With the disparate conditions that surround and influence Asia-Pacific coporate communications, summarising the state of crisis communications in this region in a single article is a daunting task.
Even venerable brands with huge budgets and decades of history that manage to be totally attuned to generation Y and Z have still tripped over the communications challenges.
There have been some cases of well-managed crisis communications in the region. The Legoland theme park in Johor, Malaysia, for instance, did well when faced with a crisis surrounding child kidnap rumours circulating on social media which turned out to be a hoax. Air Asia’s Tony Fernandes also understood the power of outreach using Twitter during the harrowing days of the Indonesia Air Flight QZ8501 disaster. Thousands stayed glued to his updates which remained poignant even with the constraint of 140 characters.
We were very fortunate in our situation at the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon 2015, when the weather deities ran amuck and scuttled plans for a widely-anticipated race with 35,000 runners flying in from various parts of the world by blanketing the city in trans-boundary smog.
A race for goodwill
We’ll be upfront about the secret recipe for managing the communications in our situation. Every single person on the team understood that we needed to be swift when addressing issues and embrace social media as a tool, our most important channel to reach the domestic diehard and at that time, arriving international runners.
Our client, the organiser and the title sponsor, understood very well that, in a region that boasts more than a billion smart phone users, many of them switched on to social media 24/7, social media was the fastest way to get word out about that the race being cancelled as the smog reached health-threatening levels.
“It took tremendous trust and goodwill from everyone involved in the race to achieve the festive atmosphere.”
After the cancellation was announced, it took tremendous trust and goodwill from everyone involved in the race to achieve the festive atmosphere on site. That spirit had been built over the years through relationships with the media, sporting community as well as the thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter and website posts in the months leading up to the event.
Personalisation played a key role rather than the often-favoured copy-and-paste messaging that is the convenient, if over-automated model seen on a lot on social media communities in the region. The entire team took time to understand the audience sentiment and position. The approach led us to highly-relatable messages that the community (both online and offline) valued. They appreciated our efforts and responded in like spirit.
5 key take-aways about communicating during a crisis
- Put people as priority. The local professionals on the team are doing their doing what they do best, they have in-depth understanding of the community that has been built over months and years of personal interactions. The tone and manner of the crisis communications must resonate with where the bulk of your community is located. It is important that managers from headquarters who are distant from the crisis support decisions of the locals and trust them to respond appropriately as the situation develops.
- Listening. This includes listening to existing relationships/stakeholders and conducting social media listening. It can be stressful or even painful to go through the outpouring of emotion from concerned communities and on social media. Many comments will be harsh, even unfairly so. Our team spent hours providing personalised replies to comments rather than cutting off critics or taking the safe route of pasting replies from template sheets of headquarters-approved messages. It made a tremendously positive difference to the way the public responded.
- Get the conversation off the main discussion board. This is something that managers in the hoteling business have mastered. When an upset guest is making a scene in the middle of the lobby, invite them to discuss quietly and with dignity, at the side. The same principle applies with social media outbursts. It isn’t downplaying or dishonest but gives the required attention and can lead to good insight.
- Trust goes both ways. Working with the community means being transparent and honest in understanding the impact of the situation on them. Communications won’t always change their minds, but continuous engagement and being able to dialogue is often appreciated in the often top down communications style in Asia. Giving space to voice and creating opportunities to provide input at non-crisis times can really pay off when trouble erupts.
- Experience and simulations are crucial. Being a smart personal user of social media is an entirely different thing from having to manage crisis that involves social media. As our team had experience managing other communications challenges, they understood the importance of merging experience from past crisis that happened on traditional and mainstream media to create a cohesive response that spanned the various communications channels. Social and mainstream media teams must work in tandem rather than be operating separately since there is very little turnaround time.
There have been some cases of well-managed crisis communications in the region. The Legoland theme park in Johor, Malaysia, for instance, did well when faced with a crisis surrounding child kidnap rumours circulating on social media which turned out to be a hoax. Air Asia’s Tony Fernandes also understood the power of outreach using Twitter during the harrowing days of the Indonesia Air Flight QZ8501 disaster. Thousands stayed glued to his updates which remained poignant even with the constraint of 140 characters.
We were very fortunate in our situation at the Standard Chartered Kuala Lumpur Marathon 2015, when the weather deities ran amuck and scuttled plans for a widely-anticipated race with 35,000 runners flying in from various parts of the world by blanketing the city in trans-boundary smog.
A race for goodwill
We’ll be upfront about the secret recipe for managing the communications in our situation. Every single person on the team understood that we needed to be swift when addressing issues and embrace social media as a tool, our most important channel to reach the domestic diehard and at that time, arriving international runners.
Our client, the organiser and the title sponsor, understood very well that, in a region that boasts more than a billion smart phone users, many of them switched on to social media 24/7, social media was the fastest way to get word out about that the race being cancelled as the smog reached health-threatening levels.
“It took tremendous trust and goodwill from everyone involved in the race to achieve the festive atmosphere.”
After the cancellation was announced, it took tremendous trust and goodwill from everyone involved in the race to achieve the festive atmosphere on site. That spirit had been built over the years through relationships with the media, sporting community as well as the thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter and website posts in the months leading up to the event.
Personalisation played a key role rather than the often-favoured copy-and-paste messaging that is the convenient, if over-automated model seen on a lot on social media communities in the region. The entire team took time to understand the audience sentiment and position. The approach led us to highly-relatable messages that the community (both online and offline) valued. They appreciated our efforts and responded in like spirit.
5 key take-aways about communicating during a crisis
- Put people as priority. The local professionals on the team are doing their doing what they do best, they have in-depth understanding of the community that has been built over months and years of personal interactions. The tone and manner of the crisis communications must resonate with where the bulk of your community is located. It is important that managers from headquarters who are distant from the crisis support decisions of the locals and trust them to respond appropriately as the situation develops.
- Listening. This includes listening to existing relationships/stakeholders and conducting social media listening. It can be stressful or even painful to go through the outpouring of emotion from concerned communities and on social media. Many comments will be harsh, even unfairly so. Our team spent hours providing personalised replies to comments rather than cutting off critics or taking the safe route of pasting replies from template sheets of headquarters-approved messages. It made a tremendously positive difference to the way the public responded.
- Get the conversation off the main discussion board. This is something that managers in the hoteling business have mastered. When an upset guest is making a scene in the middle of the lobby, invite them to discuss quietly and with dignity, at the side. The same principle applies with social media outbursts. It isn’t downplaying or dishonest but gives the required attention and can lead to good insight.
- Trust goes both ways. Working with the community means being transparent and honest in understanding the impact of the situation on them. Communications won’t always change their minds, but continuous engagement and being able to dialogue is often appreciated in the often top down communications style in Asia. Giving space to voice and creating opportunities to provide input at non-crisis times can really pay off when trouble erupts.
- Experience and simulations are crucial. Being a smart personal user of social media is an entirely different thing from having to manage crisis that involves social media. As our team had experience managing other communications challenges, they understood the importance of merging experience from past crisis that happened on traditional and mainstream media to create a cohesive response that spanned the various communications channels. Social and mainstream media teams must work in tandem rather than be operating separately since there is very little turnaround time.
