Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie | Part Two

Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie | Part Two

Don’t Revisit Your Brand Crisis Externally

 

Most businesses work very hard to either avoid a crisis, or to move on from it as fast as humanly (and digitally) possible. If a crisis has occurred, evolved, and been put behind your brand, then best practice is to let ‘sleeping dogs lie’. A lingering crisis, even in remnants, simply creates more damage-potential, and invites an opportunity to reopen a can of worms. Whether you’re (your brand) is in the right or wrong doesn’t matter; it’s all up to the Court of Public Opinion (social media) to judge, often unrelated to the truth or actual perspectives on the matter.

 

When it can take up to a year for a brand to recover ‘valuation’ to pre-crisis levels, we cannot underestimate the long term damage to a brand that a crisis causes in the first instance. Navigating through the crisis and coming out the other end is often a significant achievement, but with most of the time, it is with added detractors and lobbyists / keyboard warriors lying in wait for your next mistake, just so they can pounce again.

 

MAS certainly felt this with their unorthodox (read: shocking) handling of MH370 as it spiralled significantly with MH17. The often unsympathetic and ‘disinterested’ communications sent (both publicly and privately) caused a disconcerting negativity toward the brand and any communications it attempted to media and stakeholders. Heightened judgement was at the fore, and by the occurrence of any untoward event related to the brand, social media was on it like fleas on a dog.

 

Removing MH 17 from the equation, there was the very public meltdown a junior counter staff had, which conveniently got filmed; new storm in a teacup which entertained the warriors for way longer than it would normally have been allowed. Ultimately, the spotlight is on the brand, and every wrong move is seen as enhanced systemic failure by a team recovering. It highlights weaknesses in the organisational culture, whether real or imagined, and is added fodder for social media netizens desperate for a cause.

 

Navigating a crisis can be stressful enough. But to allow the crisis to resurface at a later date, not through external ‘activation’, but from the brand itself, is tantamount to attempted brand suicide.

 

It does not matter the rationale behind trying to resurface the crisis, even if it is to explain ‘what you learnt’; it effectively becomes ‘Hunting Season Open’ for those brand detractors. The risks are simply too uncontrollable in such a situation.

 

Learning from a crisis is something you communicate to stakeholders at the time of crisis; not months later, and not as part of your brand communications strategy. Coming out to share such ‘reflections’ not only reminds people of the crisis, it opens enquiry from others who were not familiar with it, and provides opportunity for more “brand-haters” to engage with you – again, more uncontrollable.

 

A well-managed crisis response is a synchronicity of strong honest communication, empathy, transparency, timeliness, and luck. Any brand-initiated resurfacing of the so-called crisis only serves to open the metaphorical floodgates and invite critique (much as this post is).

 

Revisiting your crisis should be an internal-only approach for onboarding, training, and culture-building. Keep it at that, please.