"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and one tweet to destroy it." Aaron Blank joins us to discuss the crucial importance of crisis communications and the proactive measures businesses should take to prepare for potential crises.

Aaron explains how companies can effectively manage their reputations when unexpected situations arise, emphasizing that having a solid crisis plan is not just a good idea—it's essential. He talks about the value of transparency and responsiveness during a crisis, urging leaders to avoid the dreaded "no comment" response, which can harm relationships and reputations.

He highlights the need for thorough planning, scenario mapping, and ongoing communication with stakeholders in a crisis situation. Ultimately, he stresses that investing time and resources into crisis management can safeguard a company's reputation, making it a vital part of any business strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Public relations professionals emphasize the need for crisis communication planning well before a crisis occurs, as it is crucial for effective management.
• Crisis communications require understanding the landscape, including local and global events that could impact a business and its stakeholders.
• Companies should prepare for crises by maintaining a responsive communication strategy and avoiding the use of 'no comment' as a response.
• Establishing a crisis management communications team and defining roles is essential for efficient crisis response and recovery processes.
• The importance of internal communications during a crisis cannot be overstated; keeping the in-house team informed is vital for cohesive management.
• Crisis preparedness involves scenario planning, message development, and regular training to ensure teams are ready to act swiftly when needed.

About the Guest

Aaron Blank is President and CEO of Fearey. He leads the firm’s crisis and issues management work, ensuring the team has the resources and expertise to navigate complex challenges. With more than 23 years of experience, Aaron has managed high-stakes situations across the U.S., from reputational crises following crane accidents and workplace safety issues to data breaches, M&A transactions, and food recalls. He has advised CEOs, government leaders, police chiefs, and mayors during critical moments, including officer-involved shootings and legal disputes affecting both private and public sectors.

About the Host

Abbie Fink is president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona and a founding member of PRGN. Her marketing communications background includes skills in media relations, digital communications, social media strategies, special event management, crisis communications, community relations, issues management, and marketing promotions for both the private and public sectors, including such industries as healthcare, financial services, professional services, government affairs and tribal affairs, as well as not-for-profit organizations.

PRGN Presents is brought to you by Public Relations Global Network, the world’s local public relations agency. Our co-host and executive producer is Adrian McIntyre with Speed of Story, a B2B communications firm in Phoenix.

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From the Public Relations Global Network, this is PRGN Presents. I'm Adrian McIntyre.

And I'm Abbie Fink, president of HMA Public Relations in Phoenix, Arizona, and a founding member of PRGN. With public relations leaders embedded into the fabric of the communities we serve, clients hire our agencies for the local knowledge, expertise and connections in markets spanning six continents across the world.

Our guests on this biweekly podcast series are all members of the Public Relations Global Network. They will discuss such topics as workplace culture, creative compensation and succession planning, the importance of sustainability and environmental, social and governance programs, crisis communications and outside of the box thinking for growing your business.

For more information about PRGN and our members, please visit PRGN.com. And now let's meet our guest for this episode.

I'm Aaron Blank, President and CEO of a public relations marketing firm called Fearey. We're based in Seattle, Washington. We're entering into our 44th year in business.

Holy moly. 44 years.

That's crazy.

I'm guessing in that amount of time you've come across quite a lot of opportunity to use your smarts when it comes to crisis communications. It's one of my ... I want to say it's one of my favorite things to do, but that makes that sound kind of weird. But I do like how smart you get to be when you do crisis communications and how you rely on gut instinct and past experiences and you bring a lot of yourself into conversations when it comes to crisis communications.

But one of the things we desperately try to talk about is you got to plan for these things and you may not want to talk about them, but it's so important to plan about them. So let's get into it a little bit. Crisis comms is a big part of what we do and some conversations we need to continue to have with our clients.

You know, Abbie, 44 years, I wish I owned the company and been around running the company for 44 years. I've been there for half that. And in that time, I've seen so many different types of crisis, whether it's officer-involved shootings, crane collapses, data thefts. I even had a doctor sexting in the operating room that went national. I mean, so much stuff that I've been a part of.

