Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
The world has been buzzing since the announcement of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s tell-all interview with Oprah. Since airing on March 7 in the U.S., the internet, talk shows and celebrities have not stopped talking about the content of the interview and its potential impact.
The highly anticipated interview, as well as the aftermath, have highlighted a handful of important PR lessons that spokespeople and PR professionals should all keep in mind.
Know your messages
If you’ve watched the interview, it was clear that Meghan prepared. Her responses were measured, thoughtful and direct. This is critical for spokespeople when conducting interviews. Interviews are an excellent way to raise awareness for your organization, communicate benefits and demonstrate thought leadership. Unprepared or underprepared spokespeople often don’t communicate their messages clearly or effectively, minimizing the potential impact of the interview.
Proof points are critical
Several times throughout the interview, Oprah pushed Meghan on her claims and/or sought clarity. In some of her responses Meghan had examples or facts to back up her claims, and other times she did not have all the information to back statements. For example, she noted that 60-70% of the commonwealth is made up of people of color, which is why she believes representation is so important. However, when pushed on the topic of Archie’s title, she fumbled as she referenced a clause, which she felt supported her claim of a discrepancy in tradition. If the reference to this had been clearer with more detail, her statement would have been more impactful.
Don’t rush it
Often, spokespeople feel pressured to respond to journalists quickly—it’s human nature to avoid the awkward silence. Especially when spokespeople are feeling nervous or pressured during an interview, they often jump into a response that is filled with rambling or “ums.”
Meghan usually paused before her responses to Oprah’s questions, giving her a moment to gather her thoughts and deliver an eloquent and concise response. This approach makes it easier for the interviewer and the audience to follow along with the spokesperson.
Be ready to adapt
This goes for both spokespeople during interviews and for organizations responding to public claims. For spokespeople, they will never know exactly how an interview will go. Regardless of the amount of preparation, its important to always be ready to adapt. And the pause mentioned above can be very helpful in doing so.
More importantly, if an organization is responding to public claims, it needs to be prepared to adapt. There are claims (that we cannot substantiate), that the palace had a statement drafted and ready to publish following the broadcast of the interview. However, after hearing the content of the interview, it held the statement and drafted a new one.
Whether this is true or not, it does raise an important point: It is critical to be prepared for crises, but regardless of what you have on hand, you may be forced to adapt. In this case, the information shared during the interview was shocking and sensitive and required a more thoughtful and personal response.
It’s uncommon for one interview to be as high-profile as the one with Meghan, Harry and Oprah was, but it does remind us that effective interviews can have a significant impact.
A frequently asked questions (FAQ) document is one of the most valuable and must-have materials because it supports both clients and PR professionals in the development of consistent key messages. Typically, an FAQ appears on a company website and acquaints potential customers with information that builds awareness for the brand and promotes its product or service.
For public relations professionals, we regularly draft internal FAQs that serve as a foundational material when kicking off a partnership with a new client. It allows PR professionals to take a step back and ponder the intricate questions members of the media might ask. Gathering these questions ahead of time makes it easier to urgently address media requests in a timely and consistent manner.
Below are a handful of tips to create straightforward yet comprehensive FAQs that can be utilized throughout media relations to deliver consistent and strong messaging.
Best Practices for Creating an Effective FAQ
Include Common Questions – Incorporate the simple, common questions that may seem unnecessary in FAQs. Although it may seem tedious, it’s important to take this time to be thorough and include every piece of information you believe reporters will want to know about the organization. With this document, every member of the team has ready-to-use, approved messaging that has been thoughtfully written out.
Categorize the Document – Organize the FAQ in a systematic way that focuses on the company and its offerings first, then goes into the broader questions. Keeping them structured and grouped will save you time in the future to clearly identify what you’re looking for and ensure that anyone reviewing the document can easily find the content they need.
Keep it Short and on Message – When possible, keep the language clear, conversational and succinct. It’s important to use simple language that fully aligns with the company’s mission statement and its value propositions. Additionally, FAQs should include proof points that back up any claims to ensure information is accurate, convincing and believable. Remember, your goal is to clearly answer the media’s questions, not confuse them!
Write for Your Audience – It’s critical to ponder the types of questions reporters will ask once they receive a story idea. Review your client’s top priority journalists and read recent articles. This will help you get a sense of their style and spark a slew of questions that help make the relationship much for effective for all parties involved.
Beneath I’ve compiled a few example questions for inspiration.
Example Questions to Consider:
- What is the product/service?
- What pain point does the product/service address?
- What are the key benefits?
- What are the drawbacks or shortcomings of the product/service?
- Who’s the target audience?
- Who are the company’s top competitors?
- When was the company founded?
- Where is the company located?
- Who is on the executive team?
- How many people are employed at the company?
