When the sky falls
Advance planning key
to crisis communications
By Amber Dumont
& Donna Abernathy
Editor’s note: This article is reprinted
from CCA News, the newsletter of the
Cooperative Communicators Association
(Web site: www.communicators.coop).
The article is based on a panel discussion
held at the CCA’s annual Co-op Communications
Institute, held in Denver
last summer. Dumont is communications
director at Virginia & Maryland Milk
Producers, while Abernathy operates her
own communications business based in
Murfreesboro, Tenn.
hile it might seem
preferable to pull a
Chicken Little and run
screaming: “the sky is
falling,” when crisis
hits, the job of co-op communicators
is to face reality and deal with the situation
as professionals. Should the
unthinkable happen, it’s good to know
that others have made the journey and
lived to tell the tale.
Cooperatives come in different
shapes, sizes and varieties, yet when
they face upheaval their one commonality
is the need for a crisis communications
plan. It’s vital for a communicator
to have a roadmap to follow when disaster
strikes.
Sheryl Meshke, communications
director at Associated Milk Producers
Inc. (AMPI), in New Ulm, Minn.,
knows this all too well. She studied the
crisis communications plans of other
cooperatives and then developed one
for AMPI — just in case the sky should
fall some day.
10 steps for survival
When a night-time fire engulfed
much of the AMPI butter processing
and packaging plant in New Ulm last
December, Meshke was ready. She
quickly swung into action with this 10-
step communications plan:
- Activate the emergency response
team. AMPI has an emergency plan
that designates those who should be
contacted first. This includes the
CEO, the communications director
and other management staff
involved with plant operations and
safety.
- Unleash the crisis communication
team. This is typically comprised
of senior management,
including the CEO and the communications
director. All communication
— media interviews, releases
regarding the incident, etc. — must
funnel through this team.
- Designate the on-site
spokesperson. Most often, this is
the CEO or communications
director. To maintain a consistent
message, AMPI CEO Mark Furth
(CCA’s 2004 CEO Communicator
of the Year) and Meshke spoke for
the cooperative in all interviews. It
is the cooperative’s policy that only
the designated spokesperson may
give interviews, because others
may not have all the vital information.
- Gather facts. While others on the
response team are busy doing specific
jobs to handle the situation, it
is the communicator’s duty to get
the big picture by collecting all the
facts. Like the reporters who are
requesting interviews, the communicator
must determine the what,
when, where, why and how.
- Identify the primary audience for
your messages. For AMPI, there
were several key groups who wanted,
and needed, to know about the
situation at the butter plant. Meshke
primarily targeted communications
to: butter plant employees, cooperative
members and AMPI butter customers.
After the first 24 hours of
the crisis, she also developed key
messages aimed at lawmakers and
community leaders.
- Develop key messages. Stick to
just two or three, but know that
these messages will most likely
evolve as the situation progresses. At
AMPI, the designated spokesperson
consistently repeated the messages
in interviews and Meshke placed
them in all written communications.
The result: The cooperative’s
intended messages were repeated in
newspaper articles and on television
and radio broadcasts.
- Designate spokespersons for
other audiences. Though the CEO
was tapped to speak to the general
media during the initial stages of the
crisis, Meshke recognized that her
post-fire efforts could be bolstered
by having audience-specific opinion
leaders communicating details. For
instance, the butter plant manager
became the primary communicator
to butter plant employees.
- Draft statements. To assure that all
messages remained consistent,
Meshke wrote talking points for all
those who were communicating on
behalf of the cooperative.
- Work with the news media. It’s a
natural inclination to want to shutter
the doors and stand behind a
“no comment” when the media
comes calling about a crisis. Meshke
took the opposite tack and reaped
the benefits. The CEO conducted
countless interviews in the first 24
hours of the crisis, even when it
meant standing outside in sub-zero
temperatures and snow. Reporters’
calls were answered promptly by
Meshke. The philosophy behind
the openness: Talking to the media
gave them an opportunity to communicate
the co-op’s messages.
When reporters don’t get the story
from the authorities, they’ll go elsewhere
and are more likely to get
inaccurate and/or completely false
information.
- Go back to No. 4 and repeat as
needed. Most crisis situations last
longer than a few hours. The situation
may encompass days, weeks
or months. As time goes on, your
messages will change and this
necessitates a revamping of steps 4
through 9, Meshke said. In the
first days after the fire, she was
repeating her crisis management
steps every few hours.
Dealing with a crisis is never fun,
but a cooperative communicator can
survive it. Meshke is living proof. With
the fire now several months behind
her, the communicator has put aside
her crisis communications strategies in
favor of a new task: Planning this fall’s
grand opening of the rebuilt butter
plant.
Common threads
Disaster comes in many forms.
Sometimes it strikes with 100-mph
winds. It may threaten the health of a
nation.
Regardless of its form, disasters
often fall squarely into the laps of
cooperative communicators.
There are common threads of strategy
that communicators can employ to
best manage the situation.
Stay in touch
Brad Kimbro, vice president of marketing
and member services for
Florida-based Peace River Electric
Cooperative, has survived more than
11 tropical storms and hurricanes,
including three of the four that hit
Florida last year. His top tips for outwitting
and outlasting disaster include:
- Maintain an up-to-date directory
of key contacts, including office, cell
phone and fax numbers. Keep information
for media as well as senior
staff members and even primary customers.
In Kimbro’s case that included
the phone company. Keep a hard
copy of the information accessible at
some place other than your office.
Then, if the unthinkable happens
and your office becomes damaged
due to a storm or other emergency,
your communications efforts can stay
on track.
- Plan for the unimaginable and
“communicate, communicate, communicate.”
In times of disaster, your
members and others will want to
receive constant updates on the situation
and it’s up to you, the communicator,
to provide it.
Keep it simple
National Cattlemen’s Beef
Association (NCBA) identified bovine
spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or
Mad Cow Disease) as a crisis issue
more than 20 years ago. In 2003, when
the United States had its first confirmed
case of BSE, NCBA sprang in
to action with its communication plan.
Kendal Frazier, vice president of public
opinion and issues management for
NCBA, offers these tips on handling
crisis communications:
- Organize your resources and
“make sure everyone is at the table.”
Get as much input as possible so that
all angles of the issue are examined.
- Follow the KISS (keep it simple
stupid) method. He advised CCA
members to establish truth and facts
early in the process and then be consistent
with key messages.
- Remember that “the media is not
the enemy, it is the battleground.”
Know members matter
A proposal to sell one of the
nation’s leading Farm Credit System
lenders to a Dutch co-op bank sent
shockwaves throughout the nation’s
farm co-op and ag credit communities.
Doug Sims, CEO of CoBank, a
$31 billion cooperative bank comprised
primarily of Farm Credit members,
led efforts to avert the proposed
sale of Omaha-based Farm Credit
Services of America (FCSA) to
Rabobank Group of the Netherlands.
His advice:
- Don’t take members for granted.
Ownership matters, though it’s not
often a priority unless it’s threatened.
Communication with members and
other stakeholders is absolutely crucial.
“Members are more tolerant
than the marketplace,” Sims said.
“But they need to know where the
cooperative is going and why. Then,
when the time comes to vote, they’ll
be prepared.”
