Crisis Communications

Episode transcript

Panos  2:20
Meg, welcome back to the podcast. 

Meg  2:22
Thanks so much for having me back, Panos. It's always nice to be here with you talking about the business of running events.

Panos  2:29
Well, absolutely. It's a great pleasure to have you back on. Obviously, since-- I think we last spoke more than a year ago. I checked when our episode went out and that was December 2022, so it's been a while. But I've been eagerly following your trajectory in the industry. You've been busy with a few things, taking on some races, and you now have an online course out. Do you want to maybe tell our listeners - the ones that don't know - who you are, a little bit about yourself, and also for the ones who do know who you are, what have you been up to all this time?

Meg  3:01  
Sure thing. Hi, my name is Meg Treat. I'm an entrepreneur, educator, and an accredited PR professional. I'm the owner of Treat Public Relations, which is the endurance industry's primary PR agency partner. We work with some of the largest and most storied running events here in the United States, helping them share the stories of their runners and increase their impact in their communities. I'm also alongside that main role of leading Treat PR and growing it. I am the president of the Orange County Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America and I also teach PR at the collegiate level. I'm a limited-term lecturer at my alma mater, Purdue University. Overall, Panos, everything for me is about communications and about running and making sure that people feel empowered to share their story and be the main character of that story. 

Panos  4:00
Absolutely. And I have to say that, before we got connected and chatted about stuff, I had a very kind of nebulous kind of math kind of idea about PR, and you're doing a great service to the PR science as an ambassador of that field. I think you're doing solid work, which is not necessarily something I would have necessarily before meeting you and getting connected with the whole PR world, but lots of great stuff. I've been following you on LinkedIn and the stuff you do with Boulderthon. You're involved with the Dave McGillvary trust or something. Is it a--?

Meg  4:34
Foundation. Yeah, Dave McGillivray has his Finish Strong Foundation. We're really proud to work with Dave in a number of different ways. We support DMSE's in-house communications team. I handle all of Dave's personal PR and then I've been helping in not just the communications but to kind of jumpstart some of the programming after Dave rebranded his foundation a couple of years ago and we've been pushing forward on making sure that all those dollars are having a great impact on young people to help them move more, give more, and read more.

Panos  5:08
Yeah, indeed. Really, really great work you're doing. And also, of the many races you represent, we had Boulderthon on the podcast. What a journey they've had. I mean, they've been growing by leaps and bounds. And also, the innovation that's coming out of that race-- it's really exciting to be involved with them. Right?

Meg  5:28
It really is. I think that we are very lucky that we work with both kind of the old guard of race directors and the new guard coming in. And from the legacy lessons that we can learn from longtime race directors who are legends in the industry as well as the things that we can learn from new race directors like Phil who are totally innovating and bringing their kind of millennial marketing mindsets to the industry, it's causing a lot of good positive change, obviously, for races like Boulderthon, lots of positive impacts on their bottom line and their registration numbers. Yeah,

Panos  6:06
I mean, Phil-- he does a great job, and he makes everything look so easy. I mean, he's one of those people that just-- everything looks so easy for him - like growing a race into the thousands in a couple of years and, like, doing all the great stuff he's achieved with a race. He just makes it look so effortless alongside everything else he does. 

Meg  6:26
I know. And I know, behind the scenes, he's working his tail off, not just as an RD, but as a runner, as a business owner of other businesses in the local Boulder area, and he brings such a calm and serene vibe to it that it does give that effortless look in front of all the hard work that he's doing behind the scenes. 

Panos  6:49
Yeah, he's a great ambassador for our industry. And I strongly suggest that people take a note and go back and listen to that Boulderthon episode - there are lots of really great tips in there from Phil - as well as our other spotlight episodes. Some great races in there. So last time we chatted, we had a very interesting discussion on PR in general as a tool that race directors might use to reach out to public media and extend the exposure they get for the race. We touched on lots of very practical tips on winning over earned media - earned media being the kind of stuff that you earn, meaning people take an interest in your race and they write about that kind of thing as opposed to paying for it, which is really a great eye opener in terms of the many things that people could be doing in reaching out to radio, to press, to online media, and getting more exposure for the race with some really practical tips. Today, we're going to be touching on crisis communications. And I should say, because we've been discussing this topic for a while and the first thing that at least crosses my mind when I think of a crisis is, like, earthquakes and floods and really, really big stuff. And of course, we're going to be touching on weather as it is and other things. But I think it's important in the context of today's episode to explore crisis in a broader context because crises these days take many, many different forms. My first question on this topic would be what really constitutes a crisis? What would be your definition of a crisis? And also, in terms of maybe-- you're going to give us a few examples because, again, the things that come to mind for me are, like, wildfires and comets coming down raining from the sky, that kind of thing.

Meg  8:40  
Yes. No, I think it's a great place to start. And coming into this conversation this morning, Panos, I was thinking about my own definition of crisis that I've kind of adopted over the years working in PR, but I decided that it was prudent and thoughtful to actually go back to my textbooks from when I was in my master's degree - we had a lot of focus on crisis communications - and I actually found two definitions from my textbook from some PR scholars and researchers that I think are interesting. The first is super simple, and I love this researcher Heath's focus on being concise. He says that crisis is risk manifested. Its risk comes to life. It's the worst thing that you could imagine happening right in front of you in the present. Now Seegr, Sellnow and Ulmer, other researchers have a longer winded answer that I think arrives at the same endpoint, but it's a specific, unexpected, non-routine event or series of events that creates uncertainty, and then either has a significant or even just a perceived threat to some goal that we're chasing, according to their definition. So at the end of the day, I think he has the right idea with keeping it concise. Its risk manifested. In my work as a PR practitioner, the definition of public relations is creating mutually beneficial relationships. So that's everything that I'm trying to do in my work all day. So, for me, when I boil risk and crisis down and when I'm talking to the RDs that I work with, I'm thinking about crisis in the space of it being a time when a relationship with a group of people or a person or another organisation is at risk of changing when we don't want it to change. Something is up in the air, something might be morphing into a new type of relationship when we wanted it to be another type. So that's where I really approach crises - a relationship is at risk. 

