www.theicor.org866.SOLVE21 (765.8321)

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MediaCommunications

in a Crisis

Certified Media SpokespersonOffered by ICOR as part of the

Crisis Management &Communication Professional

Development Program

Get Certified in Crisis Management& Communications!

Foresight PR is a full-service public relations firm that helps clients build and maintain reputations, ease change, inform and educate, prevent disorder, sell products and ideas, retain and attract employees, slow rumors and promote truth.

Foresight PR’s specialty is the prevention of communications crises, or, if called in with the bases loaded and nobody out, a minimization of reputational harm.

www.foresightpr.com

For more information aboutICOR’s courses, go to

www.theicor.org/courseware.htmlor call 866.SOLVE21 (765.8321)

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Course Outline:Crisis basicsThe class will begin with a discussion of how crisis, which is really a euphemism for “severe change” affects an organization. We’ll define crisis, learn to distinguish a crisis from a disaster, then discuss in some detail the ten basic crisis scenarios.

To understand crisis communications, one must understand how instinct serves you poorly in a communications crisis (HINT – instinct serves us poorly). Then we’ll look at crisis communications do’s and don’ts, followed by the thinking behind crisis communications strategies.

Change doesn’t have to be a villain, just a misunderstood activity. We will work to understand the role of “change” in an organization, then apply that to forming the basic strategies of internal communications.

The Spokesperson’s Role In A CrisisThe spokesperson is the person who runs into the “burning building” as everyone else is running out. To become that person, you must first understand the importance of media training for a spokesperson as you learn the attributes of a spokesperson

Message DevelopmentDeveloping the right message for the right audience at the right time is as much an art as a science. We’ll prepare you for the science part. In the practical exercises, you’ll develop the art. You’ll learn how to construct strong, common-sense, provable messages that you can deliver and defend.

Media TrainingThe part you signed up for. You’ll learn about the media world and its inhabitants and come to see them as ordinary, one-leg-at-a-time people. We will discuss and drill the guiding principles of interviews, discuss and drill media do’s and don’ts/tricks and traps, then spend a great deal of time in realistic practice and immediate critique.

While your colleagues will cower at the sight of a reporter, you will be able to approach the media with the full confidence of strong messages and their proofs and the techniques for delivering them.

You will be able to see and impart the route for symbiosis with the news media.

Course Description:An organization in crisis faces many grave threats. Employees can be in physical danger. Buildings can fall. Customers can be lost.

But the most serious threat is and always will be the threat to the organization’s most important asset – its reputation.

To preserve and protect the reputation, an organization’s most valuable players are its spokesperson and the person or persons who form the messages that the spokesperson delivers through the news media to the organization’s key external audiences – customers, potential customers, government officials and regulators, potential employees, stockholders and other stakeholders.

In this one-day seminar, you will learn to act as both the spokesperson and message maker. Honing your new skills will take work, but this class will give you an excellent foundation, arming you with a common-sense approach to saying things and the methodology for saying them effectively. This is a one-day, 9-hour class, divided between lecture and practical exercise.

We’ll examine:

We’ll construct messages for a variety of situations and then practice standing up and delivering them in a wide variety of simulated media interviews. As students gain in confidence, they will overcome their natural aversion to being interviewed by the news media. Before the class has ended, each student will also develop and deliver messages that can be used in the student’s real-life organization.

For more information about ICOR’s courses, go to www.theicor.org/courseware.html or call 866.SOLVE21 (765.8321)