In a crisis companies want the media not to write about them but that's the wrong strategy and here

I will tell you, after 2020, I'm stunned at how many people do not have an active crisis management plan on paper. I think it would probably surprise more and more people. And I think, you know, what 2021 should be about for people is if you have one, you need to look at 2020 and make sure that you are dusting off, changing, editing, because a crisis management plan is a living, breathing document. It's not you write it and you're done. And if you don't have one, You know, you definitely should write one.

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. And I'm really chuffed today to have Anthony Hayes with me, joining me all the way from New York. And Anthony runs the Hayes Initiative. Anthony, now you tell me that sometimes it's better for people not to get noticed. Tell me, what do you mean by that? And what do you do for the people?

Well, first, thank you for having me. And, you know, I think as a PR professional, you know, we've We work— we've been very lucky that we've gotten to work with some really incredible people, but a lot of the work we do, I would say about 50% of the work we do, is crisis management, crisis communication. And so sometimes what we try very hard to do is, you know, where we can shape stories, impact the crisis, or, you know, where sometimes reporters will be sniffing around because they think there's something there, if we do our work, And really prove the point that there was nothing there and that there's not really a story to be written, then sometimes that's a real success as well. Because sometimes PR agents, you know, reporters have the best of intentions, but then all of a sudden, you know, they may not have all the facts. But when, if, if you do your work, you have good relationships and you have those off-the-record conversations and can take proof points, whether it's, you know, reports or emails or whatever you need to use to sort of demonstrate that there's really no there there, then you can really help reporters understand there's no story there because story, believe it or not, reporters aren't always champing at the bit to sort of write a story that isn't true. So I know a lot of people think that— I think the opposite, but that is actually not true. There's some real integrity there for a good majority of them.

And I think that's absolutely a great point that the media are not out to catch anybody out, right? They're doing the job for the readers, not for the clients. And Anthony, just tell us a little bit about the Hayes Initiative. Who are some of your clients? Just a bit of context into the conversation.

Sure. So yeah, no, we, we're a small LGBTQ-owned and operated firm based in New York City that has been very lucky to do work with Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bloomberg LP. You know, I think before the show started, we were talking about some work in Singapore and Beijing with that group. We also do work with the Major League Soccer team here in New York City, which especially for the folks in the UK will know City Football Group, Man City, is the parent club to NYCFC here in New York. We've had someone that group of people that we can't name, but that have come over and wanted to do work in terms of introducing, you know, their business to sort of key stakeholders in New York. And so just some of those, you know, while it's not obviously public and in the press, it's really just sort of going around introducing and bringing them because, you know, they don't do business in New York, but, you know, it's worth sort of reaching out and mapping out those stakeholders.

So part of the communication plan there is obviously known in advance, isn't it? It's a proactive outreach. A lot of what you talk about on your website, or some of it, is about discretion and about crisis management, which is almost by definition when there hasn't been a plan. Can you just talk us through what would an entrepreneur or small business owner need to have ready as a bare-bones crisis comms plan?

Yeah, it's certainly given what we've all sort of experienced over the last year. I think it's a very good question. And we have been asked that quite a bit, as I'm sure you have as well. So I think the thing that I always impart to people is that it's not really if there's going to be a crisis, it's when there's going to be a crisis. And I know it sounds a little sort of ominous and sort of a very pessimistic way to sort of approach things. But I do think that it is a bit naive to assume that there won't ever be a bump in the road, or there won't ever be a disruption to the flow of business, or, you know, a natural disaster, or just certain things that just we have to do because, you know, we're alive, and we have to live through those things. But so the basic comms plan really does need to have, you know, a couple of key elements. And I think really, to me, the biggest one is who is the team, right? So if a crisis happens, you know, if you're a small business, everyone's going to be involved in the war room, so to speak, the metaphoric place where everybody meets to sort of get through the crisis, but you know, if you're a bigger organization, you're going to want to know, okay, it's someone from the legal team, someone from the HR team, someone from the comms team. You know, you're going to really want to know who the people are and they're going to have very clear and defined roles so that everybody's sort of in a lane. And there's really a hierarchy of decision-making so that, you know, it goes here first, then it goes to legal, then it goes to here, then it goes to the CEO and they bless it. And we put out the statement. And then, you know, you're going to want to make sure you have your list of stakeholders that you need to make sure you're getting in touch with, both internal and external. I think a lot of times the internal gets overlooked. And then therefore key people, like if you have a sales team who are going to be fielding phone calls in the middle of a crisis, they're going to desperately need talking points to sort of get your message out. Your investors, there's a list of people internally that I think a lot of people overlook and they forget that they can actually be really instrumental in driving the message once the message is decided. And I think the most important thing is to determine when, you know, it's the rock and the hard place, right? And you have to really sort of get this right. And we've watched so many people get it wrong where they wait too long to respond because they're nervous they're going to get it wrong. And I think it's better sometimes, depending on what it is, obviously every crisis has to be taken, you know, one at a time. You know, there's no cookie-cutter answer on how to manage a crisis, but you want to make sure You at least acknowledge that, you know, that there is in fact a crisis happening. And I think that's where people get dinged quite a bit is that they don't realize they have waited too long just to even acknowledge to customers or the public or however that sort of plays out.