FAQs can be a great public relations’ tool that serves as a foundational material, offering access to client-approved language to answer media requests swiftly. Hopefully, these tips and example questions will guide you to create an FAQ that instigates connections with reporters to drive meaningful results for clients.
This month, we approach the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic hitting the U.S. While it is a grim milestone, we are not without hope, as we’ve seen the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and the recently authorized vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. President Joe Biden expects the U.S. to deliver enough coronavirus vaccines for all adults by the end of May.
Still, many continue to adjust to our next normal and consider what the future of work will hold. Already, we’re beginning to see trends come into play, both in the workplace and in everyday life. Here are a few notable ways we’ve seen how the past year has influenced the workplace in 2021 – digital and otherwise.
Greater Emphasis on Health and Safety
Beginning an email with “I hope you are doing well” has greater meaning these days, as health and safety remain top of mind. Amid all the chaos and catastrophe of Covid, we genuinely want to make sure folks are hanging in there, staying healthy, and maintaining some semblance of normalcy as best they can. It’s good for them, and it’s good for us, too.
In the workplace, there is increased focus on taking the necessary precautions to maintain physical health and optimum mental health. You may have noticed colleagues checking in more to make sure things are going all right. Masking up remains a norm, as is having sanitizing stations in offices and buildings. Both will likely continue well into the future – even after we achieve mass vaccinations.
For companies, it is important to continue communicating how your business is prioritizing the health and safety of staff, and where applicable, consumers. A best practice is to provide specific, actionable steps that are being taken to ensure health and safety standards are being met, be it during the pandemic or beyond.
The Response to Remote Work
In general, many workers have responded favorably to working remotely, but the pivot has not come without challenges. A survey from Talent LMS of 1000 respondents from across the U.S. found that 88% of survey respondents had transitioned to remote work as a result of the pandemic.
The survey found that many folks are most productive in the morning to mid-day hours. Forty percent of respondents said they hit their productivity peak between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., while 31% said they are most productive between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. Twenty-two percent responded being most productive between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., and 8% were most productive from 7 p.m. or later.
Finding motivation can be a challenge for both new and seasoned remote workers. Respondents cited their top motivation boosters as listening to music (66%), chatting with a colleague (49%) and exercising (46%). In addition, the survey found that many good and bad habits have increased since the start of the pandemic. Respondents said they do more of the following:
- Watch TV (51%)
- Eat (50%)
- Exercise (42%)
- Talk on the phone (30%)
- Meditate (20%)
- Drink alcohol (18%)
- Smoke (16%)
The survey also found that offering training opportunities to a remote workforce can make a difference in their performance, happiness and company loyalty. This could include hard and soft skills training, COVID-19 training, and compliance training.
Sixty-one percent of respondents said they need additional training to help them perform better in their role. Remote workers who had received training consistently showed higher rates for productivity, time management, work-life balance, and communication with their colleagues than their counterparts who had received no training. They also showed higher rates of happiness while working from home and feeling valued by their company.
A Virtual World of Social Connections
The pandemic has forced countless people to turn to online solutions for human connections and socializing. Virtually everything that many folks do now is online, including their work, shopping, exercising, entertainment and more.
As people have become more isolated, the appetite for human connections has grown stronger. Successful companies are finding ways to create personalized experiences and increase person-to-person interaction via virtual means. This can be through virtual meetings, lunches, one-on-ones and special digital events.
At Communique PR, we celebrated our 17th anniversary with a virtual cooking class with Culinary Artistas, a small women-owned business based in San Francisco. Our CPR team made homemade fresh pasta with roasted vegetables. It provided a fun opportunity to virtually gather, make a delicious meal, and wine and dine together.
As we contemplate what comes next, one thing is certain: how we go about our professional and daily lives will forever change. Hopefully, our collective response to the pandemic will enable us to demonstrate greater agility and resilience moving forward. By learning how to adapt, we find a way to incorporate old norms into our current lives, and usher in normalcy sooner without having to wait for clearance.
One of my favorite project stages is brainstorming; I love the creativity and excitement that comes with idea generation. I like to exercise my brain and think outside of the box and use the constraints of a project challenge to determine how to move forward. Brainstorming is also an important step when you want to determine the right option to move forward with as your first idea is unlikely to be your best.
Unfortunately, the next step after brainstorming can be a stressful, emotional and angst-ridden process. The next step is deciding which idea is the best solution and, in a group setting, critiques to an idea can feel like personal attacks. And if the decision-making process is prolonged, our attention is spread between the choices, wasting resources like time, money and emotional investment.
If this struggle feels familiar, you’re not alone. Making a decision within a brainstorming setting can be hard, especially when you’re choosing from a slew of workable, good ideas. Luckily, this is a skill that can be improved with thoughtful preparation, best practices, and usable techniques that will allow you to more efficiently narrow down and rank your ideas. To streamline the brainstorming process, below are some best practices for each step of the process.
