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crisis

How to find a much-needed, crisis-proof activist voice

July 15, 2020 by cpdigital

Remember 2020 blew in? With its false change-of-decade hope and flashiness. In March, 2020 the SaaS 90-day return policy jokes and memes were rife.

The ‘global toilet paper crisis of 2020’ rolled out (We like our puns around here. We deal with darkness with humour). In the form of ‘the Corona’. (Cue the day drinking jokes).

There was a mass exodus from traditional workspaces to online working.

Suddenly virtual work was an everybody thing.

Those that had strong online community or engagement found it drop. 

Those that didn’t, and scraped together a smattering of the stuff, heard crickets.

The clutter pile was deep and hard to wade through. Even for the experts.

Then May 2020 rolled around. A sad and shocking kind of viral video seized the world’s attention. The police killing of George Floyd.

In a collective gasp of horror the world unified in an ‘enough is enough,’ anti-racism movement that we believe is going to actually change things.

One Tuesday in June. And over a 100 days of working virtually showed all of us  marketers and communicators one thing:

Who had the smart, emotionally intelligent marketing flywheels, and who had the sad boring, tone deaf sales funnels. As unprepared marketing teams tried hard to shove more MQLs (minimum qualified leads) down a structure people DID NOT  want to go down. Just so they (the marketers) could keep their jobs.

It’s hard work. Who really can blame those marketers for barely having a minute to look up and see what’s going on around them in the world.

What many marketers missed was this:

Times have changed a whole lot. News is swift, and judgment is swifter.

And it’s no longer possible to say ‘oh, that conversation has nothing to do with me’ and stay silent. The reason? The information we possess at the end of our fingertips, a higher state of collective consciousness, and the genuine possibility of change.

The week of Blackout Tuesday, in honour of the BLM movement, we saw one influencer voice after another get it wrong, and then come up with self indulgent apologies, which really did not serve their audiences. 

Everyone from mayors and politicians to influencers to business voices and large brands messed up their “crisis messaging.” Some were being really quiet; conspicuously quiet for the times. Or they were taking a misstep and then being defensive about walking it back. 

As we were asked over and over for crisis and reputation management advice, we started to think, ‘what is the compass for getting it right, no matter what the crisis at hand?’

Answer: build an authentic activist voice.

Not just your company.

You. Whether employee or shareholder.

And if you lack one as a company or it hasn’t quite filtered down from the PPTs to the people out there talking on behalf of the brand, read on.

First, find the hill you would die on

Then prepare yourself for some uncomfortable vulnerability. Because you can’t be courageous (and this shit takes courage, friends!) without also being vulnerable. 

Sound counter intuitive? It’s not. By putting yourself out there, you’re opening yourself up to all kinds of potential abuse! 😆Sounds fun, right?? No, but seriously. 

V💥U💥L💥N💥E💥R💥A💥B💥I💥L💥I💥T💥Y 💥

Refer to Brenee Brown’s body of work on the subject. It’s immense. And necessary reading/listening in our opinion.

You’re about to get deeply authentic about a subject that means A LOT to the world (and hopefully you, if you choose to say something). You’re about to say “Hey, look, folks. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I believe in. Here’s what I think is broken. And here’s how I think I can fix it!” 

And yes ‘I’ is powerful in this case. It often needs to be one individual, even in large organizations. One ‘subject matter specialist’ on the hill you picked. (There could be multiple hills, of course. But start your work, or improvement on one hill. Got it? Good.)

Most of all HAVE SOME BALLS. The last thing you want to do is be afraid to shake the joint up. But DON’T BE A DICK (see the difference?)

Find your sweet spot on the scale of kind to clever. We often see people set things up cleverly but they lose their audience because they are not being empathetic to the realness of the people to whom they are speaking.

Right, so, take what you know – what you’re best at and one thousand percent believe in – and drill down into that. Start mapping out how you’ll break through the clutter. And the noise. Because folks it is MOFO noisy out there! 

Then use your body of work as proof. 

Second, recenter to your values

While highly cliched, the idea of values is the reason why brands like Nike keeps coming up repeatedly in the news. They really, really, REALLY subscribe to a set of values. (At least in their communication.)

Values are not in a statement hidden in a dusty powerpoint somewhere. Hopefully your values are  something your brand, however big or small, is living and breathing in the way you operate.

That spirit of values becomes the radar that guides you as you decide your brand’s alignment with the state of the world.

