Innocent until proven guilty might hold up in the court of law, but the court of public opinion tends to play by hazier rules.
From celebrity scandals to business blunders, crisis communication is a cornerstone of public relations. It's a specialty of PR dealing with protecting reputation, because a blow to the image of a business or public figure often has real financial implications on the bottom line.
But what are the necessary steps to take in the face of scrutiny? And what are the most common missteps? Four public relations executives help make sense of crisis management.
Timing is essential
The key to an effective crisis communication strategy is knowing when to act, and experts advise a wait-and-see approach in the very beginning.
"There's a lot of pressure to react quickly. But you have to anticipate the response from naysayers and to plan a few steps in advance," said Ben Kaplan, founder and CEO of Top Agency, a global agency handling crises ranging from cybersecurity breaches to food recalls.
"You have to evaluate: 'Is this story going to die or is this going to continue to take off?'" said Lauren Jennings, executive vice president and crisis communications strategist for Alison Brod Marketing and Communications, which manages PR for a host of household brand names such as L'Oréal and Panera. "The red flag alert for us is when the narrative direction has the potential to have an immediate impact on sales."
If outrage continues to spiral, it is important to set the record straight as soon as possible, rather than waiting to play defense. "Once the story is out there it's much harder to control," said Jennings. "If you do go out with a statement, you have to assume there's going to be a news cycle around that narrative, (so) it has to be worth it to get the right story out there."
Rather than playing defense, anyone facing backlash should be proactive in addressing controversy, said Evan Nierman, founder and CEO of Red Banyan, a firm specializing in crisis PR. "You can't sit back and just listen or watch, you have to become an active participant in the discussions where (they) are happening."
Disapproval tends to have a finite life cycle, according to experts, and the goal for public figures or corporations under fire is to make the cycle as short as possible.
"I always say, 'No one loves a weekend more than a publicist.' Often you'll see publicists drop news on a Friday. The strategy behind that is that often the weekend will kill a news cycle," said Jennings. "A scandal breaking on a Tuesday is very different than one breaking on a Friday, because on Tuesday you're going to have the rest of the week for stories to drop and snowball. A Friday, more often than not, helps dilute a story."
What you say matters...
When a company decides to address a crisis by releasing a statement, it should be succinct and transparent.
"Being transparent about a situation, even a negative one, can help retain or rebuild trust," said Deborah Hileman, CEO of the Institute for Crisis Management, a business consultancy. "People appreciate honesty, and acknowledging mistakes is a sign of integrity. Transparent communication paves the way for remediation of the issue and ensures that corrective actions are relevant to the problem."
A positive tone can make all the difference, said Kaplan. "It's important that people understand that (the companies) care, that we're invested in this situation. We can understand how people are feeling, we respect all the people affected, we're not going to sugarcoat things and we're going to be self-critical if we need to be. We're also going through the process of solving the problem in the right way, and our attention is in the right spot."
Intentionally misleading the public and not taking responsibility for mistakes are considered inexcusable PR moves. The best course of action is to be forthright with the facts.
"Eventually, the truth will come out and you will be caught in your lie. It's a losing strategy in addition to being unethical," said Nierman.
When they do take ownership of the issue at hand, companies and public figures should make their statements as genuine as possible. "There's often a tendency to make a statement feel very robotic and corporate, but if I'm a customer or a fan and I see a statement that I can relate to more, or if I see a statement where the brand is approaching (the problem) with a bit more humility, it's much harder for me to hate on that brand," said Jennings. "We often say pull back the curtain a bit, humanize it."
Overly contrived statements full of buzzwords and "mumbo jumbo corporate speak" satisfy no one and can make things worse by coming across as hesitant, said Nierman.
Jennings emphasized a lack of conviction is a major PR mistake.
"The biggest thing I see people do wrong is flip-flopping on their stance to accommodate whatever the reaction is. You need to stick with the stance you're taking, and it might mean you're going to lose a subset of your audience. But if you start flip-flopping, you're setting yourself up to lose your entire audience," she said.
The most prominent case study experts pointed to was the Bud Light public relations fiasco in April, when America's erstwhile No. 1 beer was attacked by anti-trans commentators and right-wing media after sponsoring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The company released a statement after the fallout saying, in part: "We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people."