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Preparation
The first thing you need to do is to identify and define the problem you want to solve. At this stage, it’s important to clarify the need for the solution, who will use it and how they’ll use it, and any other factors that put constraints on the situation. Reach out to stakeholders and make sure you have a grasp on their understanding of the problem.
The next step is to gather your brainstorming team, making sure you have a diverse group with a range of perspectives and a dedicated time to discuss. It may be helpful to include key stakeholders in brainstorming activities to ensure their perspectives are captured.
Then, work together to determine three to five key guidelines to judge the ideas. For example, clarity, stability and integration may be key factors on which to judge a successful slogan. Other possible criteria include profitability, practicality, “stickiness”, originality, and clarity. Finally, give each criterion a score between 1 and 5 (1 being unimportant and 5 being very important).
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Brainstorming
Begin your brainstorming individually to prevent groupthink and “idea anchors” that can limit creative thought. This is the time to turn off that critical voice in your head and let your mind play with the problem. Not all your ideas will be winners, and that’s ok! Give yourself a set amount of time and aim for quantity. If idea creation is difficult, try some of these creativity techniques.
Following this, share these ideas with the group and let them spark additional solutions building from others’ thoughts. Together, develop an affinity diagram that will group similar ideas, allow for the elimination of duplicates, and show areas for growth.
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Evaluation
When your group reaches a lull in idea generation, it’s time to shift gears into idea evaluation. Have everyone pick their favorite ideas from the affinity diagram, limiting people to 5-10 choices depending on the number of ideas and group size. Go through the full list and have everyone rate the ideas based on each criterion, giving a numerical score from 1 (very bad) to 5 (very good).
Collect all the scores and multiply each score by the predetermined ‘weight’ of each criterion. Immediately eliminate the low-scoring ideas. If there’s a clear winner, you’ve made your decision.
In addition, it’s important at this stage to methodically eliminate the worst ideas because too many choices only makes it harder to choose. There are several techniques that can help you explore the possible outcomes of your choices. Not every technique will work for every project, but some helpful methods include:
- A desirability-viability-feasibility Venn Diagram. Create a Venn diagram with these (or other important) factors to help you evaluate an idea. The best ideas will fit in the middle of this chart, any ideas that only fit in one circle should be eliminated, and, in general, if the idea fits in the ‘desirable’ circle, you’re working in the right direction.
- Develop feasibility roadmaps. Collaborate to determine the steps it would take to make each idea a reality. Are the steps clear-cut and achievable, or are they complex and expensive? This should help eliminate ideas with hidden roadblocks.
- SWOT Analysis. This is helpful in larger projects and involves identifying the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to your solutions to help you compare ideas and how they relate to the situation and environment around it.
- Request outsider opinions. Select a person or people who will be thoughtful but decisive. Describe the solutions as objectively as possible, without any statements that might influence them (e.g. “This was the boss’s idea,” or “My favorite is…”). Ask them questions about their first impressions and any concerns they have. It may be helpful to have them also ask questions, as they may bring up points you hadn’t considered already, but make sure not to become defensive or argue with them.
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Selection
From this point on, you’ll be deciding between a small selection of appropriate, interesting and workable ideas. There should be no wrong answer, but there’s likely a best answer. Take the time to make sure each idea addresses the problem and matches the needs of the relevant stakeholders. Think about which choice you and your group wants more; a project with the interest of the team will drive better focus and dedication. If you still can’t decide, introduce the element of chance. Flip a coin. If the option that the coin suggests makes your stomach drop, you know to pick the other.
The best thing you can do to streamline the decision-making process is to make eliminating choices systematically. By preparing ahead of time and gaining a deep understanding of the problem, you’ll come up with better ideas and have the tools to efficiently analyze, eliminate, and choose the best option.
In an increasingly remote and cloud-based business ecosystem, companies across all industries continue to be targets of ongoing cyberattacks. From hospitals and banks to transportation companies and tech giants, the event of a cyber breach is unfortunately no longer a matter of if, but rather when it will occur.
Having a corporate crisis communication plan on hand is wise, but given the uptick in cyber-related events, it’s important to revisit these crisis playbooks and update sections to reflect the real threats of running a business in 2021 and managing a remote or hybrid workforce.
If you have not developed a crisis communications plan, it’s not too late. It is far better to be proactive and develop these materials now so that, in the event of a crisis, the executive team can refer to a strategic plan with agreed-upon response steps. Response steps offer guidance on how to effectively manage communications when faced with a crisis situation. This guidance includes when the company should share messages, what the context of the messages will be, who will receive those messages, which executives will share the messages and how the message will be sent, aka the communication channel (e.g. email, text alert, etc.).
