted an insensitive tweet about President Obama’s grandmother to the KitchenAid twitter account instead of their own, which fueled outrage from its Twitter followers. Because the organization was monitoring its social media posts, KitchenAid was able to delete the tweet within 15 minutes and issue a series of apology tweets from Cynthia Soledad, the company’s head of branding. It appears that the company had a plan for a full-on brand crisis that involved contacting the most relevant executive and responding with respect to its offended Twitter followers and customers, which reflects the brand’s commitment to quality and excellence.
Brand crises are unexpected and stressful, but when handled appropriately, they can actually strengthen your brand’s image. Needless to say, a brand isn’t the only component of your business that can be affected by unexpected events. Check out our post on planning for uncertainty and the best way to stay prepared as marketers.
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