When communication is instantaneous via 24-hour cable TV, Twitter, blogs, e-mail and cell phones, news of a disaster and its consequences can be disseminated in a moment — and just as quickly distorted by inaccuracies.
The same is true if the crisis isn’t natural, but manmade: food recalls, workplace violence, a business scandal, an oil spill.
So when a situation occurs requiring an immediate and accurate response, it’s important that the business or agency involved has a crisis-communications plan ready to go. That means knowing who will be the chief spokesperson on the topic, what the key talking points will be, if there needs to be a formal statement released to the media and what that will be, how everyone involved will be updated so the message remains coherent and cohesive and how the plan will be evaluated post-crisis.
Within the seafood industry, the fallout from the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill and the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and its impact on businesses in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida were circumstances requiring crisis communications to separate fact from fiction.
When the Deepwater Horizon oil platform caught fire and sank in April 2010, Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board, says “we immediately knew we would have some PR issues.”
Click here to read the rest of the story on crisis communications, which was written by SeaFood Business Associate Editor Joanne Friedrick and appeared in the magazine’s May issue.
