The Salt Sessions

Transcript

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0:11
Welcome back to the SALT sessions.

0:12
I've not recorded the podcast in a long time, so it's great to be back.

0:16
Today we're going to be discussing the recent headlines surrounding the Beckham family crisis.

0:23
And for those of you who haven't heard, Brooklyn, their eldest son, announced on Instagram in an 800 word statement that he would not be reconciling with his family and cited his many reasons for that.

0:38
And I just want to add, this isn't about celebrity gossip.

0:41
So this episode is about brand and reputation and how it affects businesses.

0:48
David and Victoria Beckham, they clearly operate as brands and globally, there are many founder led businesses thinking Mark Zuckerberg from Meta, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, where a founder's reputation can impact the brand.

1:05
So today I'm pleased that Amanda Coleman has joined me.

1:09
Amanda's an expert in crisis communications, so welcome, Amanda.

1:14
Oh, thank you for inviting me along.

1:17
Pleasure.

1:18
Do you want to introduce yourself to our listeners?

1:21
Yeah, certainly.

1:22
So it's good to be I and I'm not a celebrity PR specialist at all.

1:27
I work in crisis communication.

1:29
I've got a background in emergency communication, working with the police and dealing with some quite high level kind of crisis situations and but also lots of reputational things as well.

1:39
So for the last six years I work been working for myself running a crisis communication consultancy and dealing with all aspects of crisis and I've written in three books on crisis issues and reputation management.

1:52
Thank you.

1:53
Amanda, in your opinion, do you think that founder led brands are more vulnerable to reputational damage?

2:00
So for instance, Elon Musk, we all hear about his political activities and behaviour.

2:06
Do you think he has harmed his brands, X and Tesla?

2:11
Well,

2:12
There's a long, long conversation just about Elon Musk having been reading some of the books written about Musk and Tesla.

2:21
I think the first thing, I suppose it's really sad that you've got a family regardless of the brands that are publicly having this kind of breakdown in terms of the Beckhams.

2:29
But with any business, if you are very high profile as the chief executive, then there's going to be a huge risk of whatever you say or do.

2:41
You don't even have to be high profile.

2:43
So I'm thinking of like the astronomer incident at the Coldplay concert.

2:46
Nobody had heard the chief exec.

2:48
People probably didn't know who he was.

2:50
But whatever you do does reflect on that business.

2:53
So I think it affects everybody.

2:56
But when you are very high profile and you think of people like Branson, as you said, Musk, and lots of other people who are very, very connected to a business or a brand, the stakes are a lot higher.

3:10
Definitely, unlike the Beckhams, most of us aren't in the public eye, thank goodness.

3:16
So can you provide some examples of crisis communications that small businesses might relate to, for instance?

3:23
Negative reviews?

3:24
Yeah.

3:25
I mean, it's, it's a very difficult world.

3:27
And I say this because everything I do keeps them evolving and changing.

3:32
So things like you've got, as you said, bad reviews, but not just bad reviews, those fake reviews.

3:36
So you've got a whole kind of range of different problems.

3:40
You've got staffing problems, whistleblowers, you've got people going publicly saying things.

3:46
You've potentially got your accounts, anything about your data that will be poured over because everybody can use artificial intelligence now to analyse things within an NTH degree.

3:59
So really everything that a business does can be put under the spotlight very, very quickly.

4:05
You've also got things like cyber attacks and continued this continued announcements that really every business has got to be on the game ready for a cyber attack with the way the world is.

4:20
So, and then the other kind of issue that I see now is also non kind of crises and non-problems.

4:28
So where people are creating a problem using artificial intelligence, it could be mocking up that there's a fire or that there's something happened somewhere with your, with your brand, with your business and it's not and it's not true and it's just not happened.

4:41
So we've got a lot of things to work through and every business for me, you know, I'm sure lots of everybody listening to this will say, yeah, we've got our risk register.

4:52
So we know our biggest risks are, but it needs to keep pace with the way the world is and things like non incident crises, if that, if that makes sense.

5:03
You absolutely need to be there now because it's really hard when these things get like million views and shares and then you're struggling to try and clarify that there's no problem in the first place.

5:16
Yes, I'm picking up on that point.

5:18
Elon Musk recently got into trouble with AI and grok on his platform.

5:25
So yes, I think that caused a lot of people to review whether it's worth staying on X or not.

5:32
Also then you've got like the West Midlands Police who I had to apologise for using artificial intelligence wrong and getting wrong information as part of the operational work.

5:41
So you know, it goes, not everything is AI related problems, but there's a big chunk of problems we're seeing emerge now because we might not have the right policies and procedures and we've not done the training or people don't understand the parameters.