Yeah. And I think one of the recent episodes was Buzzsprout, the web hosting company. So it's only a mid-sized company, you know, 20, 30 people and they got a DDoS, you know, a denial of service. Attack, a ransomware. And who would have thought that a company of that size would come under a, you know, a concerted effort to extort money? So it seems that now it's not just these traditional, you know, manufacturing plant has a problem or product recall. Actually, companies can be attacked at random by invisible parties, can't they? Yeah. What do you think, Anthony, about how companies can set themselves up now that the workforce are not in one place? Because one of the ways that we look at crisis comms, it's really all about business continuity, right? It's how do you keep things going? How do you advise companies to do that when people are not all in the same space?

Well, I think that's— I mean, I think obviously, you know, we're talking on Zoom, right? Or, and I think between Teams, Zoom, and all of the other platforms, I think they're going to be very very critical. But I think the one thing that I notice is people don't often think about— I think we're getting more and more into sort of cloud-based systems. But certainly any crisis management plan and tools, tactics, things that are needed, passwords, phone lists, all that stuff needs to be on a cloud-based system. You know, I would say really the leader of the team, whomever that might be, or maybe you divide it out. If you have a really large company, you have several people, but You know, I'm a big believer in someone needs to have a hard printed out copy. Because if there's no, you know, having managed natural disasters, if you don't have electricity, then you don't have phone numbers. If you don't, you know, then you don't know where things are, you know, it's very funny because we don't think like that. But as organizations, and to your point of continuity, I think that's a really big important one is just having hard— at least one hard copy for somebody so that there's some pretty pretty big things, but you have to figure out the right way to, to get your team used to. I think one of the upsides of COVID is I think people have become very familiar with working remotely. They may not like it, but I think a lot of teams have gotten very good about how they sort of pull that together. And, and I think in a crisis, you know, I think it's very easy to get everybody on a call like, like what we're on today and really just sort of keep it running, right? And just have everybody there. Because when you're in a crisis, you don't need to be— you know, you want to limit, you know, the phone calls and you want one-off conversations. You want to keep the team tight. You want to keep everybody in this, ideally in the same space, even if it's virtual, just because, you know, everybody may be working, but they can turn and say, hey, does everybody know what you're— what is everybody else hearing from AP? I'm hearing that they blah, blah, blah. You know, you can Just have real quick conversations because time is of the essence.

So that's an interesting point there you raise about, you know, what are you hearing from AP, for example. So you have mentioned there sort of the media relations part as well as the internal relations. What do you plan for clients in terms of like material in advance for the media relations part? Do you have templates and so on in place, or do you need Do you think the clients to respond and generate the content there and then ready for the media?

Yeah, I mean, I think you should have basic, you know, templates for media advisories, press releases, make sure you have your boilerplate, which is obviously at the bottom, that's about your company, or, you know, the key sort of things you would want to make sure you include, you know, contact numbers at the top, all of those things that are very basic. But if you have those basic templates, place, you know, if you are in a place where, you know, the typical comms person who writes up the press release isn't there, you know, someone else can sort of jump in. And it's not like they're, you know, the first time they're doing it, they can sort of insert here, hold quote here, you know, you can have all those things. But beyond that, just because every crisis is unique, it does get a little, you know, you have to be very sort of careful about, you know, I do believe everyone should game out many scenarios. And so I think in those crisis management plan meetings, and I I actually think the crisis management team should meet once a year at minimum, and just sort of say, are these fresh? Does this work? Are these, you know, are these phone lists up to date? Is this up to date? You know, those kinds of really administrative things so that you're not doing that in the middle of a crisis. But, you know, this kind of work is ongoing. Beyond that, no, I wouldn't say we get too granular in preemptive templates. But except for the very basic things, we definitely have— we help our clients create and prioritize their press lists. You know, who are people that are more friendly? Who are people that, you know, are going to be really adversarial? Who are neutral people? And especially the friendly people, you know, you can make some quick phone calls to reporters and say, hey, listen, you know, you're first on our list, just keep your phone open or be ready for us. Like, we'll We're coming, you know, just give us a little bit of time. And then it also could, you know, you can help navigate— it demonstrates, especially with social media today, and so much of what the reporters do is on social media even before they write, you know, even a tweet from a friendly reporter or a handful of reporters saying, we heard from them, they're going to come out with a statement soon, right? Even that buys you time so that you can get your ducks in a row, so to speak.

