Why CMOs Should Pull The Communications Fire Drill

Jim Nichols Vice President, Digital Stern + Associates

Office workers participate in fire drills a few times a year. They’re typically routine and prepare organizations for a fairly improbable scenario: a fire during the day when everyone’s there.

Unfortunately, a marketing nightmare is far more probable than a fire at the office. If we spend so much time training, organizing, and preparing for a fire, then why don’t we do the same for our company’s crisis response? A credibility challenge can be just as damaging to your company’s advertising or marketing materials as a real fire would be to your office.

Many corporations believe they have a plan in place. You may have a comprehensive, well-written crisis manual detailing the response of every possible scenario, but when was the last time you read it? More important, does everyone know where it is and how to implement it? Do you have a process for assessing how a crisis could impact your marketing? Do you need to pull ads off of the air? Do you need to create new marketing copy that will address the issue? Does the legal department know that its input on a specific scenario is time-sensitive?

These are questions that need to be answered by a crisis plan. And while this may make sense on paper, when it comes to practice, many key elements of a solid plan are often forgotten. This is where practice comes in–and that practice most commonly needs to be initiated in the CMO’s office.

Formulating A Rapid-Response Team
Given the increasing pace of today’s information sharing, the speed of your team is just as important as the crisis plan in the file. Does your company have a rapid-response team? Are key areas represented, including legal, PR, marketing, corporate communications, manufacturing, sales, and the C-suite? If not, it’s in your best interest to have one in place. Do you want to be in your office until midnight getting approval from legal to send out a tweet or change ad copy in response to the crisis? Probably not. And that’s why you can’t wait for another department to spearhead this–if a rapid-response team isn’t in place, you have as much to lose as anyone else. With this team, there can’t be any bottlenecks to response, so there must be a representative from each area in your company’s approval chain.

The following items are important to consider when developing and moving forward with your response team:

• Decision makers need to be on the team, not junior staff. Most importantly, these people need to know they are part of the rapid- response team and be ready to help while understanding what exactly “rapid response” means.

• Buy-in from your company’s top leaders is critical, and it must be known that the CEO trusts this team and has empowered a certain department or people to activate it.

• Prefixes or codes are very important in helping team members recognize the difference between a rapid-response crisis email and a regular email. A prefix can be anything, as long as everyone is told in advance what it signifies. For example, your legal rapid-response team member should know that emails with RR-ALERT in the subject line need to be answered immediately with no exception. In some instances, you can even program special rings into office and cell phones to audibly alert the team that the call must be answered because it is a rapid-response issue (otherwise known as a bat phone!).

• Each team member should have a backup so your rapid response isn’t held up by an out-of-the-country colleague.

Putting Your Team And Plan To The Test
Once your team and plan is in place, it’s vital to run communications drills that are similar to fire drills. Some points to keep in mind:

• Properly brief everyone on the rapid-response team about their roles and expectations.

• Pick a random date and start a marketing fire–a realistic scenario that needs to be treated as if it were real. I did this with a client recently; we ambushed the CEO in the parking lot with a camera crew asking a series of questions about our realistic scenario. The CEO performed flawlessly, but the idea stuck with him: It was more likely that a reporter would try to catch him walking somewhere than interview him in the comfort of his office. This lesson prepared him for that potential in the future, and now a small problem won’t become a large one because the CEO was caught off-guard.

• There must be repercussions for those who do not respond simply because it is a drill–the same way the fire department fines people who don’t evacuate certain buildings during a fire drill. You can expect a few grumbles and complaints from employees (aren’t there always during a fire drill?), but a crisis is never convenient. Yes, your scenario will catch someone at an inconvenient time, but that is to be expected and is why your CEO’s buy-in is so critical.

• Once the drill is complete, reassemble the team for a quick analysis. What were the bottlenecks? Where was time lost? Score the team’s effectiveness and speed and work to improve. Much like a fire drill, practice makes perfect, so plan on doing this again and again.

Eventually the impact a crisis may have on your marketing program will be handled with the same efficiency and banal regularity as a fire drill. This will prevent panicked decisions, poor choices, and slow responses. Take the time to conduct a few marketing fire drills: It’ll be worth the investment.

About Jim Nichols

As vice president of digital, Jim Nichols provides high-level counsel as well as tactical guidance, helping to ensure each client’s identity is as impactful online as it is off.