5:55
And as you say, and then some of the technology itself is quite questionable and how it's used and how do you think businesses can mitigate the risk of fake news from AI?

6:07
It's really, really difficult.

6:09
And the key things for me is always going to be in any crisis kind of manager or preparedness type person or communicator will say it is about being ready.

6:17
It is about thinking the risks through keeping up to date with developments and you know, like things like artificial intelligence being on the risk registers.

6:27
So you are thinking through not just what could happen, what could the impact be, but what do we then need to put in place is mitigation and what can we do to try and, and be ready for it.

6:38
We can't stop it.

6:39
I think this is one of the problems is that we can't stop all the fake news, the misinformation, the use of AI in, in those negative ways.

6:51
We have to be ready for it, being prepared for it, but also with the systems of monitoring so that any issues, you know, thinking about reviews that are inaccurate, thinking about, you know, we've got to be as ready to respond, but also pick it up really quickly as well.

7:08
Yeah.

7:09
And if you own a business, in your opinion, Amanda, what should never go online?

7:16
It's really hard.

7:17
It's when you think about that question because so much of our lives is online now.

7:22
You know, literally everything is online.

7:24
I think as a business it's about, I suppose you've got the basis of what is legally challenging to put online, you know, as in, you know, you will have bits of accounting and kind of a product information that you don't want to, to share.

7:39
So there's probably like a very core central heart of the of the business that is very specialist and he's and he's very protected.

7:47
But I think the way we need to try and deal with a world that is very distrustful, where people will think that you're hiding things, is to be as open as possible.

8:00
So I think beyond that, the more information that you can share about who you are and what you do, the more you can hopefully build that kind of trust and relationship before anything happens.

8:11
They call it the Halo effect where you try and create this, this positive feel around your brand so that when something does happen, people go, Oh well, generally pretty good.

8:24
My interaction with them has been really good.

8:26
I hear good things about them.

8:28
The other side of that is what they call the Velcro effect where you've got a bad reputation and everything sticks to you because you can't get away from it.

8:35
So I think that's the key for me is, is looking through not being too restrictive because at the end of the day, with a lot of things now, if you don't provide it, say it, deal with it, somebody else will or somebody else will do it and do it inaccurately.

8:55
On that point then so for the Beckhams, it was Brooklyn that made this announcement on online.

9:01
So if you're a business owner and if your employees are doing it, how can you prevent that or mitigate that?

9:08
Would you recommend having guidelines and policies in place?

9:11
Well, the first thing for me is always, you know, is building a strong business that's based on purpose and values that employees understand and are connected with that you've got an engaged workforce.

9:22
So hopefully they won't feel that they have to have to do that.

9:27
And that puts you in a much better position.

9:29
I think other than that, it is about having, and I wouldn't say preventing employees from using social media and one, because it won't happen, but also that becomes a story in itself.

9:39
You're trying to hide something because you're stopping your employees talking publicly.

9:44
So it's more about the boundaries.

9:45
What are the boundaries of what's acceptable?

9:48
And if you can engage them with the core of what the business is about and what it's doing, then they'll understand what's acceptable to post and what's not.

9:59
And we've got to have broad shoulders.

10:01
And sometimes employees won't be happy about something.

10:03
And sometimes you know something will go wrong.

10:06
But it's how you deal with it that becomes the issue, not the fact that something has happened or something's gone wrong.

10:12
It's how you can respond to it.

10:14
And in terms of responding, what do you think of silence as a strategy?

10:19
Do you think it's starved a story from escalating?

10:22
Does it signal confidence?

10:23
Yeah, I think it's a really tricky one.

10:25
This.

10:25
It's a really tricky one because I would say probably 99.9% of the time.

10:31
I wouldn't say silence helps.

10:34
I think there are very few cases.

10:37
If you are a very big brand like Amazon and the Beckhams as a brand, you can write some of this out.

10:44
People may be unhappy with Amazon, but they'll still use it.

10:48
But for majority of the businesses, the minute that you don't say anything, people will fill that space.

10:55
If it's serious enough, they will, you know, find the video, they will share the video, they will get your employees talking.

11:02
And we see this happening lots of times now.

11:06
And it's much better if you're in that and managing things as best you can rather than watching it play out.

11:14
But it but it still happens.

11:16
It's, you know, crisis communication is high risk.

11:20
I always say it's kind of a high risk environment, but it's the time really if you want to be effective that you've got to grasp and take some of those risks.

11:29
But I think firmly, you know, if you've got a firm kind of understanding of what the business is about and what staff can do and those kinds of things, then hopefully you can get your message out in the most appropriate way possible.

11:43
But you know, if it's a big story, it will run and run and run.

