Communication Tools

Corporate crises touch many audiences. When a corporate employee passed out during the height of the terrorist scare, the word “anthrax” threatened to panic a mass audience. When a European bank was targeted for abusive tax shelters and called before Congress, the audience it needed to reach included regulators, investors, and elected officials.

Corporate crises require precision strategies crafted for each audience. When a health care company was confronted by a whistle-blower claiming criminal records falsification, its audience included health care industry trade publications, but it also included the company’s own employees – while the CEO had to fashion his own, altogether separate answers for an inquisitive corporate board.

Corporate crises threaten market share, they jeopardize internal staffs, they result in prison terms, and, to be sure, they arouse the keen interest of plaintiffs’ lawyers and NGO’s. Corporate crises may be the most important ongoing story of the day, and corporate crises require war room mentalities ready, at the drop of a reporter’s dime, to swing into action on as many fronts as there are audiences.