Panos  11:04  
Well, it's interesting you bring the relationship into it because, up until that point where you were discussing risk manifested and stuff, like, what came to mind is just, it's a curveball, basically. It's an unexpected kind of spanner in the works kind of thing. But of course, race directors listening to this will of course know that their whole lives are full of curveballs and spanners. Right? I mean, every single day is a curveball for the race director. But it's that aspect of it that makes it a crisis, I guess. It's the public relations and the relationship with your audience aspect of it. It's the fact that other people will be affected by this. It's not like something happened on the course and there's yet another problem to solve. It's the fact that these crises that we'll be discussing are the kinds of events that require you to communicate with people about what's going on. Right? 

Meg  11:59  
Totally. And I think it's important that we call it public relations, but it's really publics relations. There's never just one public. So even thinking about that, we're not just thinking about a relationship being at risk with our runners or participants, but it could be that we have a relationship with our city at risk, who issues our permits. It could be a sponsor relationship that now we're not going to have an investment that we thought we were going to have going into this next road racing year. Any of those stakeholder groups, volunteers, the leads-- we can think about a million different types of audiences, even our own internal teams, that a crisis could be causing our relationship with them to be at risk.

Panos  12:48  
Do you think that  social media and the way the world has changed over the last couple of decades have made crises more prominent or more visible to people? Because I seem to basically be seeing crises around every corner and I seem to be seeing posts with races facing crisis all the time. Is it a matter of more visibly allowing those to the surface these days through social media? Or are we actually getting more crises like events being hit with more stuff that they need to handle? 

Meg  13:24  
Yeah, it's a great question. I think, overall, my initial thought is that there aren't that many more event crises happening any more often than they used to. But just as you mentioned, they just have more visibility, more eyeballs. With social media, 24-hour news cycles, everybody having a video camera, and the ability to share their opinion from their phone, we just have more opportunities to see what crises are unfolding. They were probably happening at the original road races in the boom of the 70s but, now, with technology added in, it just makes it easier for us to access the experiences that people are having. And I think that that's the other piece of it is that because consumers, our participants, have an opportunity to not just compare their road racing experience to the main road race happening in their town - that's the biggest game there locally - because they can see a live stream of an ultra marathon that's taking place in Switzerland this morning or they can read an online article about a race that happened in Texas when they live in Illinois. There's the ability for us to see all of the experiences and all of the items that are available to us. And so, I think that it makes the game of comparison and the game of expectation setting a lot harder when you're not just being compared to the actions and the activities of your local event that somebody can interact with down the street, but they really can see what they might get if they went somewhere else. And so, I think, as a result, consumers are a lot more discerning, they're a lot more critical, and it's easier to play the comparison game which is sometimes where these crises can unfold from. I think, too, the last thing that I'll say on whether or not there's more crisis or there's more unfolding, I think the other thing that's worth acknowledging is that we talked about, in the PR classroom a lot, that your relationship with your audiences don't exist in a vacuum. They're not just through an email, in a tube, not affected by the world around us. And our world now is very turbulent. It sometimes presents us with unpredictable unexpected situations and cultural changes. And so, I think that when you are in the context of that space trying to have a relationship with someone, it's an added element that makes it sometimes hard to control and things can change more quickly because we're not just existing in a vacuum. We have this whole context of the present-day world playing out around us as we're trying to have this conversation with the people that we care about. 

Panos  16:32
Yeah, I get that point, actually. I mean, also, the point about being a global world and we tend to basically see a lot more of what's happening and maybe we get the impression of this availability bias type thing where you think there's more crisis happening simply because you have a lot more visibility into what's happening around you. However, would you agree that - something that struck me as you were talking there - there is a particular type of crisis, maybe, these days that is very pernicious, actually, and very specific to the world we live in around stepping on the mind in all these, like, culture war stuff that we have online? Like, there's been so many things that, actually, I can remember from races saying the wrong thing, not phrasing things greatly online, and then just having this whole tsunami of responses that you get sometimes when things get out of control with all these, like, politics and culture war stuff these days. I think that may be a very specific new cluster of crises that races have to deal with and navigate around. 

Meg  17:49
Yeah, when I think about these particular types of crises, Panos, every single situation is very different depending on what particular issue we're talking about. But I think what is consistent across the board, whether it's this type of crisis or any other, is that we need to come in with this preparation, which I know we're going to talk about here later in the episode, that causes us to take a look at who our organisation is as a brand, what our values are, what our principles are, what we stand for, and what we represent in our communities. Once we have an understanding of who we are, it's easier to understand how we want to react. Certainly, I think that, especially in these spaces, there are so many opportunities for us to learn. And listen, I think amidst a lot of the cultural shift going on right now, there has been an uncovering of information that we have either inherently known and chosen not to really acknowledge or that we're hearing about for the first time. And I think that taking that opportunity to educate ourselves before we react is helpful. Taking the opportunity to listen before we react is helpful. And again, understanding that we're a community event that brings people together that's trying to have a positive impact on the community. I think that we also need to make room to make mistakes. I think that we get obsessed with getting it exactly right in this type of crisis or in any other one. Done is better than perfect. And I think that there is some element of it where we can't learn what we need to learn unless we take the next step and gather more information. So I think that there's a lot to these crises that comes with the hesitation around not saying something because you want to say it exactly right when maybe it's more about taking the opportunity to be curious and ask questions and learn at that moment, rather than showing that you are already a perfect shining light of being able to say exactly the right thing. It's okay to be human and it's okay to level with your audiences which I know we'll talk more about here soon.