Okay, yeah, that's really interesting about the need to engage very quickly and being prepared. It's almost like having a fire drill, isn't it? You know, everyone has got some fire evacuation procedures somewhere written down, and you kind of need to think of PR in the same way, maybe, right?

Oh yes, and I think most people— I will tell you, after 2020, I'm stunned at how many people do not have an active communicate or a crisis management plan on paper. I think it would probably surprise more and more people. And I think, you know, what 2021 should be about for people is if you have one, you need to look at 2020 and make sure that you are, you know, dusting off, changing, editing, because a crisis management plan is a living, breathing document. It's not you write it and you're done. And if you don't have one, you know, you definitely should write one.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because something's going to attack the company, and some might be self-inflicted. I saw because of the riots, the CEO of one American company actually was on Capitol Hill in February, and, and that created some conversations in the media, uh, for that company and all the employees and the shareholders too, right? Now, one of the challenges I think that I found when I work with the client is that they don't want to believe that anything could go wrong in the organization, that that they somehow would be neglectful or negligent. And they certainly don't want to share that with me. Can you talk through how the external counsel can support and get over that kind of secrecy issue?

Yeah, it's interesting. External counsel has a real— to me, it's fascinating because we can play lots of roles, right? So either you have a long-term client that you all know each other very well, and sometimes those relationships are very deep and just everyone knows knows one another, and there's a lot of trust. I think that it's very difficult when you're in a crisis, especially if you're a leader, is you don't know who you can trust, and you're really nervous about, well, who are these people? Depending on how the structure of these, especially much, much larger institutions go, they may not have met the PR firm that it's on retainer, because why would they ever be necessarily sitting in the C-suite of a major bank or something like that? But so that a lot of times externally, the ways that we can really help is sometimes the communicate— look, communications people are often the people who are like, we can't say that, you know, they're often the no people initially. So I think a lot of times leaders can sort of see the communication team as the no people and they don't— that can really be a point of friction. And, you know, having someone else who is external, who doesn't really have All of the internal politics that go on in an organization. We don't really have a dog in that fight, so to speak. So we get to just sort of come in and mirror or parrot what the comms director who works there every day has said. And then they're like, all of a sudden the leader thinks it's a great idea, you know? And I'm sure the comms director is like, okay, thanks for that. Is this when you get brought in and you're— because we certainly get phone calls because a friend may work somewhere or someone knows us and they're in crisis and they're like, we need someone, who do we call? And then all of a sudden you're getting a call. And the challenge is, you know, similar to attorneys, you know, your PR team needs to know. Like, it's not a— it's not a— the more we know, the more we can sort of push toward full disclosure or push toward, you know, we can help game out scenarios that will help the client really determine, you know, how they want to go about handling this. You know, is it a big mea culpa press conference, or is it a statement? Is it— but if we don't know where things are, then what happens is you're drafting statements or making responses that could make it worse instead of making it better.

And then one last question for you then, Anthony Hayes. What about media not to run a story? How do you say, I just don't want you to write that?

Well, you know, it's not an easy call. I think there's several ways to go. Certainly tactically handled that lots of different ways. So one is, you know, either you have a relationship with the reporter and that, that becomes— those, those are always easier. That's why, like, the, you know, it is a relationship business. The other option is a bigger story to trade. You know, and so really, the client has to decide, like, well, wait, we know we're going to announce, I don't know, you know, that we're firing the CEO in a week. So, okay, well, then let me go trade that, because maybe they'll take that over this. And then, you know, that doesn't mean that the reporter may not include some of what they've called you about. But, you know, it's you trade, and I'm not saying that it always works. So I think that people sometimes think there's magic where you call the PR team and the PR team is going to clean it up.

Yeah, no, it is. And they do it very immersively where live in countries where we have journalists who have that job to keep us all well informed. Anthony, if people want to find out about you and the Hayes Initiative, how can they do that?

Oh, sure. You can go to hayesinitiative.com. That's H-A-Y-E-S with an E. Or you can just email me, anthony@hayesinitiative.com.

Anthony, thank you so much for joining me all the way from the Big Apple today on The Unnoticed Show. All right, you've been listening to Anthony Hayes, who's the founder of the Hayes Initiative all the way in New York, a specialist boutique PR firm, really sharing about the fact that sometimes it's great to get noticed and sometimes it's great to be less noticed. Thanks for listening, and we'll put all those in the show notes. And in the meantime, we wish you the best of health, a profitable business, and that you think about having a plan for your business for better and for worse.