"The political left was initially supportive of Bud Light because they felt like they were doing outreach to (the transgender) community," said Nierman. "When (Bud Light) released this statement that satisfied no one, it made things infinitely worse. By not appealing to the left, which was supporting them, (the company) ended up alienating the left and they became angry with Bud Light. Meanwhile, (Bud Light) didn't actually put a lid on the controversy and so the right got even more incensed."
Following the company's response, Mulvaney said in part: "For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse in my opinion than not hiring a trans person at all because it gives customers permission to be as transphobic and hateful as they want."
As of August, the controversy had cost AB InBev, Bud Light's parent company, nearly $400 million in US sales.
CNN reached out to Anheuser-Busch, the owner of Bud Light, and was directed to a June statement from CEO Brendan Whitworth, which said in part, "We are a beer company, and beer is for everyone."
...and how much you say matters, too
When it comes to pressing a narrative, less is often more.
"The more you talk, the more you open yourself up to scrutiny," said Jennings. "Ego is what really leads a lot of people to get into trouble. They feel this strong desire to explain their side, and their ego tells them that whatever they say is what people will believe and listen to. More often than not, talking leads to more opportunity to get ripped apart."
While simplicity is important, being too minimalistic can be damaging, as well.
"It's mind-blowing, but some organizations persist in actually saying 'no comment,' which is about the worst move that you can do," said Nierman. "In many cases I would say telling someone 'no comment' is worse than not returning the phone call because it just smacks of evasion and it looks like you have something to hide."
According to Jennings, the "no comment" route was more acceptable and popular during the 1990s but has since grown very outdated. "'No comment' nowadays implies guilt," she said.
Nierman noted making a mistake when you're already in crisis can be fatal. When the public eye is shining directly on someone, they need to exercise particularly good judgment about their next moves. It includes taking steps to remedy any wrongdoing.
"You only get one bite at the forgiveness apple," he said, adding effectively weathering a crisis can be beneficial to business. "If a company shows in the midst of a crisis that it makes good decisions, you could actually use that time of crisis and flip it into opportunity to engender more respect from the public and more commitment from your customer base."
"There is nothing that gives more confidence to your audience, customers, and consumers," added Kaplan, using Johnson & Johnson's handling of the 1982 "Tylenol murders" as an example.
After a string of deaths tied to cyanide-laced Tylenol pills, Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million bottles and tested 1.5 million bottles for the poison. The company later introduced triple-sealed Tylenol packaging now commonly used in over-the-counter medicines. "Handling a crisis with skill is a huge brand builder and morale booster. There's a possibility of coming out of a crisis a stronger brand than you were before."
Social media is changing the PR landscape
A few decades ago, reputational crises would typically unfold as legal issues were covered by news media, and would then sometimes transcend to social media discussions. But today, scandals increasingly foment on Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), Reddit and Facebook, and are then picked up by mainstream news outlets.
"It used to be that we would ask, 'How do we stop mainstream media from covering this?' But now we say, 'How do we stop social media influencers from spreading this?'" said Kaplan. "Oftentimes, now, the bigger risk is the social media spread."
"Prior to social media, people felt less empowered to share their opinions," said Jennings. "Now, anyone has a voice, anyone can have an opinion, whether it has merit to it or not. Often for crisis communication, you're not trying to counter the reality, you're trying to counter the perception."
However, as much as social media stokes the flames of PR crisis, the platforms can be effective mitigation tools.
"You have to go to where the discussion is happening, whether that's Instagram, YouTube or Twitter," said Nierman. "You have to be engaging on all the different platforms where people are coalescing to criticize you, and you have to do it with consistency and clarity."
For better and for worse, social media gives corporations and celebrities direct access to the public.
"If there's a controversy taking place on social media or in a small echo chamber in a certain discussion group or Reddit thread or Twitter conversation, the idea is to try to contain it there," said Nierman. "Go to the people who are stoking the outrage and try to win them over by providing more information and context in order to prevent this crisis from spilling over into mainstream press, where it then just goes global and becomes infinitely harder to mitigate."
