Words That Work

Munich, the cap­i­tal of the state of Bavaria, was in a state of shock on July 22, 2016. In the early evening, short­ly before 6 pm, an eigh­teen-year-old man had opened fire in the dis­trict of Moosach and killed nine peo­ple in a quar­ter of an hour. Rumors and reports of the assault spread through social media like wild­fire. Still very present in the minds of Munich’s res­i­dents was the Islamist ter­ror­ist attack in Paris just eight months before, which had killed 130 peo­ple and injured anoth­er 683.

The hor­rif­ic events in Munich came to a close at 8:30 pm when the rad­i­cal right-wing shoot­er killed him­self. But the pub­lic was deeply shaken—and all kinds of false reports had already been spread­ing for a few hours. The fact that the police depart­ment suc­ceed­ed in reas­sur­ing res­i­dents and con­trol­ling the nar­ra­tive in the sea of infor­ma­tion is a trib­ute to the work of the team led by Mar­cus da Glo­ria Mar­tins, the head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pub­lic rela­tions of the Munich police. In calm and clear terms they pro­vid­ed pre­cise­ly what the pub­lic need­ed to hear: direc­tions, facts—and final­ly the all-clear.

“In 2016, we learned how to use social media to com­mu­ni­cate in a cri­sis,” says da Glo­ria Mar­tins, adding that this was no sim­ple task. Among other things, dozens of emer­gency calls were made on July 22 describ­ing addi­tion­al crimes, includ­ing shoot­ings and deaths. A total of sev­en­ty-three such phan­tom crimes were com­piled by the police in the wake of the actu­al assault.

The rea­son for incor­rect reports on social media is increas­ing­ly evi­dent: users do not ver­i­fy what they read and sim­ply pass on erro­neous infor­ma­tion. The many sirens and flash­ing lights on the streets of Munich at the time also inten­si­fied the degree of anx­i­ety.

Crises and extreme sit­u­a­tions like this one invari­ably show that estab­lish­ing an author­i­ta­tive pres­ence when dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion is not only desir­able but also essen­tial. False reports can spread all too rapid­ly, and fake news can poi­son the entire atmos­phere. The out­break of Covid-19 shows yet again that the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate in a cri­sis is cru­cial. Ten­ta­tive results of stud­ies and poor­ly researched but quick­ly pub­lished sto­ries that lack a basis in fact—combined with con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, mis­in­for­ma­tion, and fear—lead to extra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tions, espe­cial­ly on social media such as Face­book and Twit­ter. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion (WHO) warned of what it called an “info­dem­ic” right at the start of the corona­virus cri­sis. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion teams in Gene­va and at region­al offices in Braz­zav­ille, Cairo, Copen­hagen, Mani­la, New Delhi, and Wash­ing­ton have been work­ing since Feb­ru­ary 2020 to counter the spread of rumors with facts.

Com­mu­ni­cat­ing effec­tive­ly is also a cru­cial com­po­nent of cri­sis man­age­ment in busi­ness. It is the way in which a com­pa­ny can favor­ably influ­ence fac­tors such as pub­lic opin­ion. “Going about their busi­ness with­out cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion is short­sight­ed,” says Paul Argen­ti, an econ­o­mist and pro­fes­sor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Busi­ness in Hanover, New Hamp­shire.

The goal of cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions is to work around any crises fac­ing the organization—or to get through them suc­cess­ful­ly. But the req­ui­site means and mea­sures have changed con­sid­er­ably in recent years. “Social media changed the way com­mu­ni­ca­tion is done. Con­tent pro­duc­tion is no longer con­trolled by indi­vid­ual agents but a joint effort of a large num­ber of peo­ple,” Argen­ti says. It’s not an option for busi­ness­es to refrain from engag­ing, he adds, because soci­ety expects them to take a stance: “Not say­ing any­thing will not do you any good.”

What does that mean for com­pa­nies? They need a strong cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions team. In addi­tion to employ­ees with the usual back­grounds in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the team should also include high-level man­age­ment per­son­nel because they have the author­i­ty to lend state­ments the req­ui­site exter­nal cred­i­bil­i­ty. It’s also absolute­ly essen­tial to have some­one with the right cre­den­tials on the respec­tive topic—a lead­ing fig­ure from the health man­age­ment depart­ment, for exam­ple, in the case of the corona­virus cri­sis. The team’s deci­sion­al pow­ers are anoth­er impor­tant factor—as is a clear­ly defined scope of action. “We have a very lean hier­ar­chy because we enjoy a high level of trust with­in the force. That makes us incred­i­bly quick and agile,” says da Glo­ria Mar­tins from Munich’s police depart­ment. 