Panos  20:22
These types of crises are an interesting example in another sense, which sort of leads me to my next question, because they're the kind of crisis that catches people by surprise. I mean, again, just for people to visualise because I think it's interesting to look at the framework of crisis management through an example-- again, you put out the wrong comment, you say something the wrong way or in a way that your audience may perceive to be the wrong way, and it's so difficult these days sometimes to rollback from that position. And then I wonder, which is a general question around crisis more generally, by acknowledging the audience's maybe merited complaints about things - maybe hysteria in some cases - are we bringing crisis onto ourselves? Are we basically making a crisis out of nothing in some cases? 

Meg  21:23  
Yeah, this is an interesting one to think about because, to me, even with crises that are in the news right now that aren't even related to running-- I think about this Boeing plane situation with the Alaska Airlines Flight, and when you look at a crisis, it's very rare that you look at the root cause and there's not something clearly there. I think that it didn't come back that it was a freak accident. It came back that some bolts were loose. There was somebody along the way who didn't do what they needed to do, who didn't check what they needed to check, or created a culture or environment where they didn't feel they had time to check it. There are a million things that we can think about. But I think in many cases, in terms of the idea of us bringing crisis onto ourselves, it is true that there's usually something along the way that happened - a breakdown in our systems and our processes and procedures, or in someone else's who we rely on in the space of our race - that creates the opportunity. And that's why it's important to think about reviewing all of these things ahead of race day to see what risks are there, and what can be mitigated. But in terms of whether or not something is big enough to acknowledge, whether we need to get on top of a crisis before it's even fully materialised, I sort of have this Jiminy Cricket, let your conscience be your guide sort of take on it, that if you get that funky feeling in the pit of your stomach that makes you go, "Maybe we should tell the runners about this. Or maybe we need to say something." You probably do. You probably have some inherent intuition. And I think you just have to put yourself in your audience's shoes and say, "If this were me and I found out later that an event didn't tell me about something that happened, would I be upset? What would be my own reaction to this situation?" And so it's true. There might be little hiccups along the way that happen behind the scenes that end up working out just fine. But I think, in general, we have to think about managing expectations. And so, if there is a potential crisis looming, it may be wise to help edit expectations for those different audiences so that they can be prepared in the event that it happens and so that they feel like they were clued in, that they had buy-in, and that they had a role in their race day experience.

Panos  24:20
For a previous generation of leaders, the recommended course of advice in a crisis was to say nothing, right? I remember for decades, growing up, and the standard response was just no comment. I guess you're saying we've moved on from that in terms of, like, our general thinking around crisis communications?

Meg  24:42  
Yes. I think that we have completely moved on from that. Our audiences expect more from us. When I think back to my undergrad days, the first day of PR one-on-one, this is actually what they address, that no comment is never a sufficient answer. I think that, in general, there may be times when it's not helpful for us to comment. Say, somebody calls you up to ask what you think about an action that another race took. Is your comment, is your opinion going to be helpful in this situation or is it just going to stir the pot? It's certainly a consideration to make. But I do think that, in general, audiences now are expecting transparency. They are interested in communicating with brands. It's why things like social media have taken off. It's given them access to our organisations and to the people in our space way more than they've had before, and they like it, they enjoy it. That's why there's such high usership on these types of apps and platforms. But I think that, in general, they enjoy the access and they're expecting to have that kind of open line of communication. Instead of being broadcasters who just speak to our audiences and then shut off, we want it to be a two-way conversation. That's the most ideal framework for any type of relationship that we have, and it's one that creates power and space on both sides of the conversation. 

Panos  26:31  
And I guess the whole no-comment thing can also invite speculation, right? I was reading an article towards the end of last year. Was it Scotland or Wales or somewhere around there? There was an organiser who basically had a track record of canceling races and not issuing refunds and stuff, and the press got on to it. I really don't know the circumstances. Maybe, it's all totally legit and stuff. But the whole point that that guy didn't come forward to comment on it, I guess, doesn't reflect very, very well on him. I mean, it allows that space for your audience to start thinking, "There's something fishy here. Why would he not come? And why would he not come forward and say, 'No, we had a legitimate reason for canceling.' etc." It doesn't sound, in this day and age, the right strategy for at least this reason alone.

Meg  27:29  
Absolutely. I think that the potential for speculation is one of the greatest reasons to put a crisis communications plan together, not only because honesty and transparency are the best policies when we're talking about any type of relationship. Whether it's between us and our runners or it's between you and a friend or a family member. That honesty and that transparency go a long way in building trust. And I think that in terms of this particular example, which I think is a great one for this particular topic, where there's smoke, there's fire, and when there's someone hiding from the press, there's usually something to hide. So I think that it's a very fair assessment that folks have speculated on why that would be happening. And without an answer to the question. The other reason that we address the specific questions that we do when we make a comment on a crisis is because we're trying to reduce the amount of questions that remain. A crisis is over when all the questions have been answered, and you'll notice that with any type of news story too. It's always in the news and continues to be in the news until all the questions are answered. When there's still speculation, that's when it's going to keep being a part of the zeitgeist about the conversation. So I think that that's something to consider too - how can you have answers to and anticipate all of the questions that you're going to get about a crisis situation so that, once you've answered them, it's kind of over. All of that speculation, and that uncertainty goes away. People feel good about what they hear and, as a result, they can move on, they have the closure that they need to move forward from the crisis.