11:47
And the problem you've got is that you're going to be, you know, not going to be in the conversation.

11:53
The additional problem now going back to artificial intelligence is that people are using AI as a search engine.

11:59
Google's use as a search engine is diminishing.

12:02
Like figures come out recently that have said that.

12:06
So if you haven't said something when they're Googling, you might not bring up those stories.

12:12
When they're going into AI and searching, it will bring up those stories and there won't be anything to kind of counteract that or context it or put things together.

12:21
So you've also got longer term issues to think about.

12:25
silence might work for today and tomorrow, but if it's given you a long term problem to deal with, it might not be the best way to deal with it.

12:33
Who should speak it in a crisis and should it be a PR agency, your marketing team, the owner?

12:40
Yeah, it's really hard because I work in PR and comms and, and we've got a bad reputation.

12:47
You know, our reputation is not good.

12:49
And there are lots of kind of historic things that have happened.

12:53
And the way things have worked, that means that people look at, you know, if you see somebody being PR or spokesperson for it from a comms perspective, it's not seen as trustworthy.

13:03
And I think this research that's done by Ipsos Mori called the Trust Veracity Index, which ranks professions as to what are the most trusted and what are not.

13:13
And that comes out every December.

13:15
So I think you've got to accept that certain professions might not be seen as trustworthy as others.

13:22
The key for me in this is, is it the right person?

13:24
As in, do they understand the issue at hand?

13:28
Do they have the best knowledge and experience for the most serious cases?

13:33
You are going to be in a position where the this chief exec is going to have to speak at some point.

13:37
It might not need to be straight away, but they will need to.

13:40
What you don't want is doorstep in and people running down the streets and kind of targeting them at meetings because they haven't said something.

13:48
The more you can manage that yourself that the less you know you've got risk of that sort of happening.

13:54
It goes back to having people at senior levels across the kind of organisation who are comfortable with dealing with media.

14:03
Not everybody likes it.

14:04
I get that.

14:05
I do media training quite a lot of the time and, and lots of people don't like it, will never like it.

14:10
But are they able to deal with it and are they the most appropriate person?

14:16
Yeah.

14:16
Is it possible to prepare for a crisis before it happens?

14:20
Because with crisis communications, it's normally reactive, isn't it?

14:23
You're dealing with a crisis that's happened.

14:25
So can businesses actually prepare beforehand?

14:29
Absolutely.

14:30
It's the most important thing for me and it's now we're seeing a lot of of multiple crisis situations.

14:38
So you'll have an issue that happens, but then somebody will decide to give you a bit of a cyber attack at the same time.

14:43
So you've got multiple layers as well.

14:46
It's really important to have thought through things like the process, the approach, the plan, what are people doing?

14:52
I come from a very regimented sort of approach to dealing with crisis.

14:57
And there were lots of positives from that.

14:59
And you know, you know your role, you know what you're supposed to do, you know how the meeting structures will work.

15:06
And that saves you a huge amount of time when something happens because you just then move into sort of muscle memory and you know what you need to do.

15:12
And businesses can do absolutely do the same.

15:15
You know, you could pull your plans together, look at what that means.

15:18
How are you going to kind of approach things?

15:21
Who's going to be involved at what sort of levels?

15:23
What's the workflow across the business?

15:26
Where's the decision making going to be going to be happening?

15:30
And if you need extra resources, where does that come from?

15:32
And that's always going to be a critical factor because it's serious sort of major sort of crisis situations will always kind of suck a lot of resource out of an of a business.

15:43
So yes, you can plan for that.

15:45
You can prepare for that.

15:46
And most importantly, once you've got a plan is to test it, test it in a nice safe environment, very easy to do.

15:54
You can do that as a tabletop.

15:57
You can do it.

15:57
I use a software that replicates social if you want to go to like very realistic.

16:03
But whatever it is, even if it's just a conversation amongst kind of the people who are going to be involved, you can walk through a problem and work out what you'll be doing and find those problems before you have to use the plan.

16:17
That's always the key.

16:19
Every plan will need to be refined.

16:21
Nothing is going to be 100% prepared.

16:23
Nothing is going to be 100% perfect.

16:25
But if you can get the majority of things and the structural framework in place, then when something does happen, you can sort the detail, you can sweat the small stuff and worry about the kind of detail of what you're doing.

16:38
But it, it goes back to understanding the risks and also understanding who's important to your business as well.

16:46
You've seen them going back, you know, sort of 12 months or so where there was when Sam Altman was walking out of ChatGPT out of Open AI.

16:54
One of their biggest issues was investors and they hadn't in their plans and sort of communication, the investors haven't been prioritised.

17:02
So as a business, you've got different priorities.