The choice of words used by Munich’s police to inform the city’s res­i­dents both then and now is defined on three lev­els. The first level con­sists of using objec­tive for­mu­la­tions, with as lit­tle emo­tion­al con­tent as pos­si­ble. The sec­ond level seeks to address people’s feel­ings. “We want to have a sta­bi­liz­ing effect and a human con­nec­tion,” says da Glo­ria Mar­tins. And the third level is dia­logue, with the police invest­ing strong­ly in com­mu­ni­ty man­age­ment on social media.

The impor­tance of find­ing the right words became clear in the U.S. when com­pa­nies began adapt­ing their week­ly mar­ket­ing e‑mails to the corona­virus cri­sis. Many of the mes­sages showed a sim­i­lar ten­den­cy to put aggres­sive sales pitch­es on hold. One exam­ple comes from the Cuyana cloth­ing start-up, which was launched in Cal­i­for­nia in 2011 with an express inter­est in sus­tain­abil­i­ty. In a state­ment in late March 2020, co-founders Karla Gal­lar­do and Shilpa Shah called the need to lay off numer­ous employ­ees “try­ing to sur­vive the cur­rent moment.” They described the sit­u­a­tion with dis­ap­point­ment and sad­ness, but placed these emo­tions with­in the con­text of a much more seri­ous sit­u­a­tion, name­ly, the pan­dem­ic: “While our chal­lenges may be dif­fer­ent, we are all being uni­fied by a com­mon expe­ri­ence.” With a mes­sage expressed in empa­thet­ic and authen­tic terms, the founders con­veyed sym­pa­thy and under­stand­ing for their cus­tomers and could there­by fore­stall poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions.

The fact that com­pa­nies, too, can express emo­tion when con­vey­ing bad news was shown by Arne Soren­son, CEO of the U.S.-based Mar­riott Inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny, which is the world’s largest chain of hotels. In a video mes­sage, he talked about the Covid-19 cri­sis and the hard­est moment in his career. Calm­ly and with a smile, he com­ment­ed on per­son­al mat­ters such as his “new bald look” due to med­ical treat­ments, and pre­sent­ed bleak eco­nom­ic fig­ures with the same com­po­sure. His voice then broke as he described the hotel sector’s help­less­ness in the face of the pan­dem­ic, but he con­clud­ed his mes­sage with opti­mism: “I have never been more deter­mined to see us through.”

This shows that open engage­ment by orga­ni­za­tions and com­pa­nies is a com­pelling com­po­nent of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with stake­hold­ers. In a cri­sis, that means com­mu­ni­cat­ing as early and reg­u­lar­ly as pos­si­ble, even if the extent and con­se­quences of the sit­u­a­tion are not yet clear. The first pri­or­i­ty is to keep the company’s own employ­ees informed, because exter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions can only work if there is a solid inter­nal foun­da­tion. After all, employ­ees are also always ambas­sadors for their com­pa­nies.

What should be done if mis­takes are made? “Admit them, explain why they hap­pened, how you’re going to fix them, and why they’re not going to hap­pen again,” says Argen­ti, speak­ing in his role as pro­fes­sor of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion. This approach can enable orga­ni­za­tions to over­come prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing. Police spokesper­son da Glo­ria Mar­tins agrees. One doesn’t have to keep con­vey­ing the desire to save the world: “You have to be quick, trans­par­ent, and hon­est.”

This can be a dif­fi­cult task to keep in mind dur­ing the fraught hours in Munich or in other crises. Yet such sit­u­a­tions always offer a way for an orga­ni­za­tion or com­pa­ny to pre­pare for the future—with a sus­tain­able image that also brings eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits. Dur­ing the Covid-19 cri­sis, this can mean sup­port­ing fact-check­ers or tak­ing other steps to build close con­nec­tions with the pub­lic and with stakeholders—who will not for­get this when bet­ter times return.