Panos  29:29
You mentioned earlier that it pays to get ahead of a crisis and basically be proactive, get out there, and start communicating about things as soon as you possibly can. I'm wondering where exactly should that line be drawn. And how soon is soon enough or late enough? And in the context, for instance, of the kind of crisis that many people faced towards the end of the pandemic with world logistics being a total mess-- I knew lots of people got caught out by not having medals on time, not having shirts on time, facing all kinds of disruptions in the race, and race directors obviously receive information or should receive information from factories, from suppliers about this kind of thing being imminent. At what point would be the right point to start communicating about these things that could potentially develop into a crisis? Let's say your supplier brings you and they say, "There's a good chance that we may miss race day for some of your medals or there is a good chance that some of our T-shirts stock may not be in on time." When you get that message, should your approach be to just get out there and communicate fully transparently about the whole thing or thinking that these may blow over or somehow may be fixed down the line? You should think, "Oh, maybe I'll wait it out for another few weeks and see how the situation develops." How early should you be stepping forward and communicating all that?

Meg  31:03
Yes, I'm gonna give the standard marketers' answer that it depends, of course. But in general, when we think about an issue popping up, even one like this, somebody listening to the podcast might be saying, "Are my medals not arriving on time really a crisis?" Potentially, if you're going to have a tonne of folks in your email inbox the day after the race saying, "I can't believe I didn't have a medal. I didn't get the experience I wanted. You're awful. I hated this. I'll never run your race again," then yeah, it's a crisis, we've got a relationship at stake. And I think a big bucket of crises that I recommend that clients prepare for are the ones that are related to the participant experience. If the course is changing, if medals aren't arriving, if there's not going to be an availability for fuel at some place on the course, anything that they weren't expecting to get, expecting to have been a part of their race experience, if it's possible that that's going to change, the earlier that you can manage their expectations, the better. I think that in this particular case, there's nothing wrong with going ahead and communicating it as soon as possible. When I think about the potential of folks coming back to you and saying, "Well, my medal is going to be late, so I want a refund," or "I'm not even going to run." That seems like a pretty low risk for this, right? Instead, what they're probably going to feel is, "Wow, it was so nice of you to be transparent about this. I will keep this in mind." And even all crises are a fine opportunity, right? As much as they might feel like only a threat, they're an opportunity. I'm even thinking about, "Does this give you an opportunity to show your creativity and show your dedication to your runners?" So your medals are arriving late. Can the supplier give you one or five of those medals even if they can't deliver all of them, and you can have a photo op ready for runners at the finish line? So, even if they're going to be getting their own medal in the mail, they're still going to have a photo to share on medal Monday. When we really think about creating the fun runner experience, is there some creative way to take this bummer thing that's happening and potentially turn it into a great opportunity to show your runners that you care? So, I think that communicating early typically creates trust because it helps manage expectations, it makes people feel like you are being conscientious of them, and keeps them in mind all the while. So, even something as small as a metal or a T-shirt delay can be a chance for you to create that buy-in and trust with your participant.

Panos  34:09
And is that the case-- would that still be the advice for communication even in the types of crisis where the crisis may have been resolved or maybe no one has actually materially been affected? Because when I'm thinking about these emails I get from time to time - hopefully, not too often - where you get, like, one of the sites you're registered in maybe has a data leak or a hack or something but something that affects not serious data being stolen or compromised. They sent this email around, "On July 7, someone accessed the site, we believe your account may be affected but they only got through to this or that information, or even they didn't get anything. We just had an unauthorised access kind of thing." So, this is the kind of thing that happens. There's no actual impact on people. Yet, still, they communicate actually. I'm probably thinking that, in their case, it's mandated by law that they should, but is that the kind of attitude you would take more generally that, even in a crisis where no one was really affected significantly, you'd still go out and be upfront about things? 

Meg  35:20
I think so. Because for me, in that type of example, I think about how, in a crisis, it's important to appeal to and design our communication to appeal to the person who's going to be the most upset or the most unsettled by what we're sharing with them. Because say for you and I, maybe we've never experienced a serious issue with our data being compromised and having our identity stolen. But what if Susie, who registered for our race, just got done cleaning up a mess that she's been working on for years where a simple data breach caused somebody to take out a credit card in her name and run up tonnes of charges, and it screwed up her whole credit. Maybe now, she can't buy a house. It's really hurt her day-to-day life. And now, even if we know that we weren't storing credit card information, if we didn't have any hyper-serious information as a part of our registration process, Susie's still seeing that email when it comes through or hearing about it secondhand, like, "Well, the race had a data breach that maybe they didn't communicate out." And suddenly she's sweating. She's going, "Oh, I just had a nightmare situation like this happen to me because of something like this." And so I think we have to think about, yes, maybe our average participant isn't super impacted, maybe it's not worrisome to them. But based on the unique experiences of each participant, there may be one or a handful of people who feel very strongly or have an experience with this that really brings up a traumatising or tough situation for them. So I think we have to think about the worst-case scenario, even if it feels like it's not the worst case, because for someone it might feel that way. And I think that, in general, the reason that somebody knows that it wasn't that big of a deal or that it got resolved is because we communicated with them. If we don't tell them and they hear it secondhand, it's just like hearing that a friend talked behind your back secondhand instead of saying it to your face. It just hurts. It feels better to level with people and be transparent. It just feels better at the end of the day. So I think that not only is that part of it but, also, too, again, another opportunity. Even if a crisis resolved itself, take the chance to share with your runners how you mitigated it, how you were keeping them in mind, made decisions, and thought quickly about how to resolve it. There's no shame in tooting your own horn when there was something going wonky and you were able to bring it back to a place where it's not going to impact them. And now, you get to share that message as a part of your communications.

