A Reputation Crisis Just Hit. Here’s What Smart Leaders Do in the First 24 Hours

The world seems pretty fraught with all kinds of dangers out there now, doesn’t it? If you’re a business owner or company executive, a sudden hit to your own personal reputation or that of your brand is an always-looming threat, especially in these days of instantaneous news and viral social posts.

I’ve been in the PR and marketing space for more than 15 years — all the while, growing and protecting my own brand — and I can tell you that there’s never been a greater demand for crisis communications, a specialty area of public relations, than there is right now.

Having repped my fair share of celebrities and bigwigs, I’ve learned many vital lessons and have amassed much useful advice. Regardless of whether you’re a public figure or not, whether you run a large or a small operation, you can benefit from these pointers on how to best handle a reputation crisis. And it all rides on the first 24 hours.

1. Get your facts straight before making any other move

Very often in crisis management, the first impulse is to speak first, ask questions later. I’m not denying that acting quickly is critical … but you don’t want to act too quickly at the risk of exacerbating the situation. Yes, you want to reclaim the narrative as soon as possible, but making the wrong statement or taking the wrong action can be even more damaging than the original crisis.

Your very first step in reputation crisis management, then, is to go on a fact-finding mission. Find out precisely what happened, who is being affected by it, who’s aware of what’s happening and who needs to be aware. How can you craft an apology video that will land correctly or respond to media inquiries with accuracy until you know this information? You can’t and you shouldn’t.

So gather your team together right away and join forces to obtain the necessary facts. As you do so, make sure to differentiate between the story that’s being circulated or speculated upon and what is actually confirmed and verifiable. If you don’t have the answer to a question, determine who does and chase down that input pronto.

The truth is, any good reputation management strategy comes down to one thing: information. You can shape your internal strategy on what’s not known yet — like unclear details, who will be the company spokesperson, and pinpointing which audiences to target first — but your external public strategy should be driven by facts.

2. Quickly build a united front

Your second step in the first-24-hours window is getting your team aligned along the baseline of factual information you’ve established. And by “team,” I don’t just mean your employees; I mean anybody and everybody who represents you and your brand, all the channels and the individuals who have a stake in that brand’s management. You all *must* be on the same page.

Why? Because reputation management — celebrity or otherwise — lives or dies on consistency. Consistency is the antidote to mixed messaging, so you want to apply it before a dosage is even needed, before any possibly inconsistent communication can further undermine your credibility faster than it can be remedied.

How do you achieve this alignment? Well, before one word is uttered to the public, you can (a) temporarily freeze activity on your social platforms and (b) delay announcements or posts until you’re ready to address the crisis directly. In my informed opinion, it’s much better to release a statement that’s factually accurate and consistent a bit later in the process than to circulate an earliest-possible statement that can create confusion.

Bottom line: Get all your ducks in a row (i.e., all your stakeholders on board the same vessel, going in the exact same direction) before you start quacking.

3. Release your initial statement

The specific timing of this step is a bit tricky because even though I just advised holding off on going public until you’re properly equipped to do so behind the scenes, the public will be expecting you to take action almost as soon as the crisis becomes known. And yet you can’t always be ready to “take action” that swiftly.

The solution is what’s called a “holding statement,” a brief and concise message deployed within the first 12 hours of a crisis that openly acknowledges the situation and underlines your company’s commitment to managing it properly. This can be a lifeline for your reputation because it evidences accountability in the situation, which is what your audience is hankering after, but it also buys you time to get your facts straight before going into much greater detail.

When crafting a holding statement, concentrate on transparency — relay what you can about the story being told and how much of it is true — but it’s also okay to honestly admit that additional information is not available at this point, but will be made available as soon as you can look into the matter further.

This might seem like a “stalling tactic,” but if so, it’s a fair one nevertheless, as it’s often necessary due to circumstances beyond your immediate control, circumstances like leadership team members not being accessible yet (time zone differences, on vacation or out of the country, a critical voice that’s temporarily off the grid), data not being available yet, or inaccuracies that you can’t disprove yet.

So take advantage of the holding statement whenever you need to, which delivers a prompt reply that goes a long way toward sustaining or rebuilding trust, but which also grants you a bit more time to formulate the right actions to take in the right way for all involved.

4. Take a deep breath … and then proceed

Once you have undertaken your fact-finding mission, gotten your team aligned, and released an initial statement, the rest of the crisis management cycle can commence, one that indeed extends beyond the first 24 hours of exposure.

What this means is that time can be both your friend or your foe during a reputation crisis. It can degenerate your reputation if you use it imprudently, and it can regenerate your reputation if you use it wisely. And if you’re really, really fortunate (or have a really, really good PR firm in your corner), you might be able to avoid the reputation hit altogether with skillful crisis comms expertise.

Everything comes down to what you do with that time, particularly the first 24 hours. The end goal during a PR crisis — actually, the end goal during any type of PR campaign — is retaining or recapturing trust with your client base and with the wider world at large. Think about what you’d want someone to say to and do for you if you were questioning their veracity and reliability, and do and say that! Lots of PR strategizing comes from good business sense and best practices. But never underestimate the role that good heart sense and honest communication play, either.

Shape a response that is true, transparent, and relatable, and odds are, your company will stay in good shape and carry on to see another day, far longer than another 24 hours!

The world seems pretty fraught with all kinds of dangers out there now, doesn’t it? If you’re a business owner or company executive, a sudden hit to your own personal reputation or that of your brand is an always-looming threat, especially in these days of instantaneous news and viral social posts.

I’ve been in the PR and marketing space for more than 15 years — all the while, growing and protecting my own brand — and I can tell you that there’s never been a greater demand for crisis communications, a specialty area of public relations, than there is right now.