Crisis communication – COM-CLASS.WLC.EDU

If you are a sports fan or at least watch an occasional game, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that different sports franchises have very unique fan bases that they cater to. Whether you’re watching a Big 10 conference college football game or a Dodgers-Padres series from Major League Baseball, every fan base contributes a unique atmosphere to each game-day experience.

The reality is, without their fan bases, sports franchises would not exist. Loyal and die-hard fans will stick by their team through the highs and lows of exhilarating victories and crushing defeats. One question remains to be answered though, how does a fan base react when their team does something that they don’t agree with and how does the franchise respond to their fanbase’s frustration?

My analysis is going to take you overseas to Europe where 12 of the biggest football clubs in European football dealt with somewhat of a crisis. Various clubs from the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, and the Italian Serie A attempted to form a break away competition called the European Super League to try and take attention away from the UEFA Champions League. Many fans and commentators saw this as an attempt by rich clubs to simply make more money and take attention away from the Champions League, which is regarded as the highest level of competition in European football. The main issue fans had with the proposed Super League is that it would effectively end the principle of qualification every season, which the Champions League was built on. Every season, the Champions League has rearranged groups of clubs based on whoever qualified for that season. The Super League wanted to keep the same teams every season in a very exclusive manner that kills competition for league spots.

Reaction from the various club’s fan bases was nearly unanimous in condemnation of the idea mainly because the league would attempt to limit competition for qualification, promotion, and relegation, which are all key elements of European football. It only took a matter of two days for plans to completely change course once fans reacted.

One club after another, each team that was supposedly involved as a “founding member” of the European Super League pulled out of the proposition due to negative backlash from their fan base and the sports world as a whole. Most of the clubs issued some kind of apology statement to their fans to try and fix any ill-will that was being harbored.

These European clubs realized that their proposed business expansion did not please their fans and decided to respond accordingly by pulling out of the proposed Super League. This story goes to show just how important public relations are in the sports world because one wrong decision can leave a long-lasting wound amongst supporters. Most of these clubs were able to backtrack their decision to join the breakaway league, but some fans may still have a bitter taste in their mouth.

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The business you work for just let you know that there has been a financial crisis and they have to let go of 20% of all employees. You have 1 hour before the media holds a press conference and interviews you as a representative of the company. What are you going to do?

Crisis communication is a field of public relations centered on effectively managing inevitable risks and crises within an organization. Emergency situations are a frequent occurrence for established and large businesses and require proper preparation, management and effective communication. PreparedEx is an online resource that publishes articles, podcast episodes and emergency simulations to help companies build crisis resilience through preparedness exercises. Their team is composed of crisis communication experts that have real-life public relations experiences dealing with emergency situations. There are 3 aspects of crisis communication that PreparedEx discusses on their website; crisis preparedness, crisis management, and crisis resilience. First, we will start by briefly explaining 5 of the most common types of business crises as described on PreparedEx.

5 Different Types of Business Crises

Personnel Crisis

A personnel crisis is when the personnel or stakeholders of a company are caught engaging in illegal activities or unethical behavior. An example of this might include using racial slurs or sexual assault.

Technological Crisis

When a company has malfunctioning, compromised or vulnerable software this is called a technological crisis. This includes any cyber attacks on company data.

Financial Crisis

A financial crisis occurs when a business accumulates debt or experiences significant losses. These crises can happen internally and externally through insider-trading, poor finance management or decreased sales.

Natural Crisis

A natural crisis is 100% external and unavoidable and caused by natural disasters. This includes flooding, earthquakes or disease pandemics.

Organizational Misconduct Crisis

An organizational crisis is when company managers make a decision on behalf of the company without considering the negative consequences to stakeholders. This may include withholding information from customers, making false promises about products, or taking bribes.

In preparation for some of these crises, PreparedEx recommends that companies establish crisis teams to divide the tasks that come with emergency situations. Crisis preparedness also involves identifying risk factors to the company. What problems are most likely going to arise? Injuries, natural disasters, fraud? Lastly, PreparedEx has exercises that simulate different crises for businesses to practice their public relations skills.

For crisis management, PreparedEx provides podcasts about the most common challenges about managing emergency situations. They urge business owners to share critical information with their internal and external publics at the proper times using the proper channels. PreparedEx pushes response effectiveness, monitoring the crisis will maximize a company’s power to manage any situation.

Crisis resilience is the process a company goes through to recover their reputation and brand after a crisis. PreparedEx covers crisis resilience that explores operational, community and reputation recovery.

PreparedEx has hundreds of other topics relating to crisis communication. Here are just a few examples of other crisis communication resources they offer public relations professionals!