The Definitive Guide to Communicating in Any Crisis “When facing an already difficult crisis, the last thing a company needs is to make it worse through its own communications – or lack thereof. As one who has lived through a number of [business] crises and served as an independent investigator of the crises of others, I consider Steven Fink’s book to be an excellent guide to avoiding collecting scar tissue of your own by learning from the scar tissue painfully collected by others.”—Norman R. Augustine, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lockheed Martin There are few guarantees in business today. Unfortunately, one of them is the inevitability of a crisis having a potentially major effect on your business and your reputation. When your company finds itself in the midst of a crisis, the ripple effects can disrupt lives and business for the foreseeable future if public opinion is not properly shaped and managed. Skillfully managing the perception of the crisis determines the difference between a company’s life or death. Because in the pitched battle between perception and reality, perception always wins. Fortunately, there is a solution. Crisis communications and crisis management legend Steven Fink gives you everything you need to prepare for the inevitable—whether it’s in the form of human error, industrial accidents, criminal behavior, or natural disasters. In this groundbreaking guide, Fink provides a complete toolkit for ensuring smooth communications and lasting business success through any crisis. Crisis Communications offers proactive and preventive methods for preempting potential crises. The book reveals proven strategies for recognizing and averting damaging crisis communications issues before it’s too late. The book also offers ways to deal with mainstream and social media, use them to your advantage, and neutralize and turn around a hostile media environment Steven Fink uses his decades of expertise and experience in crisis communications to help you: UNDERSTAND AND MANAGE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PUBLIC PERCEPTION AND REALITY CHOOSE THE BEST SPOKESPERSON FOR THE CRISIS PROTECT YOUR BRAND AND REPUTATION THROUGH CRISES LARGE AND SMALL MAKE WISE, VIGILANT, AND DEFENSIBLE DECISIONS UNDER EXTREME CRISIS-INDUCED STRESS TELL THE TRUTH NO MATTER HOW TEMPTING IT MAY BE TO MISLEAD USE SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY TO THE PUBLIC ABOUT A CRISIS The explosion of the Internet and, especially, social media, has added a new layer to the business leader’s skill set: the ability to handle a crisis quickly and professionally within moments of its occurrence. Livelihoods depend upon it. With in-depth case studies of Toyota, BP, and Penn State, Crisis Communications provides everything you need to successfully lead your company through today’s rocky landscape of business—where crises large and small loom around every corner, and the lives of businesses and management teams hang in the balance. PRAISE FOR STEVEN FINK’S CRISIS MANAGEMENT “Every major executive in America ought to read at least one book on crisis management. In this way, he or she might be better prepared to deal with the disasters striking organizations at an ever-increasing rate ... The question is: ‘Is Steven Fink’s book one that busy executives ought to read?’ The answer is a resounding yes.”—LOS ANGELES TIMES, FRONT PAGE SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Crisis communication is high stakes work. For communications managers and PR professionals, it's likely to be the most stressful time of their working life. Crisis Communication Strategies is a must-have handbook which covers the whole span of the crisis from preparing and laying the groundwork before it occurs, during the incident, and the aftermath, including the move to recovery. It guides readers through each phase, providing details of what to consider, what should be done, and tips and checklists for improved responses. Crisis Communication Strategies equips readers to deal with any kind of crisis - whether caused by internal error, customer action, natural disasters, terrorism or political upheaval. Supported by case studies and examples from responses to events including the 2011 Norway terror attacks, the 2018 British Airways data breach, the 2017 Pepsi advert and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina New Orleans floods, the book explores the role of leadership in a crisis and developing a crisis communication response that has people at the heart of it. Crisis Communication Strategies is the essential guide for PR and communication professionals to protecting your company and building true, long-term resilience.

Designed to give students and public relations professionals the knowledge and skills they need to become successful crisis managers, Applied Crisis Communication and Crisis Management: Cases and Exercises by W. Timothy Coombs, includes a wide range of cases that explore crisis communication and management in action using a practical approach. In the first two chapters, the author introduces key theories and principles in crisis communication, which students apply by analyzing 17 cases drawn from recent headlines. Cases are explored from pre-crisis, mid-crisis, and post-crisis communication perspectives, and include a range of predominant crisis scenarios from product recalls to lawsuits to environmental disasters.

Equip your students with a strong understanding of the essential role that communicators play in moments of crisis and the tools they need to conduct ethically sound crisis management.

Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding provides an integrated approach to crisis communication that spans the entire crisis management process and crosses various disciplines. Drawing on firsthand experience in crisis management, author W. Timothy Coombs introduces a three-staged approach to crisis management—pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis. A truly integrative and comprehensive text, this book explains how crisis management can prevent or reduce the threats of a crisis, providing guidelines for how best to act and react in an emergency situation. The Fifth Edition includes new coverage of social media, social networking sites, and terrorist threats and includes expanded discussions of internal crisis communication and intuition in decision making. Visit the author′s blog at https://coombscrisiscommunication.wordpress.com.

This timely book explores crises as an inevitable part of modern society, which causes ramifications not only for organisations, but also for a diverse range of stakeholders. Addressing the need for organisations to be guided by a stakeholder-oriented approach throughout all phases of the crisis communication process, the author draws upon various business disciplines and covers the management of issues, risk, reputation and relationships. Covering all stages of crisis communication, from pre-crisis to post-crisis, stakeholder engagement is analysed through a series of case studies, with a particular focus on the role of social media. Scholars of corporate communications and business strategy will find this new book undoubtedly useful, and it will be of particular interest to those involved in crisis communication and management.

In this fully updated Second Edition, three of today’s most respected crisis/risk communication scholars provide the latest theory, practice, and innovative approaches for handling crisis. This acclaimed book presents the discourse of renewal as a theory to manage crises effectively. The book provides 15 in-depth case studies that highlight successes and failures in dealing with core issues of crisis leadership, managing uncertainty, communicating effectively, understanding risk, promoting communication ethics, enabling organizational learning, and producing renewing responses to crisis. Unlike other crisis communication texts, this book answers the question, “What now?” and explains how organizations can and should emerge from crisis.