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We're closely watching proceedings of the Royal Commission into misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. Our focus is on the reputations of the people and brands in the spotlight, and on trust in the whole industry.
In light of the Royal Commission we've recently completed a review of some 20 perceptual crises in the finance sector that our senior team have personally worked on over the last two decades. From this analysis we've identified nine communication strategies used by leadership teams to slow, halt or reverse a perceptual crisis.
We're sharing these in short videos. In this episode, we will discuss strategy #3, Multiple Stories.
Video Transcript
Carden Calder: Hi, I'm Carden Calder. I'm the Founder and Managing Director of BlueChip Communication and I'm here with Jacqui Maddock, who's our Head of Media.
Jacqui Maddock: Today we want to discuss the next strategy in our nine strategies to fight a perceptual crisis or issues management problem in financial services. What we talk to you about today is the concept of multiple stories and multiple story telling. So Carden let's start with the basics.
Carden Calder: Yep.
Jacqui Maddock: You've had 20 years in-house in corporate affairs and obviously as the founder of BlueChip. What does "multiple stories" mean, and what is it?
Carden Calder: It's simply about telling a broader range of stories than the one that might be the centre of the issue or the crisis. Almost every business has a range of good news. Not just good news, but actually interesting facts, business as usual stories that their stakeholders want to hear, and sometimes in a crisis, all the resources from a PR, marketing communication point of view understandably get diverted to managing the issue. And in actual fact, that can cause a broader range of stakeholders to feel like you've kind of abandoned them in the middle of this issue that you're dealing with. And it's the wrong thing to do. If you take a broader view, you would be looking at the business as usual, good news or statements of fact type of stories that your stakeholders want to hear from you in order to keep having a productive relationship.
Jacqui Maddock: Absolutely. So instead of focusing on what's on the front page of the paper, realising that you're talking to multiple audiences, on multiple fronts, about multiple stories. And as you say, there are usually good stories to tell to multiple audiences.
So some of the tactics involved, what would you describe them as?
Carden Calder: Look, the ideal situation is that you've actually built a reservoir of goodwill as an organisation, because you have multiple channels, speaking to multiple audiences with multiple stories over time. But even if you find yourself in the middle of a perceptual crisis and you haven't done that, it's worth taking a step back, taking a broad view, developing your peripheral vision a little bit, and thinking about all of the stakeholders involved in the issue and beyond the issue, and about the kinds of information they want to hear from you, and the kind of engagement they want from you. Holding your perhaps instant reactivity, which is “Don't even think about that”, but actually getting back and saying, "Well, what else should we be talking about to these people?" And as you do that, you build confidence in your position as an organisation that yes, you're managing the issue but you haven't dropped the bundle on the rest of the business or the rest of your stakeholder relationships.
Jacqui Maddock: And I'm guessing it can be often difficult for communications people, when they're fighting something on the front page of the paper, not to drop everything or to hold their nerve.
Carden Calder: Yeah, right, yeah.
Jacqui Maddock: What would your advice be to them in this sort of situation?
Carden Calder: Look, they're often really high-stress situations. If the Chairman and the Board are exceedingly concerned about a very substantial criticism of the company, and the CEO and the leadership team and the corporate affairs and marketing folk are all absorbed in managing that, that's understandable. But there's also a role there to take a beat, step back, and actually look broadly at the situation and really do a thorough stakeholder analysis, really think quite deeply about all the commercial relationships the organisation has, and look very deliberately and specifically for opportunities to tell good news stories or to tell a deeper story about the business to stakeholders.
Plenty of stakeholders want those relationships to continue and can compartmentalize in their own minds, the difference between an issue that you might managing at a corporate level, and the reality of their day-to-day experience with you. For example, if we talk about an insurance company, let's say you're a general insurer, and I have worked in this situation where, in many organisations, where say you've got a corporate scandal going on, but the BAU of what you do, the business-as-usual, is that you are out there paying claims and helping people recover from loss. Then those stories need to keep getting told in the midst of a crisis, and arguably you need to dial them up.
Jacqui Maddock: Ramp them up.
Carden Calder: So that people get a balanced view of who you are as a corporate, who you are as a leadership team and the real good that you're doing. It's too easy for everything to be focused on the negative. Media is about negative. So media by definition reports bad news. Our job now as self-publishing organisations is to tell a more balanced story than that, which typically you can do through your own channels, and you can also do it in some sectors of media, even when a crisis is running.
Jacqui Maddock: Absolutely.
Jacqui Maddock: Okay, so I should quickly ask you, can you tell me about times when you've seen this done particularly well? I won't ask you to name any names, but in those instances, has your advice been followed and has it been effective?
Carden Calder: Our advice is not always followed for all sorts of reasons, but I think one of the most successful examples of this that we've executed as a firm, was an organisation that we entered after they'd had a really large scandal. Scandal as in a media scandal, with some allegations of substantial business issues underneath that. But the very deliberate strategy that we used was to say, "Look, as part of your reputation rebuild, there are lots of stories inside the business which many of your stakeholders, clients, advisers, trade media, personal finance media, would like to hear more about. And if we start to tell those stories, we will balance up the public narrative about your brand. Which is exactly what happened.
Jacqui Maddock: Great. All right, so I guess we'll run through the critical success factors for the multiple stories strategy. So what would you name them as?
Carden Calder: Right, so I think it's to be aware that you have control over your own destiny and to plan accordingly. So, develop your peripheral vision. Think deeply about the real interest that stakeholders have in your organisation and what it's doing. Secondly, go looking for stories to tell and people to tell them. Most organisations have exceptional talent inside them and interesting people who can tell a story about the business. And third, think really carefully about your distribution strategy. If you want to be portrayed accurately as an organisation, then take control of your reputation, take control of the channels, and make sure that you have multiple stories to multiple audiences through multiple channels.
Jacqui Maddock: Great, thanks so much for listening today, and if you like what you heard, please subscribe at bluechipcommunication.com.au. And I think there's a box on the side of the website…
Carden Calder: We always stumble over this website URL callout. But yes, as you're watching us, there should be somewhere near the right hand side of this screen, a form where you can put in your email address. You can have these video blogs delivered direct to your inbox. They're all very short. Or you can get the written version sent to inbox, or subscribe to our other content. Thanks for listening.
Jacqui Maddock: Thank you.