And I'd say one of my favorite things in crisis communications is when you have the ears of every senior leader at the company you're consulting with and they're listening to you. And I think that's what I really enjoy in crisis communications is that there's no pushback because they trust your instincts, your experience in that situation, even more so than when your teams are doing the general PR part of it. And I think that the block and tackle part of crisis communications comes to life.

You know, we always talk about the general category, public relations, as an investment in your company and your brand and your reputation. And it's really difficult to talk with CEOs about preparing for crises. And I think it's also important to recognize that crises are those things that happen to you, and those are potentially those things that happen within your organization. But it needs to be considered an investment in the same way that any proactive outreach effort is going to be, because you need to be prepared.

So as you're working with the organizations that are currently on your client roster, as you're putting the conversation out there, what are some of the things you're sharing about this importance, about investing in this need way before you're going to need to bring in this senior level of counseling.

When it comes to a crisis, I always say it takes 20 years to build a reputation. It takes five minutes or less or just now in one world, in our world, one tweet to destroy it. And it really matters who is managing your reputation on the front lines. So in social media, a lot of people put their interns on it. Small businesses tend to put the most junior employees managing their social.

And the thing I'd say is your online reputation, your reputation is your storefront. Today, a lot of companies are virtual. And so they have to be thinking about their businesses as their online storefront, as their business, as what we used to in our offices.

I say one of the biggest things in going ahead with sort of preparing for a crisis, a lot of companies don't think ahead. I encourage companies to spend the investment of time and energy and hire someone, whether it's in house or externally, like a public relations firm in your market, to come in and think through what would happen in any type of situation that might occur in your business and write them down, write down the scenarios, scenario, plan, scenario map, and come up with the type of responses you might want to put out there. Should, should any type of crisis or issue come, you're not going to be able to think of all of them, but you're able to prevent them.

In a time of, of thought process and the gift of time, in the time of crisis, you don't have the gift of time. A lot of companies come to us saying, hey, this just happened, a crane happened. A crane collapse happened in my city. I'm a construction company and I need your help. Right. It'd be much better if a team was in place. We met monthly, spent an hour together, so we can understand what your business is about, who are the key executives and developed a strategic direction on how we manage that situation from start to finish and also help the company develop key relationships with, with community contacts. So in a case of a crane collapse, since I just mentioned that, you'd want to know who the public information officers are at the city.

If it's in a city, you want to know the neighboring property owners, you want to know the, you want to know the police, the fire department, PIOs, the public information officer and have relationships built so that when something happens, you're able to manage the situation a lot more and you're able to protect that, that reputation you built for 20 years and do that in five minutes versus having it collapse and not being ready and trying to find someone to help you manage your reputation when you talk.

About that planning aspect of it. So that's getting the internal team prepared and discussing and analyzing, but also what comes to mind is really keeping an eye on the landscape. What's happening around us in our local communities, what's happening in our state and federal governments, what's happening worldwide that may not be an issue specifically to our business, but is happening to the businesses we do business with or supporting.

Certainly we're seeing some of that happening here across the US we're seeing it worldwide where decisions are being made and the trickle down effect is really creating crises that may not be of our own making or certainly if something that is directly in our own business, but is happening in the businesses around us.

Crisis planning, crisis discussion has to be about analyzing, you know, the landscape around us and what else is going on that might impact what we're going to be doing or how it impacts the businesses that we're in.

Using AI, using trends, using the Internet, searching, knowing, understanding what the community is saying, following the trends is definitely a big piece of that.

I think one of the parts of crisis communications that many businesses don't think about is what do I say, how do I navigate the situation, whether it's trend worthy or not. And what I always say is don't offer the words no comment or no response.