Panos  38:20
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Panos  39:53
Probably the greatest shared crisis of our generation as professionals has been COVID, of course, where lots of races had to be canceled. And races, of course, still get canceled on account of weather. But COVID was a specific crisis where-- in contrast to the medals example where someone may complain, "You should have chosen a better supplier, you should have ordered earlier, and whatever." COVID was something that just caught people by surprise. There was nothing you could do. And there were tonnes of people who had a no refund policy, which runners were very happy to sign up for because there were very rarely cancellations before COVID. And then it comes to it, COVID comes around and you need to cancel your event, and you need to communicate this to people. And of course, it's all fine, however difficult it might be to communicate the communicating bit. There is also the who-pays-for-it bit now with the refunds, right? So for something like this, with COVID or, I guess, in the future with weather-related cancellations that are completely outside your control, how far should you go to be the good guy in all this and basically take the hit instead of the participant? It's not your fault. It's not the participants' fault, but someone has to pay for this, right? And even if you have a no refund policy, what would be your recommended communication and stance around that when it comes to that? Because someone needs to swallow the loss in all this. 

Meg  41:25  
Totally. When you have an event cancellation related to safety at the end of the day, whether it's a global pandemic, a weather-related emergency, a bridge falls down the day before your race, whatever it might be, you're going to catch flack, no matter what, and that's something that you're going to have to manage your own expectations about and accept. There are going to be some people who say, "No, I'm happy to run in a lightning storm and I would like to run. I can't believe you took this away from me." And there are others who are going to say, "Thank you for keeping runners' safety in mind. I appreciate you. I think you did the right thing." There's going to be both. You're gonna catch flack and you're gonna catch compliments no matter what decision you make - going forward with it or canceling. The important thing is that you need to make a decision, you've got to listen to your own Jiminy Cricket conscience, and find a way for you to sleep at night knowing that you did what you thought was best for your participant who, of course, as event organisers, is our primary concern - the safety and health of our participant. If they don't arrive at the finish line healthy and safe, what is it for? So I think that you've got to make a decision that you're going to feel confident about, regardless of what somebody might post in a Facebook comment or send you in your info email, you have to make a decision that you feel good about, and that you're going to be able to sleep at night knowing that you made. As far as the financial element, I think that this is going to be different for every race and I think that it's going to be different depending on every single situation. But I would say that more important than that is planning ahead of time how you're communicating your refund policy, how you're sharing that with your runners and making it something that they're highly aware of going into the situation - again, managing expectations. Do you send out an email once or twice during the lead-up to race day that reminds them about this fact? Where do you put it on your website? Do you bury it in the FAQ page in a really tiny print at the bottom? Or do you make sure that folks are aware of it and know about it? I think that we have those types of policies to protect us as event organisers. I mean, even in my own contracts, I have my own policies that help me in my relationship with my clients and that are there to protect them too. So I think that, in general, we have to be transparent and open about what those policies are. And rather than skirting around it and saying, "Well, I don't want to bring up the refund policy because I don't want to worry my participant about whether or not they're going to need it." Or maybe they're going to think I'm a bad person because I don't have the ability to give everybody a refund. You have to get over that part. You've got to get over that part and be transparent and also give yourself some credit. As an event organiser, think about how much you have spent going up to race day that you're not going to recoup the costs until after race day. Right? And our participants don't necessarily always know the intricacies that go into planning an event, and that's okay. They don't need to know exactly how the sausage gets made. But I do think that there's part of it that we have to look closely at our own policies and how well we're sharing them with our runners so that when those things do come up, the runners aren't sitting there going, "I didn't know you had a no refund policy. I never saw that anywhere." You want them to go, "Oh, I guess I did see that. That's a bummer." Now, if you have the ability to offer a discount on next year's race, let people differ, amazing if you have the room to do that. Should you feel obligated to completely throw your financial health out the window as an organiser or as an organisation that puts on races just to do this? Should you have to die by your own sword? Not necessarily. Again, that's why you have the policy there. It's really about making sure that you know what your policy is ahead of time, that you're putting it out there effectively, and then if you had to ask random runners on race day, "Hey, do you happen to know?" And I'm not suggesting that you do this but if you took a sample of people on race day and said, "Hey, are you aware of what this race's refund policy is?" Hopefully, some of them know it because they were educated about how that works - not just  about how gear check works, and where to do it, about whether or not they can have somebody pay them on the course. Any of the other policies and rules that we put in place, if we don't share them, then they can't help us. They're there to help us. 

Panos  46:31
Well, in this particular case, when you're actually sitting down to write that email, let's forget about COVID, let's look forward, there's a wildfire or a thunderstorm, as you say, when you're sitting down to write that email to participants, question one, what information sort of would you put in that email? So what kind of information should that email contain? And going back to the refund policy, obviously, you might want to mention that we have a no-refund policy. Would you feel the need in an email like that to defend your no refund policy by making all the arguments that race directors legitimately make around sunk costs and expenses being paid and all of that kind of stuff? Or would that seem too defensive at that stage? Like, what would you choose or advise people to do?

Meg  47:17
Before we even start crafting the message, there's a piece of crisis communications planning that's just taking a hard look at the way our organisation works and figuring out what the risks are. For example, do we have a refund policy and where do we put it? Where do people see it? But this could be anything. It could be what type of medical staff we have in the event that somebody has a medical emergency. Where are they along the course? It's just that situational analysis of any type of risks that your event might have that can be mitigated. What steps are you already taking to lower that risk? And then, what else can you do before you even write these statements or before they even occur to even further solidify your plan and make you feel confident that your risk is as low as it can be? Then, after we do that planning, if we do that preparation of figuring out where our weaknesses are and where we can make them our strengths? Whenever we're creating a crisis communication statement or when we're making an entire comprehensive plan that goes through all of the different events that can occur, there are four questions that we want to break down as a part of our crisis communications statement, whether that's appearing in an email, or it's at a press conference, or it's an email to a media member, or it's a post on social media. The first is what happened? What actually has occurred here? The best way to approach it is from a chronological standpoint - if you can tell the narrative story based on the time of what all went down that led to this happening. This includes when you became aware of it, what you started to do, etc, in a reaction to it. The next one is what do we believe was the reason that this happened? Is there currently a root cause that we can identify? If there's not, we don't want to speculate but we do want to remind people that we're looking for the root cause and what the plan is for updating them once we've investigated what it might be. When there's a time they can expect to hear from us again even if we don't have a completely clear answer yet. We want to talk about two, what did we do? And this is the part of that crisis planning situational analysis that's important. It is what we did before this to try and keep it from happening. Basically, showcasing that we were on top of it, we did try to mitigate this risk, and this was what was in place. Now, if you didn't do anything, of course, you can't lie in this situation. If you didn't do any preparation or if there was no way to prepare for a global pandemic, it's okay to say that. It's okay to acknowledge and level with your audiences. The last piece that's so important is what you're going to do moving forward to make sure it never happens again. And that's a promise, that's an investment of your time, always moving forward of mitigating this issue because, even when a crisis is complete, we have to tend to it going forward to make sure that it doesn't occur again. But talking about the true action steps that you're planning on taking to ensure that it's not a second occurrence coming down the line is going to be an important piece of the puzzle. I think that amid all of these questions, the other thing that's important to do, as I've mentioned, is just level with people, being honest with people, sharing in them being bummed out, or this not being an ideal situation. You don't have to pretend that everything's okay in a crisis. It's okay to be amongst the people and say, "I get it. I get that this is not ideal."

