TACKLING CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Hello Fashionable peeps! Hello fab readers!

Last time on Talk Africa Fashion (#talkafricafashion) discussion on Twitter, we tackled the issue of “Crisis Management” using the incident at the passed AMFW (Arise Magazine Fashion Week in Lagos) as a case study.

So our first dive was to explain what we thought was crisis management. And our definition was “any situation which threatens to harm the reputation of your company, brand, investors, shareholders etc”

Once this situation is identified / acknowledged you must then take steps to dealing with it as soon as possible. @NgumNgafor suggested putting out a holding statement to kill off rumours and give you the time to think of your next steps to take.

What happened during the first few days at AMFW was a clear example of a failure to recognise / identify a crisis and a major failure to have no crisis management strategy nor handlers in place.

The silence from the AMFW PR team was anything but golden and denial is by no means a way to deal with a crisis @NgumNgafor clearly pointed out. It only made matters worse with hearsays all around Twitter @iBezeng stated.

The AMFW PR team missed a great opportunity to show resilience, creativity and the ability to tackle a problem straight on before it over ran.

So when faced with a crisis situation, what should you do? Here are some tips from @NgumNgafor:-

1) Select a crisis team that can convene and act on a prepared plan.

2) Send out a holding statement to ‘calm down’ the situation and kill rumours.

3) Keep the information flow going.

4) Once the situation is appraised, the spokesperson needs to address stakeholders.

5) The message put out must be apologetic yet positive. And you must find a way to make it up to all.

In conclusion, crisis management is an integral part of PR and there are agencies that specialise in this. So to ensure your business / company / brand is covered, solicit the help of an agency before hand.
Until the next time, see you on Twitter. Catch us on Sundays from 2pm UK time. Come and talk about fashion from Africa.

Thanks to all the participants including @lostintalent and @shaddersfashion.

Follow me: @Brownschuga