How to create a crisis communication plan with Adobe Express.

Summary/Overview

Crisis often strikes when you least expect it. So, when disaster does land on your doorstep, how you react can significantly impact how quickly your business recovers. Part of this involves crisis communication. During a company crisis, it’s important that your communication is coherent, reassuring and relevant.

Want to learn more about communicating in a crisis and the importance of planning for different worse case scenarios? Read on to find out more and discover how Adobe Express can help your business prepare.

What is crisis communication?

Crisis communication is your public response to an event. What constitutes a crisis may be individual to you, but there are plenty of general scenarios that will affect a wide range of businesses. It’s important to note that crises don’t need to be real world events. Anything that can affect your stakeholders’ and clients’ opinion on the viability of your business can constitute a crisis.

Effective crisis communication impacts both external and internal communications. It can range from internal conversations to the emails you send to your customers. Effectively communicating in a crisis can impact the speed of your recovery, as well as the efficiency of your recovery.

Some of the benefits of effective crisis communication include:

• Trust building. Whether in stakeholders, clients or customers, communicating effectively shows you’re aware of the crisis and are prepared to do something about it.
• Controlling the narrative. If your crisis is public, crisis communication can prevent rumours and misinformation, while delivering the key facts you want people to know.
• Mitigating any losses. Timely response in a crisis can provide market stability, prevent panic and minimise financial repercussions that come from alarm.

Examples of crisis scenarios.

We know what crisis communication is, but what is a crisis? How do you differentiate from a bad day in the workplace and a full-blown company crisis? A crisis can often be personal to a business. What may cause one business to grind to a halt may be part of the everyday for another. Factors such as your company’s size, your industry and your capital, will factor into what is a crisis.

Common scenarios could include:

• Personnel crisis. These are typically when an individual, regardless of seniority is found to be acting unethically or illegally. Whether it’s at home, or in the workplace, their association with your business can tar the reputation of your company. Examples of criminal activities could involve money laundering or insider trading. Unethical behaviour could be sharing offensive material on social media or inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.
• Financial crisis. There are many ways a financial crisis can strike but they all result in the business running out of money or racking up debt. The causes behind these can be internal such as misspending, or external such as stock market crashes.
• Organisational crisis. These can occur when consumers or employees are significantly wronged. These aren’t always clear-cut lines, but when the relationship between an employee/customer and the wider business are no longer mutually beneficial, it’s a sign that things have gone wrong. This could be knowingly selling faulty products to customers or fostering a culture that permitted abusive or manipulative behaviours.

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How to create a crisis management plan.

Crisis management plans are set guidelines for when a crisis strikes. Often, the worst part of a crisis is its unexpected nature. But having a plan dedicated to helping employees tackle a crisis can cut response times in half and prevent contrasting statements.

Crisis plans can limit the impact on the company’s reputation and can provide a story before any misinformation can spread. Below we’ve put together the basic steps for creating a crisis communication plan.

1. Outline possible risks and crises. Begin by exploring potential crises. Depending on the size of your company, this may require interdepartmental contributions. It should go without saying that if you identify risks that can be fixed, it makes sense to address these now rather than when they turn into crises. Still, having an idea of your weak points or risks in the industry can show you what you may need to address.
2. Define business protocols in the event of specific crises. Once you’ve identified your potential crises, you can decide what the plan for the business is. It can help to think both internally and externally. For example, will you encourage staff to keep working or put everyone into new, temporary positions to help tackle the crisis? Will you need to cut spending? Will the shareholders need additional information? Asking these questions now means you’ll have less to do if things go wrong.
3. Nominate people to undertake specific roles and responsibilities. When a crisis hits you may need all hands-on deck, but having defined roles in the event of a crisis can prevent mismanagement and contrasting communications. Pick your teams carefully and select individuals who can handle pressure well.
4. Create step-by-step plans of action. Once you know what you need to do you should create a step-by-step plan of action. This means breaking down your responses into tasks. If things begin to feel overwhelming during a crisis, a plan can make things feel much more manageable.
5. Consider what to communicate and with whom. During a crisis how you communicate and who with will need to alter based on the severity and the current trajectory of the crisis. For example, when the crisis immediately hits, you’ll need to let key individuals know before you tell the public. Similarly, the information you provide will differ. Stakeholders will likely want financial information whereas customers will want to know how it affects them in their own way.
6. Review. Once the worst is over, it’s time to recuperate and assess the damage. You may decide you need to continue providing crisis communication or you may feel it’s appropriate to stop. It’s typically good to have someone monitor the ongoing situation and assess whether further responses are needed.

Browse editable crisis communication ideas and sample plans.

How to use Adobe Express to build out your crisis communication strategy.

When planning crisis communication, Adobe Express can help you plot the best course. Whether that’s managing a project, developing templates or creating brand assets, Adobe Express has multiple tools designed to get your business back on its feet.

Use an Adobe Express template to craft your own crisis communication.

As we’ve already explored, having consistent and official communication is essential for managing a crisis. One simple way to guarantee that your output is consistent is to develop branded templates. These can be used for sending letters to customers, creating emails or posting on social media. However you choose to share your message, an Adobe Express template can instantly show customers what they need to know.

Create a separate crisis communication plan for social media.

During a crisis, social media has the potential to get out of hand. One batch of misinformation can rapidly spread across your channels. The best way to prevent this is to publish your own responses first. With Adobe Express, you can not only create social media assets but also use the Social Media Content Scheduler to generate captions, plan out communications and schedule your crisis communication posts.

Apply your branding to any crisis communication assets.

Consistent branding can ensure your crisis communication remains recognisable and official. If you don’t have clear branding already, you can create them using Adobe Express. If you already have details such as a logo or brand colours and fonts, you can easily apply these to templates and designs with the One-Click, Apply Brand tool.

Save your templates so they’re easy to find in case of a crisis.

Things can be stressful in a crisis, and trying to find assets or creating new ones while you’re already fighting multiple fires isn’t easy. But with Adobe Express, you can save your favourite assets in one easy to find location. When crisis communication is key, you won’t need to worry about finding the right templates in a rush.

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Useful things to know.

What are the 5 Cs of crisis communication?

The 5 Cs of crisis communication are:

• Concern – Show concern for those affected by the crisis.
• Clarity – Clarify what’s happening and provide accurate information where possible.
• Consistency – Be consistent in your communication. This means having a unified approach across teams.
• Credibility – When you provide a plan to resolve the crisis, it must be credible and achievable.
• Contingency – Plan ahead and provide a contingency plan for crises wherever they might arise.

What’s the best way to communicate a crisis?

The best way to communicate a crisis will be specific to your business and the crisis that’s affecting you. However, it’s essential that you pick channels that will reach your customers and clients. Email is a good way to provide a personalised approach, but social media can address large groups who may be searching for your brand. You might find it beneficial to combine channels and see what works for you.

What are the key messages to include in crisis communication?

The key messages will depend on your business and the crisis, but ultimately, they should be reassuring, and provide a clear way forward. This might mean sharing a step-by-step plan with stakeholders or showing customers how they can ask for a refund.

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