Panos  51:33  
And definitely, I'm guessing, in all these, it's all implicit. Definitely, do not be dishonest with your answers. I'm saying this because I was digging up this case. We actually wrote about it in our blog on race cancellation about a race back in 2014 that got canceled in Colorado, and then in response to that the race director said, "Oh, it was because of some floods." And then, subsequently, people dug into it, and they realised that it was actually because the local authorities had denied the race a permit, and you're trying to basically communicate to put out a fire and then your own communication turns that fire into something completely different. So definitely be honest with your communication. 

Meg  52:22  
Totally, there is no room for any type of lying or dishonesty in a crisis situation. And I think, too, it's also interesting to bring up that even though this race director didn't necessarily blame another organisation, they blamed another contextual thing that had been happening in the area. Playing the blame game usually isn't helpful, either. I mean, it's true. If there is somebody that caused it to happen, certainly, you don't have to take all of the blame, but pointing fingers and saying, "I did nothing, it's all their fault." There's a way to take ownership collectively that I think well, nuanced is important. For example, like the medals example that we've been talking about, maybe you're not going to call out exactly the metal company's name when you're pushing out an email to your folks. You can say we received information from our medal source that they are not going to be able to deliver on time. That's a better one than "The evil people over there at Medals USA told us that we were going to get this and they didn't, and that's why you are going to have a bad race." There's presenting the factual information and being thoughtful enough to not necessarily name names when it's not helpful and it's not important to do, and then there's being someone who's lashing out and being defensive in a way that's not productive. So I think that that's part of it, too. And then, especially with this race director who kind of did all this work to find another excuse or someone else or something else to pin it on, it makes me think of like, in the time that it would take for you to come up with a grand plan to cheat on a test and come up with the way that you're going to write the answers on your arm or you're going to have a paper folded up in your pocket or whatever it is, you could have just in the same amount of time studied for the test and gotten a better grade. So I think that there's also something to this too that, rather than spending your time trying to find somebody to blame or trying to find an excuse, you could spend the same amount of time coming up with a thoughtful and honest answer that's going to get you better results. When you're actually going to have to end up spending more time as you mentioned cleaning up the mess of, "Well, I lied to you" and now I have to come up with an excuse about why I lied to you. It's gonna cost you double the time, double the energy, and double the impact on the relationships that you had in a negative way.

Panos  55:08
Yeah, I guess I don't want to be making excuses for people but I think when you come to the point, it's just, I guess, human to be weak sometimes and try to take some of the burden of the responsibility off your shoulders and on someone else, I'm only saying that, like, lots of people don't actually, in these cases, maliciously set out to fool others. It's just that maybe they fail their better standards in that situation and they end up with something that's a little bit watered down or maybe not as gracious as it should be or maybe points the finger to someone that it shouldn't. So it's a difficult situation for everyone. That's why we call it a crisis. So you need to sort of step up, right? I mean, that's the whole leadership aspect of it. 

Meg  55:57
Yes, leadership was the exact word that I had in mind while you were sharing that thought, Panos, and I think that that's the thing. If you are stepping into a leadership role, you have to be prepared to handle these types of situations with a little more grace, a little more tact than your average person, say, getting a bad experience in a fast food store today might where they lash out at the cashier. But, I think that, for me, I'm always looking at it where it is tough. I have to ask my clients to be the best versions of themselves as often as possible and I think that when it comes to a crisis, the other reason that people will lash out, play the blame game, or fall into some of these traps that will make them feel worse on the other end is because they didn't plan. If you're thinking about a crisis for the first time while it's happening, of course, you're going to lash out, of course, you're going to make decisions that don't feel good later because you made them out of fear instead of out of compassion or whatever value you choose as kind of your guiding value in a crisis situation. Decisions made out of fear often create problems. And so, we have to put ourselves in a situation where we've planned ahead of time so that, when it happens, we can go, "Ah, it happened." Take a deep breath and go, "I'm so glad that I already wrote up all the action steps that I would take if this would happen, who I would call if this happened, and what types of information I would share if this happened because, now, I can think clearly, I can think calmly, and I'm not going to end up making a decision based on fear. I'm going to make it based on the values and principles that my race stands for as a brand."

Panos  57:54  
Well, let's talk about that plan because we've been sort of tiptoeing around it for a while. What you were describing earlier which is the whole, "What risk might I face? What's the mitigation kind of thing?" At least, from the UK and European races' point of view which I'm a little bit more familiar with - sort of the nitty-gritty of it-- it's your standard risk assessment plan. Probably, the US has a slightly different name. So it's something that every race director-- in many countries, it's mandated to have one. Local authorities expect you to have one, and any decent race director will have one that takes exactly this kind of high-level form, which is what risk could I be facing? What might I do about this? You're talking about a slightly different thing with this crisis communications plan. What kind of form does that take?

