Preparing for the Inevitable: Modern Communications Crisis

Ever wondered when crisis communications became a recognized discipline? This riveting exploration traces the evolution of crisis management from its origins following a deadly 1942 Boston nightclub fire to today's sophisticated frameworks addressing everything from cyberattacks to brand reputation disasters.

Matt Charles, crisis communications expert with a doctorate in public affairs, joins host Peter Woolfolk to walk us through how pioneers like Stephen Fink, Ian Mitroff, and Timothy Coombs established the theoretical foundations that organizations now rely on to navigate their darkest hours. These frameworks transformed crisis management from reactive scrambling to strategic preparation, emphasizing the crucial difference between merely responding and effectively managing threats.

What separates successful crisis navigation from reputation-damaging failures? Charles reveals the essential components every crisis plan must include: dedicated teams, comprehensive scenario planning, regular simulations, and the "devil's advocate approach" that prepares for seemingly unlikely but potentially devastating events. "Nothing is too crazy. Nothing is too far off the table," Charles emphasizes, drawing from his frontline experience handling the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

The conversation tackles modern challenges like ransomware attacks and AI-generated disinformation while examining instructive case studies including Cracker Barrel's logo redesign disaster and Red Lobster's successful handling of its "unlimited shrimp" promotion crisis. Through these examples, Charles demonstrates how transparency, authenticity, and appropriate empathy can transform potential disasters into reputation-strengthening opportunities.

Charles also introduces his new book examining nine crisis types throughout history—from conflict and disease to technological failures—revealing how leadership decisions repeatedly determine crisis outcomes. Whether you're a PR professional, organizational leader, or simply fascinated by how institutions navigate their greatest challenges, this episode provides invaluable insights into preparing for when things inevitably go wrong.

Information on NEW podcast website.

Chapters

• 1:08 The History of Crisis Management
• 3:54 Evolution of Crisis Communications Theory
• 6:52 Essential Components of Crisis Plans
• 11:21 Handling Cyber Attacks and Ransomware
• 13:52 AI in Crisis Prevention
• 17:03 Brand Crisis Case Studies
• 22:46 Nine Types of Crisis Explored
• 25:23 Finding the Right Crisis Expert

Transcript

Announcer: 0:37

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review podcast, a worldwide award-winning podcast. Our experienced guests cover a wealth of current useful topics, including adapting to technological advancements, digital and AI matters, misinformation, media relations, fake news, crisis communications and much, much more. And, of course, your feedback is always welcome. Now here is your host and producer, Peter Woolfolk.

Peter Woolfolk: 1:13

Now a question for my audience. Did you know that the mention of crisis theory was not articulated until 1944? Following a fire study that examined the emotional fallout from the deadliest nightclub fire in US history there, 492 people perished and 166 were injured in Boston on Thanksgiving weekend 1942. Were injured in Boston on Thanksgiving weekend, 1942. Now the psychological effects of crisis was also the inspiration for crisis management theory. Our guest today will guide us through the growth and development of communications.

Peter Woolfolk: 1:52

Crisis planning as we know it today. Now, crisis management did not exist as a formal discipline until the late 20th century, after a rash of environmental, organizational and reputational disasters hit the nightly news, including the Tylenol poisoning and Chernobyl crisis. Early crisis management scholars recognized the immediate need for a framework to predict, plan, respond to and evaluate crisis events with the goal of mitigating or stopping them through prevention efforts. A jumping-off point was Lindemann's crisis intervention work and others such as the 1973 Apologia Theory. Crisis management pioneers Stephen Fink, ian Mitroff and Timothy Combs laid the foundation for the theory and practice. Fink also wrote his 1986 book Crisis Management Planning for the Inevitable. So joining me today from Charlottesville, virginia, is Matt Charles. He has a doctorate in public affairs. He's an APR. He's also president of Matt Charles Public Relations and Strategy to talk about crisis communications. Matt, welcome to the podcast.

