Businesses open to ‘trial by Twitter’ as average response time to a crisis is 21 hours
Over nine tenths (94 per cent) of communications advisors said that failing to prepare to effectively handle the online fallout of a crisis leaves an organisation open to “trial by Twitter”.
The survey, carried out by international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, suggests that global businesses trying to defend their reputation during a crisis need to significantly accelerate their response systems, with on average it taking 21 hours to release an external statement to try and manage the issue and more than 48 hours in a fifth (18 per cent) of incidents.
The research found that more than a quarter (28 per cent) of crises reported spread internationally within an hour, and over two thirds (69 per cent) within 24 hours, with social media playing a large part in this: spreading the story within the country of origin in half (50 per cent) of cases and globally in almost a third (30 per cent) of cases.
Julian Long, a corporate partner and crisis management expert at Freshfields said: “Until recently, responding to a crisis by initiating a thorough investigation bought companies a little bit of time to agree a fuller response with management and the company’s legal advisers. Today, largely as a result of the growth in social media use, the window to buy more time has virtually disappeared. The moment a negative story breaks it has the potential of spreading like wildfire to the other side of the world.”
Of the over 100 senior communications advisors questioned, 63 per cent believe the businesses they have recently advised in relation to a significant crisis could have foreseen the event and better prepared for it, while half believe organisations are not adequately prepared to handle such situations.
Long added: “Failing to prepare for a crisis, no matter how unlikely it may seem, is really no excuse, particularly given that crises that genuinely come out of the blue tend to be the exception.
“The nature of social media means that all those at the coal face of managing a crisis: company executives, lawyers and communications advisors, have to adapt to what is a considerable new challenge. We are regularly being asked by clients how crisis management processes might be streamlined to avoid unnecessary delays.
“Extensive and deep-rooted preparation is the only way companies can hope to be comfortable in making public responses to defend their reputation. At the same time they need to account for the need for speed to take control of an issue and minimise the spreading of damaging and un-influenced stories in the media.”
Recent examples of such incidents include the Tesco horse meat scandal and WHSmith's self-published books.