Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers: Crisis Communications
by David Nilsen
Welcome to our Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series! As a food and beverage journalist, I have communicated with thousands of breweries, distilleries, restaurants, chocolate makers, and other businesses, and I’ve seen ones who maximize their relationships with media members and outlets, and ones who are leaving opportunities on the table. Additionally, my wife and business partner, Melinda Guerra, is a freelance PR professional helping brands tell their stories and connect with media. In this series, the two of us will be sharing what we’ve learned over our careers to help craft chocolate companies of any size identify their stories, communicate them to media members and outlets, gain new customers, and keep the ones you have curious.
In part 1 of this series, we talked about why media relations is so important no matter the size of your chocolate business, and why you need to have a strategy for it.
In part 2, we talked about identifying stories and creating a story list.
In part 3, we looked at how to begin building a media list, and how to specifically build a list of industry-specific media.
In part 4, we talked about press releases: What they are, when to send them, to whom to send them, what to include, and—just as importantly—the inverse of all those: when not to send them, what not to include, etc.
In part 5, we talked about fostering ongoing relationship with members of the media, and how to communicate story ideas going forward.
In this post, we’re going to talk briefly about a less pleasant aspect of media relations: crisis communications.
Crisis communications is a type of interaction with the media that comes up for reasons you wish didn't. Basically, this is when a story is being reported that you would've preferred hadn't come up. It could be because of a product recall. It could be because somebody in your company has been accused of bad behavior. It could be because of some kind of legal dispute. It could be something outside of your control that your business just happens to be connected to, such as an issue related to your landlord, or a neighboring business. Whatever the case, it’s a situation you’d prefer wasn’t happening, but you have some choices on how you move forward.
It’s important to clarify at the outset that crisis communications is a robust field, and this post is insufficient to adequately prepare you if a problem arises. The purpose of this post is to get you thinking about how to prepare for it. Also, nothing in this post constitutes legal advice.
Here are some tips from Melinda to keep in mind if the media reaches out to you in a crisis:
Respond. Because whatever the media is contacting you about in a crisis is something bad, something that in an ideal world wasn't happening, a gut reaction people can have is to just ignore it and hope it'll go away. That's not how this works. The story is going
to get published regardless of whether or not you engage with it. One of the worst things you can do is just to ignore it. You’re better off providing your side of the story and helping to control the narrative.Know who’s listening/reading. If this is happening over email (and I do try to suggest that folks keep things that way so that you have a clear record of what's getting communicated) make sure—and this is so basic, but when you're in the middle of a crisis, it can be hard to remember—that you're aware of who is receiving an email, especially if you're hitting Reply All. Sometimes if media is reaching out to you, they're reaching out to five different people in your organization. If you hit Reply All, that is going not just to all of the other people in your organization, but also to any media members on that thread. Those might be conversations you’re having before responding to the media, so pay attention to those details.
Reduce points of contact. Try to reduce the number of people in your company who are talking to the media. Sometimes you’ll have a few different senior employees who could potentially be the person responding. Part of why I get things immediately off of the chain that includes the media and start a new thread of internal communications is to figure out who is going to be communicating with the media, and who is going to be saying what. Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's legal counsel, sometimes it’s a senior employee, but we are working carefully on the exact language. It's vital that you don't have multiple people handling communications separately because if they say something even slightly contradictory, it could create a problem in perception, even if it's not actually a problem. When a journalist is going through communications, grabbing information and putting this into a story, that appearance of a contradiction can be pretty troubling. Identify one person who's responsible for taking what we all agree on to the media.
Don’t guess on facts. Don't just guess at them, and don’t make things up. Sometimes in an effort to deal with something quickly, people will work off of recollections. I tell people to go back to your receipts, look at any reports or outlines you have and the history that impacts this, because you will be fact-checked and you don't want to make it look like you’re misleading media and, by extension, the public, even if that was by accident. You come off looking pretty bad if you're caught saying something untrue, even if it's unintentional.
Be aware of your quotes. Watch what you're saying and how you're saying it. What comes up in crisis communications, much like in in legal communications (and oftentimes legal reps and PR reps for a company will work hand in hand together in crafting a response), is the importance of being very aware of what you're saying and how you're saying it, because somebody can read something uncharitably. Guard that language and make sure you have somebody who is a skilled professional communicator take a look at that before you put information out.
