Crisis communications without a clear playbook
Shortly after ushering in the new decade, the world found itself plunged into a rapidly escalating crisis of global proportions. A mysterious and silent killer in the form of a novel coronavirus emerged and began sweeping across all corners of the world. Governments and business leaders struggled to make sense of what is now known […]
Crisis management in Japan: two twists for experts
Because the principles of crisis management are universal, companies will often fly in their most experienced crisis communications personnel when something goes wrong outside their home market. But it’s in the local details, not the global principles, that crisis response plans tend to go wrong. In Japan, there are numerous aspects of crisis response that […]
PandemicBuzz – podcast for continuing perspectives in the crisis
“We’re now on full automatic in the hands of the computers, reliant on technology to nurture basic human aspects of socialization and a feeling of connectedness.” Anonymous Resilience Practitioner, 3 March, 2020 Everything stalled at the beginning of March and the world slipped into unprecedented times. This was hard for me, the plunge into a […]
Lambs to the slaughter
The UK’s epidemic had reached a peak in April when Donna, a critical care patient in Warrington Hospital, told Sky News, “I don’t want to be a statistic in this.” Nobody does. As a crisis like no other sees horrific death tolls increase, the pandemic pulls focus on government communication strategies and the broad cycle […]
Covid-19: global media snapshots
Coronavirus – rarely, if ever, has a single cause had such a dramatic and widespread impact
Newsletter June 2020
A special edition of Response for the pandemic. We gather insights from our network partners around the world, look at how Covid-19 is transforming journalism and examine the need to move training online. But it’s not all about the virus. Our Japanese partner has advice on communicating in a country where apologies are essential. There’s […]
COVID-19: what social media offers
In many ways the year has not started on a good note. As we weather our way into March, we have witnessed a rising tide of uncertainty around the world. From Australia’s catastrophic bushfires to the escalating US-Iran tensions, global headline events may have offered some chilling pointers to what is to come in this […]
2010s: A decade of social media
The 2010s was a decade of social media. It fuelled a stock market boom, supported revolutions, influenced elections, brought people together (and tore them apart), it revolutionised advertising and it fundamentally changed my job – crisis communications. An internet search for “social media” in 2010 returned results about opportunity: “How to use social media to […]
No two fires are the same
2019 had its fair share of crises. We saw meteorological crises such Cyclone Idai in March 2019, the deadliest tropical cyclone recorded in the South-West Indian Ocean basin which claimed at least 1,300 lives in Africa, and Typhoon Hagibis which killed more than 90 people, leaving damage in excess of USD15 billion – the costliest […]
Consuming crisis media: emerging trends and unfailing principles
The good thing about the end of a year, indeed the end of a decade, is that many outlets are keen to summarise their most popular output. One such outlet, World Maritime News (WMN), did so this year with their 10 most popular interviews and 10 most read stories. Their lists indicate both how we […]