Matt Charles: 3:02

Hey, Peter, thanks for having me.

Peter Woolfolk: 3:05

So, look, let's really talk about let's say right now, for lack of a better way of putting it the evolution of crisis communications and how we benefit from it today, and other things that you think we should know about that component of public relations.

Matt Charles: 3:23

Yeah well, I mean, as we know, people have been dealing with crises throughout our entire history. I mean it's the entire premise for the book Crisis of Global History through Kendall Hunt, my publisher, that just published this past month, where people have always been dealing with it, no matter the type be it. You know, an illness which we've seen again, like recently with COVID, it was, I mean, a bubonic plague in the past wars throughout our history, natural disasters such as you know, ancient earthquakes and earthquakes like now, tsunamis, that sort of thing. But it wasn't until pretty much the 1980s where crisis management itself became a formal discipline. Basically, what happened Peter is with you know just crisis after crisis, you know, the nightly news, proliferation of news media, you know, basically corporations were like, hey, we need to do something to address this. So we really need a framework.

Matt Charles: 4:20

And fortunately there were a couple of theorists that came up with frameworks to address crises, the first of which was Stephen Fink, you know well known as the dean of crisis management. He definitely earned that moniker with his 1986 book Crisis Management Planning for the Inevitable. He pretty much came up with a life cycle for crises and these stages were the prodromal, which is really identifying a crisis and it could be a smoldering crisis, one that is lurking ready to burst out. And then, from there is the acute stage, which is when the crisis is occurring and you need to put your crisis plan into action. And then, from there is the acute stage, which is when the crisis is occurring and you need to put your crisis plan into action. And then, following that, is the chronic stage, which, within that, you can have the initial recovery, still addressing it of course. Then, finally, the resolution stage, where, hey, things have calmed down a bit, we have some time to take a breath, but also we need to evaluate what we've done well and what we could do better.

Matt Charles: 5:17

I'm just going to say, after him, ian Mitroff was the next person who really built off of Fink's work and then, in 94, had his five phases of crisis management, and the thing he introduced was the fact of like, hey, we're not going to be able to plan, we're not going to be able to prevent every single crisis, so we need to proactively plan for these, okay. And then, following that, I think in Mitrov we have Timothy Coombs, who a lot of folks within crisis management know have read his work situational crisis communication theory, which is widely applied, you know, across all disciplines, and that's the strength of his theory. But it also really focuses on stakeholder behavior. It's really understanding what stakeholders want to see from the organizations, corporations, folks like that, how they want them to behave, what's important to them and the messaging that they would like to receive.

Peter Woolfolk: 6:11

Let's focus on some of the things like actual, basically the importance, if you will, and ingredients or components, if you will, of a good, solid crisis communications plan. What are the things that are necessary to have an effective one?

Matt Charles: 6:25

So, first of all, you need to have your crisis team in place, and this could be organizations, call them different things emergency preparedness teams, crisis management teams, folks you're going to bring together when things go badly. You need to have those laid out. And then also, you need to identify all the crises, and these could be, you know, anything from taking into account a SWOT analysis to figure out, hey, what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of organization, what could really hit us hard A bit of a risk management perspective from that as well. Also, going through your environmental scanning just to kind of see, hey, what are some threats that could hit us, that are hitting some of our peers, and really planning for any and everything. And one thing I like to utilize is the devil's advocate approach, which is basically planning for literally anything and everything. Nothing is too crazy. Nothing is too crazy. Nothing is too far off the table.

Matt Charles: 7:19

I mean, personally, you know like crises I've worked never would have thought there would have been. You know a white supremacist Nazi uprising in Charlottesville. You know the University of Virginia in 2017 and the greater Charlottesville area with the Unite the Right rally. But hey, that happens, you know. So you've got to have plans in place for literally anything and everything. And with that, a way to go about that would be to bring components from your entire organization together, be it the chief executive's office, finance, hr, communications, security and safety, and just say, hey, here are some pressure points that could hit us, identifying those, having a holistic conversation and then planning across the entire organization.

