Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message
"The most dangerous place to be in business is on top -- you have so much farther too fall and you are everyone's target. And when facing an already difficult crisis the last thing a company needs is to make it worse through its own communications -- or lack thereof. As one who has lived through a number of crises and served as an independent investigator of the crises of others, I consider Steven Fink's book to be an excellent guide to avoiding collecting scar tissue of your own by learning from the scar tissue painfully collected by others."
-- Norm Augustine,
Former Chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp.
In the pitched battled between perception and reality, perception always wins. It is a critical lesson often learned too late by companies in crisis situations.
As important as it is to properly manage a crisis, it is equally as important to engage in proactive and reactive crisis communications -- informing all of your key constituents what is going on, and what you are doing to make it right.
In Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message you will learn:
-- why social media fires need to be extinguished by social media water...and how to do it.
-- how to manage mainstream media in an age of social media supremacy.
-- what companies like BP and Toyota and others should have said during their crises, and why.
-- how and why the inept communications during the devastating Penn State Crisis by the past and current university leadership was so fatally flawed.
-- how to shape a communications strategy that is right for your crisis.
-- how to select the right spokesperson for your crisis.
-- how to protect your company's brand when a crisis hits.
-- how to handle communications in crises involving fatalities.
-- how to deal with lawyers, who can be either a great asset in a crisis or a debilitating liability.
-- what to do with stubborn senior management when they get in the way of effective crisis leadership and critical crisis communications.
-- how to manage the often overlooked importance of internal crisis communications.
-- how to break bad news.
-- how to make defensible decisions -- crisis communications gold!
-- and so much more!
More high praise for Crisis Communications:
"Bravo on a sole title that captures such a complex and vital topic."
"Excellent, comprehensive, and informative! A must read for corporate executives and managers!"
A "brilliant volume..."
"A soon-to-be classic in Communications! It should be required reading in all universities and colleges ('Hello, professors, do you hear me?')"
"When I was writing my graduate research on crisis management, Steven Fink's book, Crisis Management: Planning for the Inevitable, was the seminal book for crisis management at the time. His new book, Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message, is equally impressive."
"Fink, who is a pioneer in the crisis management field, writes with a keen insight tuned by years of managing crises such as Three Mile Island. His firm, Lexicon Communications, is one of the first and most respected crisis management firms in the country."
"I strongly recommend that both of Fink's books [Crisis Management and Crisis Communications] be read in tandem."
Amazon.com reviews