Being responsive could be as simple as being saying words like "I'm sorry, we're participating in the investigation and we'll communicate what we can when we're able to." That alone says a lot more than saying no comment. Or not responding. I didn't say much there, but I'm acknowledging and showing empathy and, and being transparent and credible in this situation and being open to receiving some sort of communications and most of the companies that I counsel, that I work with in crisis that do that come out much better in the end than those that say "no comment." So I think following through with words, whether it's "sorry, I'm with you, my thoughts and prayers are with the family that's been impacted." Whatever the situation is, is, is going to help, is going to be, it can help you far greatly in and weather the storm in the end than not.

Well, one of the things when we get approached, and this would be for organizations that we are not currently working with but, but call us, a crisis is about to happen or is happening, we need your help.

And there's a 15-minute window there of conversation that we typically have and that's establishing a baseline for what the potential crisis is and whether or not we're gonna be the right fit for the work.

And one of the first things we say when we're doing that conversation is if your crisis response is going to be no comment, then we are not the people to work with because for us it is that transparent response.

And to your point, Aaron, even if it is what appears to feel like a non-response response, accessibility, being available, telling them what you know, when you know it, and that you will get back to them with more information as more information is available, goes a very long way in coming out the other side.

The truth of the matter is a good reporter or other stakeholders will seek out that information whether it comes from you or not. They are going to find that information and it's always going to be in your best interest to be the one that guides the narrative and shares that information.

And to be honest, there have been a few inquiries where that was what they wanted us to do and we politely declined to do the work because that is not our philosophy. Our philosophy is to be, to be open and transparent. And when we have done debriefs, which if we talk about sort of processing, there's always the post crisis, what you do do, look back and the learnings from it. One of the things that always comes out of those debriefings is that gratefulness that I'm so glad you told us to be responsive.

It would have been so much more difficult if we'd have kept, you know, trying to hide or not answer phone calls because they're going to come and So I, you know, I think it's an important part of this effort is you gotta talk and there's a lot of ways to be able to be responsive and be a, you know, part of that conversation in a crisis. And so you come out the other side when business gets back to normal.

The other part of that too, Abbie, I think is shaping the story. I don't like to do this a lot, but there is often a time, the role for a PR person to behind the scenes help shape the story with the reporter by telling them stuff to help guide and you mentioned this, guide the process. Right.

So you might offer the, "I'm really sorry this happened" publicly, but behind the scenes you might coach them along the ways that sort of help shape the story in the way you want to. That's beneficial for the community because that's our role. And as long as your clients are on board with that, that is definitely a piece of the equation.

Abbie, I think there's seven parts of shaping before someone thinks about the crisis. There's seven points I'd say that are critical to shaping what a crisis communication strategy should look like. And so if you're thinking ahead before that crisis comes, it's one, appointing a crisis management communications team, who's going to be on there.

Two, it's determining what types of problems you might have in developing out the situations and mapping towards that. Three, identifying your goals. What are your goals for crisis or an issues management team or process.

I think the fourth one is internal communications. That's just as important as external communications. So knowing how you're going to communicate the issue, the crisis that just happened with the team, that probably is one of the most impactful teams that's out there, which is your in house team and how do you communicate with them and what has happened. I mean sometimes you lose power, sometimes there's a major earthquake. What do you do in those situations?

The fifth point is know your key audiences. You mentioned stakeholders. I think that's a big piece of whether it's the media, it's influencers, micro influencers, whoever those key people are, who are we talking to and mapping that out.

The sixth one is I think one of the most important ones, which is just developing a file of messages, key messages for the brand, the company, the organization, the people, whatever it is, just create a baseline, stick it in a folder. Whether it's on a computer, I print it out too, stick it in a file folder. Because in a crisis you just never know. You might not have power. You might not have access to getting to wherever that that file is. Just have it in a space that's on a cloud, but also in a drawer.

And then the last one is really decide how you're going to communicate your messages when you need to and disseminating that and what channels that you're going to use. I think those are key seven pillars that any crisis team should be thinking about and going to create. And what we do is we create that plan.

And sometimes it's a five page plan. For some companies we have a 50-page plan. It really depends the size and scope, whether they're local, global, regional, we've done it all. I think a lot of our PRGN partners can help folks really think through what could be in enlisted in that crisis communications plan.