Meg  58:44
Yeah, and I think that that initial risk assessment is crucial in the presteps before writing this crisis communications plan. You're going to need that information to write your crisis comms plan, but this document has a few different things. So, the first thing that I typically have clients decide on and come up with when we're putting together a crisis document is deciding on what those guiding values are with honesty and transparency always being a part of the mix but kind of just keeping in mind that, okay, even if something in this sphere of crisis comes up that we haven't planned for, at least we have kind of a foundational set of guidelines that says, "When we have a crisis going on, we try and make decisions based on these types of qualities and characteristics. We try to always put these things at the forefront of our minds, and we're always going to be as open, honest, and transparent as we can possibly be." Then, in a crisis plan, what we do is really write out what those remaining potential risks are after our risk assessment - come up with what are those occurrences that may happen that could put my relationship with my different stakeholders that my race has at stake. And I typically divide them into four buckets. Weather, of course, whether it's forecasted or unforecasted, whether it causes discomfort for participants, or if it causes a full cancellation, or even just an editing of the course. Safety is another big bucket. This could be anything from medical issues to terrorist attacks to death on the course, and even alcohol-related issues at your post-race party. There's also that less-than-expected experience crisis, where our participant feels like they didn't get what they thought they were going to get. The swag is arriving late or it's poor quality. The course was cut, so they ran 10 miles instead of 13.1. They didn't get photos of them during the event when they thought they were gonna get them. There was a really long line at the porta-potty. It could be anything. But those things that change the actual experience and that impact the expectations that our participants had. And then there are also crises related to our team, right? Because people certainly are a big part of the risk, whether it's a volunteer who accidentally sent people down the wrong street and gave poor directions to a vendor who maybe said something that offended somebody who is at the expo, a staff member who doesn't handle a customer service related issue with a lot of tact and make somebody feel uncomfortable or hurt in their response. People are certainly the most unpredictable folks within our group. So we have to think about the crises that come from our team members. But once we have those buckets and once we have an idea of what those different risks are, we make that list. And for every single item on that list, we're gonna have a couple of things. We want to break down what our immediate action steps are and what contacts we should activate. So who do we need to call right away when this type of crisis happens? And put their phone number on the page in big red letters so that everybody can see it and find it easily. Even something as simple as, "Are we immediately calling 911 when the situation happens?" It seems silly but, in the crisis moment, you may not be thinking clearly and you may suddenly have your priorities out of whack. So having a quick reminder for even something as basic as call 911, call the race director, whoever those folks are that you need to immediately activate, putting that down on the page as a literal 1-2-3 action step plan. You also need to think about what your general communication statement is going to be about this crisis happening. Now, every single one is going to be nuanced and play out differently, but if you can have a skeleton, if you can have a template that at least you have a reminder of what information you need to put in here like, "Here, I'm going to describe what exactly happened. I'm going to describe what we understand to be the root cause analysis" or even putting in a boilerplate statement that says, "We're currently investigating what the cause of this was and we expect to have a press conference 24 hours from now to explain it - whatever that protocol is that you put in place and that you've put into this plan. You're going to address all of those other questions in the holding statement that we talked about. What happened? Why do we think it happened? What did we do to try and keep it from happening? And what are we going to do differently moving forward to make sure it doesn't happen again? And when you're crafting the statement, again, have as much of it there as possible, but always make sure that you're customising before you share it out. And that's sort of the last piece of each of these crisis plans within the whole crisis communications document - where does this communication need to go? Is it only going out to your runners? And is it going via email? Is it going via social media? Is it only going out to the media? Is it going to both? Does it need to go to your vendors? Where are you sharing it? And who are you sharing it with? And who's responsible for doing that? So does Jonathan need to post on social because he's the Social Media Manager but Victoria is going to send out the email because she controls our email marketing? Or is there someone at race command whose whole job for the day is crisis communications and they take ownership of all the channels all at once? But having that breakdown-- again, having the action steps for what you're going to do when a certain crisis happens, the communication or statement that you're planning to put out - at least a skeleton of it, a draft of it that you can adapt in the moment - and then a breakdown of where it's going to be shared, with who, and by who is all going to be a part of each of these crisis plans that you put together. It kind of ends up being a behemoth document in many cases. I've had some that are 50 typed pages long. I've had some that are shorter. But I think that anyone who activates this type of plan is going to find that it's very worthwhile to do because, as we know in the events industry, the unexpected is always around the corner.

Panos  1:05:57  
Going back to the bucketing that you suggested of the four different types of crises, is there some kind of rationale in segmenting crisis along those lines? Is it because, let's say, the weather-related stuff would have a different response to it than the race experience stuff - like the lost medals and stuff? Is that why you're thinking of why you've categorised it among those four different groups? 

Meg  1:06:24  
Yeah, I think that many of the pieces of information that you're going to share in a statement about, for instance, a medical issue happening on the course or some type of other safety threat - somebody drives on to the course with the intention of hurting runners, for example - you're gonna have a lot of the same information presented about what you did in advance to mitigate that risk - talking about your EMS teams, your law enforcement teams about other safety protocols that you'd put in place. I think that the reason that I like to bucket them together is that you're going to find that some of the answers are somewhat similar in the information that you present about what you did ahead of time. So that kind of just makes it easier to keep running through the scenario of like, "Okay, I have some of the similar information that I need to share, but there's a nuanced difference between these two crises with the same kind of mitigation plan in front of it." So it just helps you to kind of organise it in your mind. Same with the weather. I think that, for example, most race directors are going to say, "Well, we have a meteorologist that we called." Again, all these things that we're doing to mitigate it ahead of time. Who monitors the weather? All seven days leading up to the race, we have a wet bulb that we use, we have these different levels that we decide whether or not we're doing this or that, we meet every two hours leading up to the race to reassess, etc. I think that, again, whether it ends up being a crisis about the race being canceled because of weather or just having to let runners know that it's going to be a wet day out there and they might not be as comfy as they were going to be on the course before, both are going to require you to share the same mitigation steps that you took. So it just helps with bucketing them together so that you can kind of keep that consistency throughout and reuse some of that same information that you've collected in that section.

