How Crisis Communication Firms Are Managing the Current News Cycle

The police have a suspect in custody and for the past several days the news cycle has been dominated by the story about the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare.  The online chatter on social media has been relentless. From the safety of their keyboards, people are making their opinions known.

But behind those official social media channels is a crisis communications firm that is trying to navigate through it.  Anyone in the insurance industry is evaluating their current crisis communications strategy (not to mention the safety and security of their executive leadership).  Anyone who works for or represents other big businesses is wondering what they would do if this incident were to happen to them.

However, for any crisis communications firm, we always need to take a hard look at our current plans and make changes to address this type of situation.

When we do crisis communications training with our clients we talk about the crises that are of our own making and those that are a result of outside forces.  The flow of information, who shares that information and when are all factors for consideration.  That won’t change, but the complexity of the crises we are dealing with has certainly changed.

It’s never been a good idea to have the plan, put on the shelf and hope we never have to use it.  That plan has to be taken off the shelf on a regular basis, updated, reevaluated and shared.

Maybe now more than ever.