If the worst should happen, marketing teams are often on the front lines of managing large-scale attacks on brands and their reputation.
At Financial Promoter Live!, Anne Vigouroux, global head of marketing at Charles Taylor, Alayna Francis, global head of corporate communications at Fitch Group and Daniel McMillan, head of media relations at Axa UK sat down with Mark Geoghegan, editor of the Voice of Insurance podcast, to discuss how marketing teams should respond to a crisis.
Not all crises were created equal
Different scales of crisis require different responses, and a plan for a mild crisis that is likely to only have a short-term impact on your operations will be very different to a response to a large-scale issue.
While short-term crises can usually be handled internally by a marketing team, the panel emphasized the need for contingency plans for larger-scale problems.
Failure to prepare
Vigouroux spoke about the importance of having a marketing plan in place for a crisis ahead of time. “You need to be planning for difference scenarios, and more than likely the scenarios you plan for will not occur exactly as you prepared them, but if something similar happens then you have already done most of the hard work.”
She added that this also avoids a situation where different parties blame each other for how a crisis is handled. “If everyone knows what the plan is and what job they have to do, then you can execute it.”
Francis also emphasized the importance of preparation: “The best time to react to a crisis is 12 months before it happens.”
Choosing the right spokesperson
Putting the best face on a crisis is a crucial decision in how to respond to a problem. While many companies might instinctually want to use their CEO as their official spokesperson in any situation, this might not always be the right move.
McMillan noted that CEOs will not always have the technical knowledge to respond to certain issues, such as a data breach. “In that situation the CTO is probably in a better position to answer questions about what’s happened.”
Vigouroux added that this technique can also contain a crisis to one aspect of the company. “CEOs represent the entire company, so if something has gone wrong and the CEO is speaking about it, people assume it is a company-wide problem, but if you put the right person forward you can avoid that.”