AKCG - PR Counselors

On day one of this year’s PRSA Crisis Communication Master Class, speaker Adam Tiourine asked each one of us to answer that question in front of nearly 50 strangers. If you haven’t faced one yet, you’re lucky, sure, but you shouldn’t let that luck fool you or your colleagues in the C-suite into believing you don’t need to prepare. It's much harder to restore trust in your organization once it has been broken, so every action must be made with the intention of maintaining it in the first place.”​ Effective crisis preparedness and response is a competitive advantage. Don’t allow your key stakeholders to wrongly believe that you don’t care because your organization is scrambling to write the perfect statement.

This new landscape condition is partly the media's fault; fewer reporters in newsrooms can spend the appropriate time to develop a story and they now have to feed the ever-crushing, never-satisfied hunger of an online audience. We train spokespersons on a set of techniques to break the conversational nature of an exchange with a reporter and, ultimately, to be selfish. Effective spokespersons deliver just what they want, and they know how to navigate challenging questions, keep a dialogue trained on where they want to go It is poetry in action when you see a spokesperson seamlessly bridge from answer to answer providing just the information they want the audience (remember – the audience, not the reporter) to absorb.

The #AKCGteam is thrilled to break in our brand-new office space at 121 West High Street in Glassboro, N. J. Located just outside the heart of Philadelphia, the new location provides the space needed to accommodate AKCG's growing team. During this past year, both Chris and AKCG SVP and COO, Mike Gross, APR, worked closely alongside the architects to design a modern agency workplace that supports AKCG's collaborative team culture and strengthens productivity. The open floor plan promotes collaboration among our team members, and our work will continue to improve as a result. Collectively, the #AKCGteam looks forward to sharing the new space with clients, friends and members of the extended AKCG family.

Perhaps we’re managing an internal matter that is considered private, or perhaps we’re managing a highly sensitive public situation with complicated legal implications. Empathy acknowledges human impact and your commitment to addressing the issue – regardless of the issue – and signals how seriously you take this situation. While you may not want to provide details about the matter at hand, you should be able to outline the policies, procedures or protocols that govern your decision making. Your job is not to answer every question directly and fully; effective crisis communication is about managing the reputational challenge threatening your organization.