17:05
Potentially, you know, you might have customers, you might, you'll have your workforce, but you may have shareholders, investors, you've got a vast range of people.

17:13
So it's understanding who you need to speak to and, and at what point and, and making sure that you've got all that in place.

17:22
And I don't know whether you're allowed to talk about this, Amanda, but what's the biggest crisis you've ever had to deal with?

17:26
Well, the biggest crisis I had to deal with was it was awesome emergency disaster crisis situation was the Manchester Arena terrorist attack back in 2017.

17:38
I was the head of communications there for Greater Manchester Police at the time.

17:43
And so, yeah, we had plans.

17:45
They weren't quite the plans we needed because they were for specific marauding terrorist attack and that wasn't what we experienced.

17:53
But we were able to then kind of flex from that and look at what we needed to do.

17:57
So that's defined a lot of what I do know, because if it sort of really tested every part of dealing, being ready for crisis.

18:07
Interesting.

18:08
For founder led businesses, are there any golden rules that you would advise people should follow to protect their reputation?

18:16
Yeah, I think it goes back to looking at the fundamentals of the business.

18:20
I mean, the reputation for me, you know, just talking about different people that you might need to speak to when something happens, each of those different groups and individuals may have a different view of your reputation.

18:31
So I think you've got to start by understanding what your reputation is and if who is important and what views you might need to kind of address.

18:41
So once you've got a really good understanding of that, it makes things easier when something happens to assess if it has had an impact.

18:49
But it's about being really sort of strong around the business, business operation values and principles that people understand, you know, the employees are engaged, they understand what to do if they've got a problem and they feel comfortable to raise issues at an early stage.

19:05
Making sure that you have strong relationships and you know where the weaknesses are.

19:10
Like we've been talking, you know, if you're, if you have certain suppliers, if you have certain connections, they may be your weak point.

19:18
A lot of cyber attacks are via third party operate operations that a business is connected to.

19:25
So you know, it's understanding the broad footprint of the business as well.

19:29
So you can see those risks across that strong leadership, effective leadership that's comfortable in standing up when something goes wrong to starting to make those decisions and decide what you know what, where things need to go.

19:42
Financial stability is always a really important one, I think for reputation because there's a lot of risk in how that operates.

19:50
And then thinking about risk management, crisis preparedness, and ultimately remembering it's not just about what you say, it's about what you do.

19:58
So the two things really need something to match together.

20:02
And that's why I say that the purpose and principles of your operation are so important.

20:08
We can.

20:09
We can then build the communication that supports that.

20:13
Brilliant.

20:13
Thank you.

20:14
And I'm going to ask you a bonus question that I ask all my guests, and I'll be interested to ask you because of what you do.

20:20
What's the piece of advice you come back to when things get tough?

20:23
Yeah, I think it's an interesting one.

20:27
It's one I kind of can't tell myself is that if you can only do your best.

20:32
So I can't make things go away.

20:34
I have no magic wand to make things go away.

20:37
But all I can do is try and do my best to help a business, to help people through a difficult time in their lives, through a difficult patch in the terms of business operation.

20:49
I wish I had a magic wand.

20:50
I haven't got one.

20:52
Thank you for your time, Amanda.

20:54
I really enjoyed our discussion.

20:55
And if people wanted to contact you, where can they get in touch?

21:00
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn.

21:03
Amanda Coleman.

21:04
You should be able to find me that or through my website, which is: amandacolemancomms.co.uk.

21:11
Brilliant.

21:12
And you mentioned earlier you've got three books.

21:14
Do you want to talk about the three books that you've got published?

21:18
Yeah, so the first book I wrote was back just it came out actually just as the pandemic was hitting a cold crisis communication strategies, which was an which is an interesting one because a lot of book publishing had been halted, but they decided it was actually the right time for it to come out all by Kogan page.

21:37
So if you go on the Kogan page website, you'll find the books there as that was the first one, which is a practical guide to before, during and after.

21:46
So all the things we've been talking about going into the detail of what you need to do.

21:50
And the second book was effective everyday communication strategies.

21:54
And that's what I call like a prequel because it's all about managing issues effectively so that they don't become your big problem.

22:01
And then just over a year ago, I wrote Strategic Reputation Management, which has picked up some of the things we were talking about around how do you build a strong reputation and how do you understand and quantify what that reputation is and how do you recover your reputation if something goes wrong?

22:19
Interesting.

22:20
Well, that's brilliant.

22:21
I just wanted to thank you again so much for your time, for taking the time out to record this podcast, just for the listeners to let you know, it was very last minute.

22:30
So I'm extremely grateful for that.

22:32
So thank you.

22:34
OK.

22:34
Until next time, everybody.

22:36
Bye, bye.​