Matt Charles: 7:58

And once you have the things identified, then you can proactively plan and then figure out what the impact analysis would be, putting maybe a little more emphasis and resources behind crises that could hit your organization more directly.

Matt Charles: 8:13

For instance, if you're a restaurant, it could be a food poisoning. Planning for that and then having the response laid out like, hey, how are we going to go about actually attacking this crisis should something happen? And that's going to be having your holding statements in place, your ops team ready to be deployed and knowing what their jobs are. And then, finally, you're going to go through your evaluation stage, which is, first of all, you're going to do your crisis monitoring as things are starting to die down, check out, maybe, what the chatter is on social media, within the media, with your stakeholders and, again, really hitting across all stakeholder groups, be it internal with employees, external, with media, community members, and then from that after that, really evaluating what went well, what didn't, what could we do better, and typically with that, you're going to bring together your team within, hopefully within 24 to 48 hours, to have what's called an after action report or a hot wash report out on that.

Peter Woolfolk: 9:08

You know, one of the other things I was thinking about as you're going through that is that, oh, who's involved? One of those things I think is that not only every department, but every person who this might impact. It might be a different, it might be a shipping department, or it might be some custodians or something along those lines, but everybody who might have something that could go wrong should be at the table in the planning to make sure all the bases are covered.

Matt Charles: 9:34

Yeah, I mean literally anybody, and everybody should have a voice. You know, maybe they can't be in that initial planning meeting, but you know their bosses or supervisors or those that represent them can bring those to the table. And then, of course, you know, like every six months to a year, I recommend bringing everybody together to run through an actual crisis scenario. If you have the resources, do it twice a year.

Matt Charles: 9:57

One can be man-made events, such as corporate malfeasance, active shooter, things like that. The other could be natural, such as a tornado, earthquake, act of God, event, and with this you could actually have everybody that could be impacted and have them run through scenarios on how to, or run through the scenario on how they're gonna address it in real time, and you set basically the moderator will set it up hey, here's what's going on, and then you could have updates throughout to like what's going on with the crisis, to really replicate what it would be in that environment, so that folks can really get a feel for it. And then, of course, again, you bring everybody back together at the end to go through that hot wash.

Peter Woolfolk: 10:39

One of the things that has happened recently and maybe this applies to larger organizations is that some folks will get in there and hold your computers hostage. Maybe banks or other organizations and hospitals, I think, is another one where they have all their computer information hostage until they pay some ransom. So have you run across any of those sort of things and, first of all, how do you protect yourself against that and, if so, what sort of action should you take should that happen to you?

Matt Charles: 11:10

Yeah, so personally I've had a couple of cyber crisis clients work those and with that you're going to be working with law enforcement, be it state, federal, sometimes international, to try to locate the culprit. You know you really, if you can, you don't want to pay the ransom because that just opens it up and that's just giving into extortion while you're tracking people down and through that. There's basically going to be two components. One is the management side of really going through with your team and your law enforcement partners of figuring out who did it and with that, also protecting all other data to make things are shut down. Then you have your communications component, where you're communicating out to your stakeholders, those that were affected if there was any personally identifiable information released, steps that are going to take place to address that, solutions, remediations, and you could also I recommend having an FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions page for folks to refer to, and also some sort of website or some sort of page on your website. That's a repository of information with updates on that, and that's actually one of the nine types of crises that I identify in the book, one being technological, which we're seeing this a lot now.

Matt Charles: 12:26

You bring it up with cybercrime. As far as ransoms, we also see it with elections, disinformation, misinformation campaigns. But yeah, this isn't a new thing, peter. I mean, even in the late 1850s there was the Hawthorne incident, which was basically a solar flare that wrecked telegraph communications across a major part, a wide part of the world over. What would have been basically the Labor Day weekend September 1st or 3rd they had.