Seek help. We talked much earlier in this series about when it makes sense to hire outside PR help for your company. If you're in a crisis situation or think that you might be, that's a great time to consider hiring PR help, because we know that language and how to respond to the media. We understand trigger language and phrasing that might seem fine to you but is going to come across wrong to the public. Not every company needs professional help with media relations and publicity, but it’s a good idea for any company to have a relationship in place with PR if you think you might need help with crisis comms at some point.
I took this photo of a honey locust thorn a few years ago on a trail behind our home. It’s actually a lovely tree, but it felt appropriate to this - ahem - thorny topic.
I want to talk briefly about a commonly misunderstood term in media communications, which comes up sometimes in movies and TV shows: On or off the record.
Let’s talk about what being on or off the record means and doesn’t mean:
What it means. “Going off the record,” or just requesting something be off the record, is when you're communicating with the media and you’re letting them know that something you're about to tell them is to stay between you, and they don't have permission to share this in their reporting in whatever format that's going to take. The purpose of going off the record is to provide context, opinion, or other supporting information you think is going to help them better understand the story from our perspective, but you don't want the details of what you’re telling them shared. Conversely, being on the record means anything you tell that media member might be included in their reporting. Honoring this agreement is a matter of honor and ethics for journalists, but it’s not a legally binding agreement.
Doesn’t have anything to do with being recorded. Being on or off the record is not dependent upon being actually recorded in some kind of electronic sense. In other words, you're not on the record just because you're being recorded and off the record if you aren't. If an interview is being recorded, it is appropriate to expect the recording to stop if you both agree a section is off the record, but just because you aren’t being recorded doesn’t mean you’re “off the record”. What you say to the media is fair game to be reported unless you both agree otherwise, regardless of electronic recording.
You’re on the record unless agreed otherwise. Going off the record requires both parties to agree, and honoring that agreement is a matter of honor and ethics for journalists. But it does require mutual consent. If you just say, "I want this off the record," and they say, "Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm not giving you that," you have the option to not tell them anything further there, but they aren’t forced to go off the record just because you said the magic words. The important thing to understand when you are talking to a media member in this kind of crisis communications scenario is that you are on the record unless you have both agreed to be off the record. It doesn't matter that you think you're having a private conversation, and it doesn't matter later that you say, "Oh, I thought we were speaking in confidence." If you guys didn't agree to be off the record, you're on the record at all times. You need to assume that.
Why do journalists agree to it. There can be a variety of reasons, but usually because it will provide them context or background information to better understand a story. Depending on the type of story, it can also point their investigation or general reporting in a new direction, even if they can’t directly use it and attribute it to a source. It can be easier to work from having a fact and needing to find a way to support it than needing to find out the fact in the first place.
Investigative reporting is a critical part of having a free press and freedom of speech, but it's not always the prettiest thing in the world, especially if you’re the one being investigated. The status of being on or off the record can be very important during a crisis, but for most of the earned media coverage we've been talking about throughout this series, it's not as relevant. The type of stories we're encouraging you to solicit and promote and work with media members and outlets on are pervasively positive, so the conversations aren’t nearly as fraught.
We’ve spent this entire series explaining that working with the media doesn’t need to be scary, but crisis comms is one situation in which you need to be very careful to avoid making a bad situation worse. To be honest, I think a lot of the anxiety or reluctance people feel in working with media comes from confusing investigative journalism with the kind of storytelling I do professionally—the kind this series has been pushing you to seek out.
In my work, I don't do investigative reporting. I'm writing the earned media coverage we've talked about in this series. Going off the record will come up sometimes in interviews if somebody just wants to give me a little bit of background information so I understand something better, but they don't want it included in my story. I always honor that. I want sources to feel safe talking with me.
We don't want to dwell on this negative side of this too much when we've spent this entire series talking about how great it is to have a relationship with the media. These are just some things to keep in mind and hopefully they don't come up for you, but it's always best to be prepared. The media is not out to get you.
Media Relations for Craft Chocolate Makers series
Podcast Episodes
Why You Need a Media Plan
Identifying Your Company’s Stories
How to Build and Manage a Media List
How to Write and Send a Press Release
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
How to Get Started, and Common Pitfalls
Blog Posts
Why You Need a Media Plan
How to Identify Your Stories
How to Build a Media List
Industry and Unexpected Outlets for Your Media List
How to Write and Send a Press Release
How to Maintain Media Relationships and Communicate New Stories
Crisis Communications (you’re reading it!)
Common Pitfalls in Media Relations
Easy Steps for Getting Started