TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Its crisis communications time. If you're in the PR industry, you've no doubt heard that crisis communications is completely different from standard media training. Crisis communication trainers say, oh, don't even think about hiring a traditional media trainer. This is highly specialized. There is some truth to that. But I am going to break against conventional wisdom somewhat here. I happen to believe there's absolutely no difference in how you should prepare for a crisis when it comes to a media interview versus a simple product announcement, a ribbon cutting of a new building. Here's what is different. The stakes are different. If you're off message a little bit, you don't have great sound bite for a ribbon cutting ceremony for a new building, your community, there's not that much damage, there's not that much harm. Instead of getting an A plus for the day, maybe you get an A for the day. You still get a lot of positive coverage when it comes to a crisis. If you're off a little bit, it could absolutely destroy your reputation. In the case of companies like BP with their whole oil leak problem in the Gulf, their company went down $36 billion in market cap within six months of that incident. So the stakes are much higher when you make a mistake, when you have awful sound bites. But the actual preparation, I believe, should be exactly the same. You brainstorm on messages, you narrow it down to your top three. You brainstorm on sound bites on message, you get rid of any that can cause you any problems. You then practice your interview on video repeatedly until you learn the discipline of answering the questions and having your messages come out. And your great sound bites come out that are on message and not accidentally having sound bites come out like, hey, it's America, of course there'll be frivolous lawsuits or I want my life back. So the process is the same, the stakes are higher.