Panos  1:08:31
Going back to what you said about, like, sometimes these things take 50 pages. Obviously, most events will need to get close to that. But also on the other side of this, as a race director, you can also make some common sense decisions around what areas of this to focus on. For instance, if you're in California, if you're in Oregon, which constantly have issues with wildfires, if you're in Florida, coastal states being hit with hurricanes, you want to focus a little bit more on those kinds of things rather than others. And I'm sure many race directors in those areas may not have a full crisis communications plan, but I'm sure they fought really hard and probably put something into writing around the kinds of weather-related stuff that they're really prone to be hit with. 

Meg  1:09:19  
Yeah, I think that triaging it is thoughtful. If you have certain crises that you expect more often than others based on your geographic location, based on the size of your race, the type of event that you do - maybe it's a trail race versus a road race - there's certainly a lot of considerations to make between different distances too, whether you have a 5K or an Ultra going on, you've got very different risks. But I think that if you don't have a communications team who you can rely on to put one of these crisis documents together and make it completely comprehensive or as comprehensive as possible, it is okay as you had mentioned to kind of prioritise what crises you expect more often than others and have those available and set the goal that, each year, you're going to review these crisis plans that you put together and hopefully add a couple more to your database, to this toolbox that you're creating, so that you're continuing to have a growing document that's living, breathing, and developing as your race is developing.

Panos  1:10:30
Yeah, when you were going into the different sort of event types, I somehow got this flashback from a couple of events in the UK that are triathlons and swim-based events, and they had issues with the quality of the water. I mean, all kinds of things can go wrong. I mean, too many algae or bacteria or whatever chemicals are the water. I mean, it's endless in terms of crisis when you're a race director. You do, of course, offer help with all these kinds of things. And I know you're the type of person you're going to be hitting the conference circuit soon in the industry as well as a speaker who likes helping people out. Is there a way that people can perhaps reach out to you if they have some questions about the kinds of things we discussed today or how you might help them with some of these issues? 

Meg  1:11:18
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love connecting with folks in the Race Director group that you have on Facebook, Panos, I think it's a wonderful tool for folks to connect with each other. So certainly, if there's any discussion around the crisis there, I try to offer advice where I can. But yeah, if folks want to learn more about Treat PR and how we might collaborate, we have a variety of different ways that we engage with races no matter their size or their scope. Our crisis communications planning is a part of our podium package which is our full-service kind of ultra-premier PR agency experience for race directors where, for six months leading up to their race, we're providing them with full-service PR support - everything from press releases to crisis plans to media training and everything in between. We also have our Tempo plans, which are a great document package for races of all sizes to make sure that they're sharing key information points about their race and getting it out there in their local media. We have our online courses. We have a free media training course that anybody can take called, "Headed for the Headlines" that folks can utilise on our website. It's a one-hour training that will get you prepped for that interview whether you're hoping to have one soon or you've already secured one. And then we have our PR DIY course for race directors who might be on a limited budget or who want to bootstrap their PR efforts called "Headlines and Finish Lines", and that has hours of video worksheets, cheat sheets, everything you can think of, and we're always adding new content to the course. So it's a one-time investment, but you're going to continue to get new trainings from us that will hopefully benefit you as you drive great mutually beneficial relationships for your race. And then, as you mentioned, yes, speaking at some upcoming conferences. I'm super active in places like LinkedIn. So I'd love to connect with people there. And if they have questions, they can always simply shoot us a quick email. You can either contact Hello@treatpublicrelations.com, or you can send one directly to me at meg@treatpublicrelations.com and I'll be happy to offer you some advice and see if there might be a way for us to support you in good times and in bad weather to crisis situation or a time of celebration for your race.

Panos  1:13:44  
Indeed, and I should mention that the "Headlines and Finish Lines" course which is, as you say, video-based sort of goes a lot further than the very helpful podcast we had on PR and earned media a while back that I would also advise people to go back and check out. That online course is also available at the very gracious 30% off for our members for anyone who wants to go through that. And I do think it's a great investment, regardless of whether you take the course or not, for people to invest more in their PR and media. They can really take the field and the perception and the effectiveness of the race with participants and with the local community to a whole different level. So, hoping for an uneventful 2024 with as few crises to communicate around as possible. I want to thank you very, very much for taking the time today to be with me. I hope you enjoyed it.

Meg  1:14:45  
Yes, always a lot of fun to chat with you, Panos, and to be in the world of running. I just feel so lucky that I get to work in this industry every day and talk about races as much as humanly possible, and this is a great space for us to all learn together and connect. So, appreciate you having me on and appreciate the community that you've built around this podcast and Race Directors HQ. 

Panos  1:15:08  
Well, thank you very much for all your contributions to the podcast. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to talk about something completely different in the future. Thank you very much for your time again, Meg. It was really helpful and thanks to everyone listening in, and we'll see you guys on our next podcast.

Panos  1:15:31  
I hope you enjoyed today's episode on crisis communications with Meg Treat of Treat Public Relations. You can find more resources on anything and everything related to race directing on our website, RaceDirectorsHQ.com. You can also share your thoughts about some of the things discussed in today's episode or anything else in our Facebook group, Race Directors Hub. Many thanks again to our awesome podcast sponsor RunSignup for sponsoring today's episode. And if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe on your favourite player, and do check out our podcast back-catalogue for more great content like this. Until our next episode, take care and keep putting on amazing races.