And if your company’s values have nothing beyond commercial words, then rethink that. Now’s the time. People align with brands that believe in the things they believe in. 

And ask what your brand voice will be, post pandemic? 

Are you brave and on the frontlines? 

Are you reflective and thoughtful?

Brand voice is one of those jargon’y terms, an often overused, clichéd  sounding idea. 

All it’s about is this: Determine stand for, and how you will articulate that, across all your communication channels.

And it doesn’t have to be absolute. 

Things evolve.

So finding that brand voice is worth spending time on.

Third, make it more than ad-hoc; make it infrastructure

If you step out and make a few statements, write a few posts, make a few videos on a crisis related subject, I’m just going to say it, nobody will care. Worse you’ll get caught up in the ‘cancel culture’ and people will troll or take you out of their consideration set.

Given that the time to say nothing is over in this dystopian, post-apocalyptic world, when you say something, you want it to have context, be ‘on-brand’ and have follow through.

For us, that’s been our podcast. The fact that that piece of infrastructure existed allowed us the ability to use something with an established base. We looked at our strategy, took a few calls about how this ‘new normal’ is going nowhere, and invited in voices to comment on various aspects of life in 2020, relating it to our key messaging for ourselves.

For other people, it’s been a video series, or a Live social property, a webinar variant of some type.

Just not one-offs.

Because one-offs are reactive.

And everything about building an activist is proactive.

Peace

Susan

Filed Under: Blog, Crisis Communication Resources Tagged With: activist, activist voice, brand voice, crisis, crisis communication, crisis marketing, evolution, proactivity, values, voice, vulnerability

Think Before You Speak: Crisis communication 101

June 5, 2020 by cpdigital

So. Here we are again, taking the wind out of our own sails re: our celebrations around hitting the FIFTY EPISODE milestone with the 4 AM Report.

And rightly so!!

With the protests against police brutality happening in the U.S., and around the world, we put the brakes on that shizz, and instead want to talk about crisis communications.

Earlier in the week, we published what we jokingly called “Episode 49.5” – well, today it’s the 4 AM Report episode 49 and three-quarters! 😂

Our point? We’ll get to episode 50, eventually. But now is NOT the time for back patting!

And YO! All you brands out there should be on this same page.

This episode started from a place of having seen one influencer voice after another get it WRONG. And then come up with self-indulgent apologies – which do not serve their audiences.

Talk Crap, then Walk it Back = WRONG

Everyone from mayors, politicians, influencers, business voices, sports stars (we see you Drew Brees, walking your crap-talk back), and large brands have walked on shaky ground this past week.

They’re either being conspicuously quiet or they’re taking a miss-step and then trying to be defensive.

And the mea culpa apologies don’t cut it.

Look, we’re all human, we all put our foot in our mouths from time to time – but b*tch, please. 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week and a half, you shouldn’t have to be walking your talk back – you shouldn’t be talking that crap in the first place!

So, that prompted a discussion that raised a question:

Is there a CRISIS 101 FRAMEWORK?

Crisis Communications 101

We decided if to create our own – and share it with you, because people are hurting, and the last thing anyone of us wants to do is add weight to that pain.

We broke it down into 5 areas. And here’s just a bit of what we talked about.

Acknowledge What’s Happening

“Acknowledge the problem, whatever crisis we’re in – acknowledge that something’s different or out of sync or atypical, if you will. The opposite of acknowledging is if you just continued with your promotions and your planned automation, as usual, there’s no acknowledging already, people are going to say, or see, that you’re in a totally different dimension than everyone else right now. And already, that’s not a good thing. A whole bunch of digital people out there, the big voices, have started picking on people who are doing that already: “Listen, tone deaf human, at the very least shut down your automation funnel!”

Be Agile – Like, “Switch Gears in an Hour” Agile!

“Nobody wants you to be fixing the world’s problems. They just want to know that you’re not that one unaware dumb ass in the room, right? And be humble about it – you don’t have to publish a blog post and tell everyone about it. You just have to reach out to a few people who are likely to resonate with that messaging. Make a few calls, write a private email to your client list to test [your messaging] out. Then call on your team! Once you trigger that crisis button, everyone

needs to get as agile as possible. What is true today is changing tomorrow. Reaching out to your team, making sure you’re all on the same page. And again, even with what you’re putting on social, if you have an expert [in tone on staff] to rely on check if you’re not sure. The number of large names that we’ve been seeing, who are getting into trouble, people are calling them out because of tone, or they’ve had to make a public apology. This is the time to reach out to your teams, guys.”

