Is Your Startup Ready for a PR Crisis?

Didit Editorial

9 years ago

PR crisis

June 17, 2015: Sometimes brands run campaigns with slogans and events that make you wonder what their marketing team was thinking.

An unfortunately prime example: Bud Light’s “Up for Whatever” campaign. As part of the campaign, which was meant to encourage spontaneity and good times, the company printed labels on its beer bottles with the slogan “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night. #UpforWhatever.”

Come on now. It only takes a moment to realize that the slogan simplifies into “no means up for whatever.” In even less time, people began to point out that the statement could easily be interpreted as endorsement of rape culture.

How could the marketing team behind Bud Light be so irresponsible? They must have been aware that at least half of sexual assaults are associated with alcohol consumption, making alcohol the most common date-rape drug.

Aside from a bad marketing idea, one of the worst things that can happen to a startup is bad press. In 2014, megastar Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify, the hugely successful startup that gives listeners access to a massive, widely encompassing database of songs delivered through free streaming, anytime. Spotify (and its PR Agency) blundered through the crisis, making it worse by posting apologetic, blubbering Tweets begging T-Swift not to pull her entire song library from the database and even creating a playlist with suggestions on “What to Play While Taylor’s Away.”

Startups face a steep set of challenges as they attempt to scale. Mismanagement of a PR disaster during your startup’s early stages is enough to destroy its future. Straight from our PR experts, here are five crisis control steps you can take to ensure your startup is prepared to avoid embarrassingly pathetic disasters such as those mentioned above.

1 – Identify potential crises and formulate crisis management plans in advance.

Start preparing for a crisis before you need to respond to one. Identify potential crises and take the steps necessary to prevent them from happening. Crises don’t strike without warning: if your company has been around long enough to have a history, research the company’s past crises and outcomes. Learn from past mistakes as well as from errors committed by competitors. Analyze your startup’s readiness for each potential crisis.

In the event of bad press, be prepared to develop a crisis management plan to divert media attention away from situations that put your startup in a bad light, and to look for other media outlets where you can set the record straight. PR strategists have developed relationships with the press that are useful when it comes to finding the right reporter or journalist to help you tell your side of the story through an interview.

2 – Choose a spokesperson and build their image ahead of time.

How ready are your startup’s CEO and top executives for any potential crisis? Choose key leaders to represent the company carefully, and build their image way before any crisis strikes. One image-building tactic that PR strategists employ is “news jacking:” searching for current issues that company leaders can comment on to build their authority and the company’s authority in their field.

Key company leaders must go through media training before speaking to the press. PR strategists who are masters of media interviews prepare spokespeople for public apologies with strategic key messages that are simple and straightforward. Develop “sound bites” (quotable quotes and catchy phrases) ahead of time. Practice your answers and speak enthusiastically and naturally. Deliver your key messages effectively, don’t drop your voice at the end of a sentence, and eliminate phrases like “uh” and “you know”.

3 – Listen to voices from inside and outside the organization.

Many crises are caused by internal activity: for example, why didn’t anyone within Budweiser point out that the above-mentioned slogan, part of the “Up for Whatever” campaign, might be in bad taste? Monitor the behavior of senior management and employees on an ongoing basis.

Commit to ongoing media monitoring. Make sure you are one of the first to know of negative press about your business so you can respond before the situation snowballs out of hand. Monitor print, online, and broadcast media for coverage, and respond to negative press in an appropriate and effective way.

4 – Don’t allow time for the crisis to escalate.

Your startup’s response within the first 24 hours of any crisis is crucial. The media is constantly searching for news that’s being shared across social media channels, and anything posted on the Internet has the potential to stick around for a long time. Ignoring a crisis can generate more negative press. Remember this: if you don’t shape your story, someone else will. Be aware that your startup’s reaction to the crisis will impact public perception of your company long after the situation is under control. React quickly with your key messages and get straight to the point: address what went wrong, how you plan to fix it, how it affects your audience, and how you plan to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

5 – Out-class opponents.

Don’t whine the way Spotify did when Taylor Swift ditched them. Instead, shift the focus from tragedy to remedy. Don’t blame your competitors or the media, don’t deny what really happened, and don’t point fingers. Answer questions briefly, bridge to what you want to say, and communicate your key messages. And instead of dwelling on what went wrong, move on to how you plan to make it right, and how you will prevent it from happening again.

Follow these tips to prevent, prepare for, and contain any PR crisis. Remember that PR is a continuous process, not a Band-Aid for a marketing mistake or bad buzz. Your PR firm should help you handle any crises effectively by developing your key messages, as well as rebuild your company’s reputation over time with speeches, press releases, articles, and content matching your company’s image in order to hook people in.