Matt Charles: 12:56

Labor Day back then just shutting down global comms because folks weren't aware at that point that a solar flare could do that. But that was a technological crisis at the time.

Peter Woolfolk: 13:06

It comes to mind now simply because everybody is talking about AI. How can AI be used in, let's say, maybe it's the prevention of crisis communication? Or, better still, how can it be used in whatever format is used, to help prevent and minimize crisis communication?

Matt Charles: 13:25

Well, I think first, if you're going to use it, you have to make sure that it's speaking the same language you are and kind of speaking along the same lines algorithmically, and you're going to use that, you can use it generatively to help formulate ideas, try to come up with scenarios really like quickly maybe like write out some sort of crisis communication or statement or with the facts that you have.

Matt Charles: 13:47

It really can help you real time in a lot of the tactical aspects, but you're still going to need the human side to think strategically. But you could ideate through the AI as well, that you have whichever tools you choose to use. Now, on the flip side of that, we also need to realize that AI can be weaponized.

Matt Charles: 14:01

On the other end, you need to be able to prepare for that and say, hey, what are some scenarios that could hit us Specifically? It's a lot more seeing it more through the disinformation and misinformation and just things being just splattered out there across the Internet ether with just basically like false claims that are going to basically incite people, turn folks against one another and yeah, it's just, it's a whole mess at that point, because I forget the exact title of now, but there are a lot of programs that you can use online to find out people's sentiment about you, what are they thinking about you, or if there are things being said that could lead to some sort of crisis.

Peter Woolfolk: 14:46

Would you recommend having those I forget the names of those particular programs to have so that you're up to speed on what's being said about you, regardless of what it is positive or negative?

Matt Charles: 14:57

Yeah, I mean there's some social media consultancies that basically have their proprietary software, that you can work with them. But you know you could also just do I find that the good old Google search and I've had conversations with folks about this if you really need something in real time, that's really going to help you figure out what's going on.

Matt Charles: 15:15

And really, but it's also this is where you could use AI would be to figure out what those keywords are going to be to help generate the best geo information for you. Make sure at least you're asking the right questions.

Peter Woolfolk: 15:27

Now, one of the things we always advise people to do is to back up their work. Is that a prevention process as well? Because I don't know whether you do it on an hourly basis or weekly, or however that's done, but would you recommend that being done as a way to salvage anything that might come down as a hostage situation?

Matt Charles: 15:48

Yeah, I mean you always want to be. I mean, of course, now everything's on the cloud, it could be secured that way. Just make sure whatever company you're working with is reputable and they have their plan in place should something happen, because at that point I mean they would probably be the ones that are liable. Make sure you're insured, but also just really keep an eye on anything you do back up, even if you put it on a thumb drive. You know, don't use public access computers, don't use your friend's computer, be careful, don't leave your cell phone out. Make sure you're using encrypted software. Yeah, you'd really just want to play it safe and not be reckless at all, because it could definitely come back to haunt you. So, basically, nothing that's going to let out any information that you don't want out there.

Peter Woolfolk: 16:33

Let's talk about several things that have happened in public relations. An example of crisis communications and how two organizations did it in a different way One, the Cracker Barrel incident, and then, of course, red Lobster. Let's talk about. Let's say maybe, uh, let's take cracker barrel first, because that's the latest one, that, uh, they made some changes and uh, uh to uh, both the logo and so forth, and that didn't go over very well, no.

Matt Charles: 17:02

So, peter, these, these would fall into the category um that I call organizational reputational crises, and yeah, so you have two different versions, even though both look like they were going the wrong way at first, but Red Lobster salvaged theirs, cracker Barrel. What happened with them was and look, I wasn't part of their discovery process or any sort of stakeholder research. So I don't know. But you know, be it their agency of record or the group themselves, you really need to figure out what the stakeholder, what it is they want.

