The nature of managing crises has changed. Yet most crisis management professionals are stuck with an out-dated model of crises management.
The conventional view of crises management centers on the responses to discrete, singular events. It's been about containing the fallout by controlling the narrative through words and deeds.
Once the crisis is resolved, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Until the next crisis.
This view of crises management is no longer valid or effective in protecting the reputation of organizations because of several prevalent forces in the world today that contribute to a polyperma crisis-like situation facing organizations.
The first is how everything today is connected and interlinked. Something happening half the world away can materially affect businesses here. McDonald’s and KFC in Indonesia, because of perceived support for Israel over Palestine by their international entities, suffered drastic drops in their sales because boycotts from Indonesians.
Second is social media. It has reduced the required reactionary speed of organizations during crisis-like situations. There used to be a Golden Hour within which if you respond you’d have a good chance of controlling the situation. No longer social media has ramped up expectations for immediate response or be judged guilty.
Organizations are not, and perhaps should not, be geared to respond immediately. What they say and do can impact their bottom line, the safety and security of their customers and their staff. They need measured responses and these take time to formulate. Even the most efficient crisis clearing houses cannot deliver immediate responses.
Even if they can do so, immediate may not be enough. Societies today are quick to judge, sometime pre-judge organizations that they have no reason to trust, based on mere accusations that may sometimes devoid of any facts. When that happens, when the hive is stirred, little can be done to change the sentiment or the social media-fueled outrage.
Then there is the polarization of society to the point that whatever you do, you are bound to piss off someone. In 2023, Bakso Afung had a crisis-like moment when an influencer made a show of eating crispy pork skin together with some bakso Afung that he had brought with him into one of their restaurants in Bali. Since the influencer posted it social media, a kerfuffle ensured. Some were outraged that this was allowed to happen as porcine food was against Islam. Other pork-eating Balinese couldn’t se what the fuss was about.
Afung reacted by trying to appease its outraged customers by making a show of destroying all the bowls and containers at the Bali outlet that could have been “tainted.” The reaction? Some praise but also a lot off criticism from is mainly Balinese customers saying that it was perfectly acceptable to eat pork in Bali and they should not be so obsequious to non-Bali stakeholders, as the outlet was in Bali.
Another brand that found the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” those of contemporary crises was there American brewer, Miller. Wanting to be woke and inclusive, it got transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to post on Instagram a video featuring a personalized Bud Light can and celebrating her "Days of Girlhood" series.
The reaction? No plaudits for being woke but a massive backlash from American conservatives, including boycotts. Sales dropped by about 25% for Bud Light and it lost its spot as the top-selling US beer.
When it tried to correct its mistake and pivot back to its conservative customer base, it was roundly criticized by the LGBTQ communities.
What we can learn from these incidents is that the old rules of crisis management aren’t as effective as they were before, because crises today are polyperma - a perpetual state of experiencing one crisis after another because of forces beyond your control, and from all sorts of angles.
In this situation, crisis management procedures and skills to contain and control narratives aren’t enough any more. What organizations need is something more to anchor them in a world buffeted by passions, beliefs, expectations, all super charged by social media on steroids.
That anchor comes by a few descriptions. The respected Page Society calls it Corporate Character and by author Lois Kelly way back in 2017 in her book Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing called Point-of-View.
The common thread linking these ideas is that hype and buzz are no longer valid currencies in building the brand and protecting the reputation of organizations, especially in an age where all services and products are commoditized. They need to have something more that allows them to come across as unique, authentic, credible and trusted.
A well-defined corporate character or a distinct Point-of-View, will allow an organization to differentiate itself from others. They are based on the belief system of the organization, as if it was a person. If clear the corporate character of PoV will inform them not only what to say or do because it will be based on what values and outlook is important to them.
In normal times these will come in handy in building their credibility among their stakeholders, in times of crises these will come in handy in what they should do but equally important what they should double down on. Because you can’t please everyone, without pissing off someone and because by the time a crisis hits in a polyperma crisis world, you’d better have a trust bank to draw from.
