I was chatting with my media students recently about trust, data and issues management.
There seemed to be two strong themes amongst the Gen Zs in the room:
- Handing over data is the price of admission
- Mess with my data and you probably won’t see me again
Interestingly, as our chat ducked and weaved, some common ground became apparent:
If my data is messed with, ‘fess up quickly and tell me what you’re doing about it.
Without realising it, they’d nailed the premise of sound crisis management: move quickly, but move accurately (a balancing act if ever there was one). Don’t just state what’s happened. Spell out what you’re doing about it.
No one likes a sea of vague.
Examples came thick and fast, from recent telco breaches to matters that aren’t breaches, but more T&Cs that give them the ick. Tellingly, the two topics of data breaches and opaque or slippery T&Cs almost merged into one.
The message underneath it all was that slippery data policies can erode trust almost as much as a poorly handled breach.
In both instances, an own goal can take years to recover from.
Crisis readiness is a process. It takes time and alignment. But having your goalkeeper and defenders trained, knowing their plays and ready to jump into action can go a long way to preventing an own goal — or at least making sure it’s not all that appears on the scoreboard.
And that’s not where the preparation stops.
Business conditions and threat landscapes are constantly evolving. The crisis playbook needs to evolve with them.
Companies need to constantly train their key players (C-suite, spokespeople), keep their subject matter experts close and make sure the people guiding the response (corporate communicators, legal counsel and the like) are ready to go.
Because whether it’s a breach, a questionable T&C or the next issue you haven’t seen coming, people seem pretty clear on what they want.
Tell me what happened. Tell me quickly. Tell me what you’re doing about it.
And perhaps most importantly, give me a reason to trust you again.