This document provides advice on how to survive a crisis and not damage your brand. It emphasizes the importance of constant monitoring for potential issues, having an incident response plan and communication lines in place. When a crisis hits, it's essential to have a transparent and honest response team that includes a spokesperson, legal counsel and relevant experts who can respond immediately and provide frequent updates. The spokesperson must know all the details and understand media deadlines. How the team responds will determine the outcome, so responsibility must be taken and stakeholders engaged. While crisis management can help many situations, it may not be effective if criminal actions were involved or responsibility is not accepted. Sometimes a crisis may even present opportunities.

1. Charlie Levenson
Writer / Media Strategist /Spokesperson
Oh $h%t!
How to survive a crisis
and not destroy your brand.

2. It's
gonna
happen.

3. A Company Crisis...
Product
Personnel
Industry or
Competitor
Tylenol Capsules
Ford Pinto
Gulf Oil Spill
Dave's Killer Bread
Fukushima

4. A Personal Brand Crisis...
You? Family/Entourage? In the past?
Justin Bieber
Rob Ford
Skeletons
Lil Za
(Bieber's entourage)
And Lil Twist
(yeah, also Bieber's
entourage)

5. How will you know?

Constant monitoring of social media

Internal reporting of potential CRM issues

6. How will you prepare?

Your team in place. 
Your plan in place.

Communication lines established & practiced.

7. Is it a mountain or a molehill?

Mountains: Trigger
the IRP (Incident
Response Plan)

Molehills: Handled by
your day-to-day team

8. Geographical Considerations

9. 24 / 7 / 365

Bad news doesn't take the weekends off.

Media cycle no longer controlled only by
mass media.

Something small on Friday afternoon can be
big by Monday morning.

10. A Weekend: The Motrin Moms

September: Motrin begins campaign geared towards
Moms

Friday, November 14: Blogger Jessica Gottlieb starts
tweeting with tag #MotrinMoms

Saturday, November 15: Blogger Katja Presnal
produces YouTube video based on Tweets

Sunday, November 16: Other media begin noticing

Monday, November 17: Motrin website crashes/taken
down and returns with campaign gone. J&J apologizes.

11. How the Team Responds
Will Determine Everything
Transparency
Honesty
Immediacy

12. Who is your team?

CEO and their staff

Spokesperson(s) and their staff

In-House Counsel

Outside Counsel (if necessary)

Internal Experts

External Experts

13. The Process
Highest possible
person available.
Bring the full
team together.
Spokesperson has to
know everything.1. 2.
3. 4.
Appropriate experts
are available.

14. Who is your spokesperson?
It's a balancing act.
CEO is on a yacht
while spokesperson
deals with crisis.
Not having a
spokesperson
means you are it.

15. The Spokesperson's Role: 1 of 2
Absolutely NO stonewalling.
Respond immediately. Sooner the better.
Answer every question. Always follow up.
1.
2.
3.

16. The Spokesperson's Role: 2 of 2
Understand 24-hour-news cycle deadlines.
Frequent scheduled updates.
More information is always better than less.
1.
2.
3.
Control the side stories.4.

17. Why things go wrong...
Living inside a bubble.
Unwillingness to invest in crisis response.
Ego. Believing that mistakes=weakness.
1.
2.
3.
Not “getting it” that there is a problem.4.

18. When Crisis Management Won't Help
If you can't take responsibility,
at least take action.
When what you've done is criminal, whether
you knew it or not.
When your lawyer is your spokesperson and
tells you to say “no comment.”
1.
2.
Advice

19. A Last Thought
Sometimes, a crisis (if it's not your crisis)
can be an opportunity

20. Charlie Levenson
Writer / Media Strategist / Spokesperson
CharlieLevenson.com
All graphics, images and illustrations used
with permission or under fair use doctrine.