With that said, a major deterrent of developing a crisis communication plan is the time investment. To help facilitate planning and development, we’ve created a checklist of highly recommended assets. When it comes time to develop a cyber crisis plan or update existing plans with cyber-related responses, the overview, elements needed, and potential time investment will be clear.
- List of potential cyber security events. This could include hacks, ransomware or network outages.
- Members of the crisis communications team. These are the individuals within the company and outside the organization who will be vetting the initial breach and then managing the response to relevant parties.
- Response steps. The list of response steps provides the crisis team with an agreed upon overview and direction of what will take place during a cyber event. It is also helpful to include suggested owners with each of the response steps in advance of the crisis situation so all members of the crisis have shared expectations of who will be owning what and when it will happen.
- Crisis evaluation framework. This framework could be a matrix or table and outline the different scenarios paid with their associated response. This framework will help the communications team determine the proper communication response based on the IT expert’s security diagnosis.
- Draft templates. Developing draft messages that will be shared by the company in the event of a cyber event will save time when in a crisis situation. The team can then refer to these templates and make the necessary updates to address the relevant information and parties impacted by the event.
- Communication channels. Depending on the severity of a cyber event, communication channels might be limited. Here it will be important to outline the channels available to the company and understand who those channels reach.
- Media response. This section is particularly helpful in a communications plan, as it provides the team with guidance on when to be proactive vs. reactive when sharing updates about the cyber event with media – and other external audiences.
- Guidelines for spokespeople. These best practices and tips go hand in hand with the media response and will help the company spokesperson navigate the response as successfully as possible.
After a crisis plan is developed, it is wise to participate in a mock crisis response, where the crisis communications team can walk through the developed plan and test out the flow of the response steps. This practice will also provide the spokespeople with media training and best practices for navigating cyber crisis related questions that journalists would surely ask.
For other helpful crisis communication resources, check out the following articles:
- Communicating in a Crisis
- Guidelines for Spokespeople When Handling a Crisis
- The Power of a Blog in a Crisis
- Components of a Successful Crisis Plan
- What Not to Do in Crisis Communication
Three industry experts were brought together by Business Wire for a virtual panel to discuss the media and public relations trends they expected to see in 2021. I’ve highlighted the most impactful recommendations and trends to look out for below.
Utilize Employees as Influencers
In the past there has been a hesitancy to trust employees as spokespeople for their organization on social media. Executives tended to avoid utilizing and promoting voices within the company for fear of what an employee could say. That being said, the pandemic has demonstrated to organizations that employees can be trusted outside of the office.
Employees’ voices can provide credibility and validation for an organization’s actions. They’re credible as an expert because of their work experience and knowledge of the organization from the inside. In the next year, you can expect organizations to prioritize celebrating and promoting the voices of employees, customers and suppliers on social media channels.
Expand Hybrid Event Options
Some of the biggest global events were still successful in 2020 after converting to become 100% virtual. We can expect in-person events to resume again during 2021, but with improvements informed by the successes of the past year’s virtual events.
First, we can expect online options for most events in the next year. Virtual options are cheaper for guests to access and can expand the event’s reach to new audiences otherwise unable to attend in person. Second, events may play pre-recorded lectures to enable the speaker to answer questions live in a chatbox while the video plays.
Implement Disinformation Playbooks
The last few years have taught us that no one is safe from disinformation. False or fabricated stories in the media are becoming commonplace. In 2021, we expect organizations to create disinformation playbooks to allow for quick responses if they should be the target of such an attack.
Preparing a plan in advance is critical to informing the best strategy for combating disinformation. As we saw in 2020, sometimes addressing disinformation does little to address the concerns of those who believe it, but instead only fans the flames.
Prioritize Action Over Words
In response to social unrest and calls for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workplace, public relations professionals are prioritizing the importance of a company’s actions over their words. Business Wire panelist Stuart Bruce spoke to this idea; “You can’t communicate your way out of something you have behaved yourself into.” In 2021, customers, employees and stakeholders will be looking for actions. Tired of apology fatigue, people are interested in learning how organizations will step back and address issues beyond a composed apology.
Of course, actions take time. Sincere apologies must be paired with a commitment to change. For example, following the protests for racial justice after the killing of George Floyd, brands like PepsiCo and Starbucks made statements condemning racism and subsequently backed them up by implementing changes within their organizations. PepsiCo committed to remove the racist caricature of Aunt Jemima from their syrup bottles and Starbucks allowed employees to wear Black Lives Matter shirts, hats and pins.
I hope that, after reviewing these trends, organizations can proactively prepare for the coming year. Change is necessary and inevitable. The best we can do is to stay informed and prepare for it.