And then the last thing I'd say is practice. Make sure you pull out that plan every single year, look through it, update all the key personnel that might be listed in there and write out the updates that need to be happening and then practice it with key leadership to make sure they know what's going to happen in a time of crisis.

And do the trainings, do the media trainings, the prep sessions, we call it media rehearsal sessions every year so that you have an on camera spokesperson should you ever need to put them out there front and center at a moment's notice. Whether it's a plane crash or a data theft or you just never know. So just have all of those tools available to you in a time of crisis, right.

And you know, and then one of the things on that thinking about who that team is is it isn't always the senior level executives that have to be on that internal team. These are folks that are the line, you know, the line officers, if you will, the ones that are in the trenches. You may bring in the project manager, you may bring in someone that is, you know, specifically because this is the type of crisis that's happening and then, and then determining who your spokesperson is. And one of the things that we like to advise as well is business has to continue while the crisis is occurring.

So how do you make sure that your team is in place to continue to do the work that you need to do while you are managing and what needs to be halted as a result of whatever the crisis might be? One of the other things we add into our plan is that time to debrief, right? You do all the practicing beforehand.

If you do need to implement your crisis plan to do the debrief, to find out what worked what didn't work? What did you wish you have that you didn't? And I have found that thank you notes is an important part of closing that crisis plan.

You know that there were a lot of people involved, and whether that's your internal team, if it is, you know, media or other stakeholders that were important to helping you come out on the other side of it, a thank you note goes a long way in securing those relationships because we hope we never have to need them again. But if you do, you're certainly glad that you've resolved that situation in a way that everybody is comfortable and feels good about it.

And in all of this, it really is. It comes to thinking ahead and planning for and preparing for and really thinking of it as an investment in your business and in your business's reputation and in the reputation of those individuals that work with you. And it's starting those conversations well in advance of needing them is what gets you on the opposite side of a potential crisis.

Abbie, I think there's one other part of all this that needs to be talked about, which is the role of legal in PR. Where does legal ... where do the lawyers fit in?

And one of the things that I've often counseled or talked to clients about is if you want to protect information that is shared with a PR person, always CC: your attorney to protect that attorney client privilege as part of a crisis situation, if you're not CC:ing that we're not protected or they're in. And of course a PR professional should have their own counsel that supports it. But from a legal standpoint, you often want to have them. And then we often let the attorney weigh in. We'll weigh in on the communication that the attorney might draft. But in the end, the attorney far outweighs, you know, what we say. But we want their buy-in on what we say before we put it out there. In the case of legal.

Aaron, I want to address here something which feels a little bit like the elephant in the room, at least to me, and that is the environment in which crises happen now has changed dramatically on so many levels.

First of all, the nature of media itself has changed. The channels that people consume information and have fragmented, people are getting information and disinformation from all sorts of places. You mentioned AI as a positive thing. But of course there are AI deep fakes that themselves could create a crisis if they were purporting to represent the CEO of a company, you know, saying things.

And just the broader political and economic uncertainty that seems to have settled in not just in North America, but in Europe as well, there's been a resurgence of right-wing populism that has changed the dynamics in many places. The voices that are the loudest these days in some cases are saying the most outrageous things and the whole thing is, in itself, I wouldn't say it's a crisis, it's just the nature of things now.

But in that environment, a crane falling over has a different impact potentially than when there was a local paper and that was the primary place, maybe a national paper, maybe the TV station, the evening news, what have you. How do you think about where we are now? This is a macro level question. How do you think about navigating this much more complex and in some cases more problematic media environment these days?

I think in the end it just comes down to fundamental communications and you gotta hold true as a company or as a person. Understand what your values are and start there. Integrate what your business objectives are into that with your plan and proceed forward.

You shouldn't change the way you operate or think based on the values of someone else. You really should be looking at yourself and identifying what those values are and stay grounded and stay true to yourself.

And I'd say that's the same with companies out there. And those that do, I think, are the ones that are the most successful in communications.

Thanks for listening to this episode of PRGN Presents, brought to you by the Public Relations Global Network.

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