Hope for the Best, But PLAN for the Worst!

“It’s called scenario planning. It’s the idea of ‘If This, Then That.’ Work out the three possible things that could happen if I stay silent? Or, what happens if I make a specific statement that applies to me? What happens if I say something that is against the grain? Like really work it out, spend time on it – people pay good dollars for this kind of thing? And really focus on the worst case! Once you are prepared for the worst case, things go a little bit easier, right? Especially because in the climate we’re now we want the brands that we like and follow and are aligned with, we want to align ourselves with brands that do take stances on things that we value. We want to know that where I buy whatever is adamantly against what’s happening right now in the United States and is as outraged as everyone else. But again, it’s how that’s communicated. And when you do take a stance, you are opening yourself up for a lot of praise, but also potentially a shit ton of criticism and backlash. And that just the price you got to pay, to play!”

The only way to seriously prevent long lasting damage from “taking a stand” is to really play out those scenarios. Don’t wing it. And don’t ‘speak’ before you think.

There’s so much more on this subject in the episode – catch the whole thing here. I hope you’ll have a listen.

And while you’re there – subscribe to us – you won’t regret it!

Filed Under: Blog, Crisis Communication Resources Tagged With: communication, crisis, crisis communication, crisis marketing

Episode #49.75 – Crisis Communication 101

June 3, 2020 by cpdigital

EXTRA EXTRA 🗞️🗞️🗞️

This episode started from a place of having seen one influencer voice after another, get it WRONG. And then come up with self indulgent apologies 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ which was not really serving their audiences. 

Everyone from mayors and politicians, to influencers, business voices and large brands have walked on shaky ground this past week.

They’re either being really quiet, conspicuously quiet and this time, or they’re taking a mis-step and then trying to be defensive. 

Nobody gives a shit! 💩💩💩

If you said it, deal with the consequences. And if you didn’t, deal with those consequences too….

So, that prompted a discussion that raised a question:

Is there a CRISIS 101 FRAMEWORK?

We broke it down into a few areas. 

  1. Obviously stop, take that pause, reflect and consider. 

  2. Re messaging! And we break that down for you a little bit in this episode; we talk about this a lot on our podcast. And it’s funny that in the last three months, we’ve discussed re messaging more times than we care to remember! Crisis times!!!!

  3. Then we’ll talk about the value of a team, you’ve obviously got yourself surrounded by some type of team if you have a voice in this moment. So really, where to use them, how to use them and what to think about. 

  4. And then next, we’ll go to backup plans. Shits going to go wrong. When it does, how do you default? I mean, a lot can be inferred about brands, from how they deal with things when it’s not going to plan. 

  5. And then finally, this is highly cliched, but the idea of values and the reason why Nike keeps coming up repeatedly in the news is because they really, really, really subscribe to a set of values. 

We are in the middle of a crisis WITHIN a crisis. The words that you put out on your channels is your voice. You’re sharing what you or your brand feels and says. This can’t be an impromptu, situation of ‘just dash something off’. You’ve got to really think and look to your team for advice. Sweat, the messaging you’re putting out.

So yeah, don’t wing it.

Listen to the full episode for details.

If our podcast masterclass is of interest, read on and the sign up is here: https://cp.digital/podcastmasterclass/ 

Not every medium is for everyone. We do try to cover a broad range at c+p digital. And if you’re listening to us now, you know that we have this podcast.One of the things we’re doing is helping others curious about exploring podcasting and communicating and getting their voice out via that method of communication. 

We are planning a podcast three day kind of boot camp/masterclass. It is next week June 11 -13 (Wednesday, Thursday, Friday). It’s free. And it’s an hour each day. It’s not a lot of time and we promise it’ll be enjoyable, but it’ll focus on branding and messaging, and the technical side of how to do it as well. It’s for those of you who either already have a podcast and you’re struggling with the messaging around it in this moment, or you’ve been thinking for a while about what the next infrastructure piece is.

But even beyond the podcast, have a think about what medium suits you.

We often hear things like, ‘I don’t like to go on video and I feel like I should be going on video.’ 

Don’t let the FOMO get to you. 

If you’re not a video person, ignore it. 

If you’re not a podcast person, ignore it. 

Find your medium. 

Everybody has one. 

If that means just posting an image with a commentary on an image then more power to you just do it with your voice! 

Filed Under: Crisis Communication Podcasts, Podcasts Tagged With: communications, crisis, marketing

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