Crisis Communication in the COVID Era

The president violated every lesson in crisis communication when he downplayed the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year.

His claimed intent was to prevent panic, which is a worthy goal, but how he did it is NOT what ANYBODY with experience in crisis communication would do.  What should he have done?

In business, public relations, and marketing communication, crises ARE a fact of an organization’s life. Airline executives. for example, don’t wonder IF there will be a crash.  For them, it is simply a matter of WHEN.

The same is true in government. Sooner or later, a crisis will arise that requires immediate response and responding WRONG can make things worse. That why businesses and governments need crisis response plans and need to use training exercises to make sure they are ready for the real thing.

Here are the standard rules about crisis communications:

• Have a plan and do exercises employing it
  
  
• Only designated top spokespeople should talk to the media and they should have a consistent message
  
  
• The initial statement needs to be made public ASAP 
  
  
• Never stonewall or say “no comment" or try to minimize the problem
  
  
• Explain what the company (or governmental unit) is doing to solve the problem and give as much information as possible, to assure the public that the problem is being handled effectively
  
  
• Express sympathy and concern for injured parties
  
  
• Provide regular updates showing that you are being responsible and proactive 

I taught the first Integrated Brand Communication and Social Media Marketing classes at my school. These subjects are much broader than crisis communication, but preparation for disaster communication is implicit in them.

I suppose you can argue whether the president violated ALL of these rules, but he clearly violated most of them. 

I saw a 9-11 interview with Rudy Giuliani in which reporter Chris Coumo recalled very positively how much information the NYC mayor provided to the public in the hours and days after the attack. Giuliani clearly WAS following the crisis communication map above (even though he turned into a loose cannon later in life).

The president completely misjudged the proper response to the growing pandemic threat and when called out on it, doubled down on his wrong approach, leading to close to 200,000 deaths at the time I write this.  

The way to calm people and "prevent panic" is NOT to pretend that a crisis doesn't exist.  The proper way is to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and show that it is being handled in the best possible way.  The president failed to do this, making the crisis worse.

Note for the record: Claims that "they died from underlying conditions" are bogus.  If they would have been alive today without getting COVID-19, then COVID-19 was the cause of death.