Author: Julia Kendrick
Whether it’s a PR crisis, a PR nightmare or a PR catastrophe – the bottom line is that you don’t want you, or your brand to find yourselves in one. These events can cause serious and irreversible brand damage and in today’s world of rapid-responses, social media and screenshots – they can happen at any moment. A recent example was the recent liquidation of the SK:N and Harley Medical business – a difficult situation which left employees, patients and suppliers in the lurch out of the blue – which could have been mitigated by prudent communications planning and prepared responses to limit the fallout. In the aesthetics, beauty and wellness industries, a PR crisis can occur even if you’re a diligent business owner and have an established a position amongst your competitors. For example, the prevalence of social media means that one tweet, comment or post can cause a severe backlash or fuel a fire in seconds.
Being prepped to effectively manage a PR crisis can be the difference between your brand recovering and surviving or fading and failing completely. In this article, I share some essential advice and tips to help brands proactively navigate a potential PR crisis.
Crisis PR in the aesthetics, beauty and wellness industry
Brands, clinics and individuals are held to very high standards in our industry and any significant event or issue which threatens brand reputation, customer trust or business operations can result in a PR crisis. A PR disaster may stem from:
- product or service integrity
- ethical practices
- customer service issues
- employment or HR
- social media
- environmental impact
When a PR crisis arises, a brand must carefully navigate and communicate their way through it to maintain and restore trust and brand authenticity.
How a PR crisis can damage your brand
As a brand owner, you’ve worked hard to build a positive brand reputation and claim your position in the aesthetics, beauty and wellness industry. Unfortunately, this hard work is instantly under threat when a PR crisis looms and it can damage your brand in the following ways:
- Tarnish a good brand reputation
- Cause mistrust and lose credibility
- Decline sales and profit
- Increase costs in areas such as PR, Marketing, Legal, HR, Customer Care etc. to fix or limit damage
- Lose contracts with suppliers, distributors, partners etc.
- Destabilise business operations
What is a Crisis PR Strategy?
How a brand responds, manages and adapts during a crisis will significantly impact its brand image and reputation. A Crisis PR strategy is a brand’s go-to toolkit or plan-of-action to help them proactively handle a potential crisis. It will set out a list of procedures to follow to prevent or lessen the damage caused by an unexpected event or issue.
8 Tips to help navigate a PR crisis
No brand or business in the aesthetics, beauty and wellness industry is protected from a PR crisis – they can land when you least expect and at less than a moment’s notice. Below are 8 basic ways your brand can proactively prepare itself:
- Create a Crisis Management Team: Appoint and set up a capable team who can be trusted to identify and manage a PR crisis. Include external partners such as your PR agency who will likely be a key ally for your team throughout. As soon as anybody in this team spots a crisis looming on the horizon, it’s time to get together and put a plan into action.
- Nominate a spokesperson: Choose somebody who you completely trust to speak on your brand’s behalf. They may be in leadership role within your business or at your trusted PR agency. Previous experience of public speaking will be beneficial – your brand will need a strong communicator to deliver key messages in a credible and professional manner.
- Prepare a plan: A preliminary action plan stating “who-does-what-and-when” will prove to be an essential tool for your Crisis Management Team should they ever need it. It doesn’t need to be super-detailed, a list of bullet points is a great starting point and will help organise your team’s ideas.
- Pre-write draft responses: First consider where your brand will need to publish a message; this will likely include a press release for the media, a post for social media (all channels and content types), emails to customers and partners, and an article on your blog or website. Next pre-draft a message for each channel and the PR crises scenarios you are preparing for. Again, detail is not essential just loosely cover the key points you may need to discuss. Here are a few pointers for your messages:
- If you’ve made a mistake, own up and say sorry. The truth will likely out anyway and it’s best to get ahead and reshape the commentary in a direction that’s better for your brand
- Explain why an issue or event has happened and what you are doing to work on it
- Show concern and compassion for any people involved
- Gather all information: Gather and collate as much information as possible when a PR crisis hits. This should be organised into a timeline of events so that your Crisis Management Team can identify the root cause of the issue or event and adapt your preliminary action plan accordingly. Fact finding is an essential step in managing any PR crisis so be as due diligent and meticulous as possible.
- Respond quickly and accurately: Timing is crucial for brands during a PR crisis. By addressing a crisis right there and then you have the opportunity to mitigate it, particularly if it is a result of speculation and misinformation. A “no comment” response or silence is not recommended – it is defensive and will do your reputation no favours! If you don’t have the answers yet, explain that you are still in the process of assessing the whole situation and you will provide a statement as soon as you have all the facts at hand. To maintain trust with your brand there is nothing better than being transparent. Be aware that more than one update may be needed and plan a sequence of messages to be published in a timely manner.
- Monitor your reputation on and off-line: Continuous brand monitoring is crucial during any PR crisis. At this stage you may not need to invest in brand monitoring software but do be aware that this option exists should you need it. In the meantime, monitor Google Alerts for your brand to stay on top of your brand reputation and monitor this diligently during a PR crisis.
- Learn and evolve: This is possibly the most important step in any PR crisis. Every brand that has suffered and survived a PR crisis must learn and adapt to push their business forwards. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes by making improvements and adjustments within your business as necessary. Never repeat the same mistake or be involved in a similar PR crisis again – your stakeholders and customers will likely forgive and forget once but that is all.
Invest in a winning PR strategy
At Kendrick PR, our expert team consistently create winning formulas of strategic and tactical support for premium beauty aesthetics, beauty, and wellness brands with clear ambitions for growth. Founded in 2015 by award-winning communications expert Julia Kendrick, Kendrick PR are a passionate and experienced agency who thrive on creating tangible success for every client. Please browse our PR services portfolio or do get in touch to book a complimentary discovery call with me!