Matt Charles: 17:33

And again, this goes back to Coombs' situational crisis communication theory. Had they understood that the Cracker Barrel brand, as is resonated so well or so much with most stakeholders, probably wouldn't have touched it or, if they had, maybe would have kept the basic tenets of it. It may have beta tested it and put it out there. So, basically, you just want to make sure you're not using your own ideas, echo chamber, and not really working with those that are really buying to the brand, because, as we see with stakeholders, it's become where they have a lot of power. I mean, we saw how many hundreds of millions of dollars, or tens of billions of dollars like, lost in market share within one day from that, um, that brand change.

Matt Charles: 18:16

And like you and I mean you're in nashville, I'm in charlottesville. I grew up in south side virginia. Plenty of cracker barrels around. I think you and I both could have predicted that that was not going to go well and that's just. You know, just guessing um because folks, really you know what you have identified with the founder sitting barrel.

Peter Woolfolk: 18:33

Well, and that's what I was about to say, there were two components of it. You know, the logo seemed to be the one that caught all the hell. Maybe updating the interior a little bit. Folks didn't want to squeamish about that, but you know, leaving that guy up leaning on the barrel is where wheels came off. Oh, that's what put it over the edge.

Matt Charles: 18:51

Yeah, that was. I mean you're watching in real time. I mean that definitely was, there would be a comment. I mean people feel very strongly about that.

Peter Woolfolk: 18:59

And then the other side, red Lobster. You know, of course, that unlimited shrimp thing. Well, obviously the customers love that very well, but the outcome wasn't what the company expected, and then how they went about correcting it.

Matt Charles: 19:11

Yeah. So you know they basically understand operationally, hey, supply chain issue. And then they basically embrace their brand and their people. You know, going back in the summer and have done very well, you know Really just sticking with who they are as a brand and as Red Lobster, not really changing things too much. And similarly, you know, like when you really embrace and acknowledge what happened I mean, we've seen it again with KFC you know where the supply chain issue in the UK, where not enough chicken. How can KFC not have enough chicken? I think that's a pretty fair question to ask when you go there, right?

Peter Woolfolk: 19:47

Right.

Matt Charles: 19:50

And they were like hey, supply chain, we messed up. I think there was also a major wreck bringing, like, you know, chicken is. They have like hours where they couldn't get it in through this major thoroughfare and next thing, you know, Colonel Sanders is helming the socials, bringing that brand character back in, being self-deferential, poking fun of themselves. You have the old, you know, instead of KFC, FCK, like no chicken you know, really just poking fun of themselves and like, did a really great job and, I would argue, reputationally came out stronger for it.

Peter Woolfolk: 20:23

Well, that's what I was going to say about Red Lobster. Yes, they acknowledged that they screwed up, you know, made a mistake and laughed at themselves and, oops, you know, sorry about that. You know we won't have that again. How could we have been so foolish not to anticipate that sort of thing? And, you know, folks like the fact that, yeah, we acknowledged the mistake and we're going to try to do better the next time.

Matt Charles: 20:40

Exactly, and I mean like again, with crisis, you know, management, crisis specifically, crisis communication that is the magic formula Stating what happened, being truthful about it and as open as possible, transparent as possible, and then the solutions that you're to take to rectify it, and then providing updates as you go along. And if it's something really tragic, you know, like a death, or just in general, if somebody you know is really hurt or a group is really hurt or having a hard time, like really infusing everything in empathy.

Peter Woolfolk: 21:09

One of the things that you've alluded to and sort of mentioned briefly in our conversation today is, before we leave, I want you to just give our listeners an overview of the book that you've recently published.

