Remember the public outcry over a photo shoot of Air Force One’s flight over Manhattan on April 28? It could have been avoided if the White House had practiced better planning. The flight stirred fears among New Yorkers of a new terrorist attack and made unfavorable headlines in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other media.

Public relations professionals trained in managing crisis communications know the damage to company reputations can be reduced or avoided by using a strategic risk assessment of the benefit of planned organizational activities or events. Had there been foresight and analysis, the White House might have scrapped the photo shoot and avoided any long-term damage to its reputation. 

Still, bad things can happen even to companies that exercise foresight. When disasters strike and employees are injured or die on the job, or the company must lay off workers, crisis communications planning can reduce the negative fallout on a company’s reputation.

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For that reason, many executives form crisis plans, update them regularly and rehearse their responses. All good crisis plans include the need for immediate response, in the first hour. Regardless of the crisis, the following three principles should be incorporated into your company’s action and guide its plan.

• Be honest and stick to the facts. Do not exaggerate or speculate. If  the company did something wrong, admit the mistake, then move on with a solid plan to correct the error and to reassure stakeholders the mistake will not happen again.

• Respond quickly but strategically. It is too easy in a crisis situation to be defensive or unresponsive to every stakeholder group demanding answers. Determine your message strategy, then stay on point with the company’s values and long-term plan in mind when responding to tough questions. 

• Maintain consistent and unified communications. Your company’s reputation will erode quickly during a crisis if several different sources provide media and stakeholders conflicting information. It’s best to identify one credible source to supply crisis communication.

Effective crisis communications plans do not need to be lengthy, nor take several months to complete. They can be brief and created as templates, diagrams or flow charts that provide crucial information and a process to help management make decisions and provide effective responses. This approach also makes it easier for new players to follow the plan if some members of the crisis team are not available.

Remember, during a crisis you have no obligation to respond to every negative comment. Often when left to their own devices, critics will say and do things that reflect their biases and render their opinions unfounded.

Finally, when companies fail to respond quickly to a crisis, victims or survivors view the delay as denial, arrogance or lack of empathy. Therefore, the better job you do preparing for a crisis and responding quickly, the better the result.

Contact Linda Welter Cohen, chief executive office of the Caliber Group, at info@calibergroup.com. Cohen is an expert in reputation manager and is accredited in public relations.