Our investment banking client already had good relationships with the media that covered their market and Bluewood’s coaches had worked with many of their spokespeople to prepare them for trade and national press interviews over the years. However, as part of their crisis readiness review, the business had identified gaps in their communications plan, mainly around how they should design appropriate messages in a crisis as well as a lack of spokespeople who had experience in delivering press or broadcast interviews in high pressure situations.
The bank’s PR team approached Bluewood for help to fill this gap in their communications planning. We proposed running a crisis training programme that would help define core messages for a range of crises the organisation could face. Then, a small number of individuals were selected to be put through testing and focussed rehearsal to ensure they had the ability to deliver the narrative, to media or other audiences, in difficult or aggressive situations.
Stage 1: Working closely with the marketing and external relations team, our training experts created three different scenarios that reflected the most likely type of crisis the bank could be faced with (e.g. cyber-attack hacking their IT systems, rogue trader causing massive losses for the bank, electrical fire at an operations centre causing staff casualties). Bluewood’s course designer also built realistic collateral that illustrated each storyline (e.g. broadcast news reports, newspaper headlines, client complaints on social media feeds, calls from board members and press statements from investors) for the crisis handling team and spokespeople which brought the crisis to life.
Stage 2: The initial part of the training took the form of an interactive workshop, it explained the core theory involved in handling a crisis and the best practice case studies the team can learn from. The team were then presented with the crisis scenarios so they could begin to design how they would approach handling them.
Stage 3: In the second part of the programme, the crisis management team underwent realistic practice and role-play based around the 3 scenarios. This allowed them to rehearse (in a safe and confidential environment) different methods for dealing with the situation, including how they would ensure their messaging showed care and concern to the people involved. They were also able to test out new techniques to find the best ways to deliver the key communication to journalists, reporters or other stakeholder groups.
The Outcome
The bank put in place a plan that became their blueprint for dealing with a crisis. It included who would speak and when, the overall narrative they would want to communicate as well as a set of messages they could adapt or redesign to use at short notice. Furthermore, the rigorous rehearsal and coaching built the skills and confidence of their key spokespeople in handing difficult media interviews or aggressive Q&A sessions with stakeholders, so they would be able to speak in the spotlight, to update and justify their actions, in managing the crisis.