Matt Charles: 21:20

Yeah, so the framework itself we've discussed a lot during our initial conversation here of basically going about how to work through crises and the frameworks, basically, that have been identified and the ones that I use. The book itself. What differentiates it, Peter, is it's an historical narrative and going back and examining nine different crisis types throughout history. Each crisis type is a chapter. Most of them are starting in prehistoric times and how people dealt with them. Did it go right? Did it go wrong? If it went wrong, like why? And just we see over and over again like a lot of this is mistakes in leadership.

Matt Charles: 22:01

And it really does come down, boil down to leadership and if people are willing to make decisions that might be tough at the time, that are for the greater good, or if they want to back off because they're too worried about their own legacy, like that's another issue. But the nine different types the first one is conflict or crisis. The second is disease. Then we go into economic, environmental, famine, natural, organizational, reputational, social, justice and technological, and I differentiate between environmental and natural. Natural would be purely act of God, you know, again, an earthquake Whereas environmental could be something such as, you know, carbon in the atmosphere that may cause a weather event, but basically it's something that we've caused as humans, as people. And also, interestingly enough, like analyzing a lot of these crises, if one happens, it easily puts you at risk, much higher risk for another type of crisis jumping in. So, for example, if there is a war, I mean you're definitely at risk for famine and we've seen that, you know, like World War, I is a great example, with millions of people starving to death.

Matt Charles: 23:06

Interestingly enough, talking about leadership, herbert Hoover, who many would maybe state maybe one of our least popular presidents ever because of his performance Depression era, leading into that, before FDR took over.

Matt Charles: 23:21

Prior to that role he was head of helping basically make sure there were supply chains, supply lines of food into Europe, so people were fed.

Matt Charles: 23:31

So this guy you know, from an organizational supply chain perspective he's a former engineering mining executive Great job, like you know, one of the greatest humanitarians of all time, widely known from that angle as far as like helping prevent famine. But then once you get the political leadership, that's a whole different ballgame where you're leaning on other people to get things done and you can't micromanage as much and you might not totally understand the entire concept or philosophy of what's going on. Economically it's much more of a micro versus the even though the hunger of helping solve that was more of a macro deal, at least micro. You could figure out and chart supply lines and supply chains. And even coming out of his presidency, like after World War II and during it, he was brought back in to help make sure folks in Europe had enough food, because people did realize how good he was at that. And it just came down to types of leadership that he had and situations he was in. One he performed awesome, the other not so much.

Peter Woolfolk: 24:28

Okay, just one more thing before we go, because when it comes to public relations and you look at people's websites and stuff, a lot of people say that we have crisis communications experience.

Matt Charles: 24:52

Give me your idea of what people should look for from someone who advocates that they are a good crisis communication specialist for PR, say, of the Public Relations Society of America, gold Star, and that one you have to go through a little bit more training. So definitely the experience plays in there. But I would say experience knowing the sector is huge. But you know, if somebody has really good or very solid crisis management crisis communication experience in one sector, that is also pretty easily transferable to other sectors if it's a similar type of problem. But yeah, experience is a big thing.

Peter Woolfolk: 25:26

Well, Matt, once again you've come through and you've delivered some solid information that our listeners can really, really appreciate, and I want to thank you again for being a guest on the Public Relations Review podcast.

Matt Charles: 25:36

Hey Peter, I appreciate it. It's good to be back on man. We haven't done this in a few years.

Peter Woolfolk: 25:39

Well, I'll certainly keep you in mind because right now, believe it or not, the podcast has grown to such a point now that I'm actually getting swamped with requests for people to come on the podcast. I have to read it very carefully to find out one, what is it they want to talk about? And two, have we done it before? And three, what experiences do I have in it? So it's growing as I'm managing.

Matt Charles: 26:03

Yeah, it was great working with you back in 2019 when you first started. It's growing as I'm managing. Yeah, it was great working with you back in 2019 when you first started. It's great to see how this is growing.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:09

Well, I appreciate it and, once again, thank you so much for joining us today.

Matt Charles: 26:13

Hey, thanks Peter, I appreciate it.

Announcer: 26:18

This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for joining us.