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How much time and effort has your company spent building up its reputation? Is this an investment that you’re able to protect? How long do you suppose it would take for an incident to destroy your company’s reputation if you weren’t prepared?
You have controls in place to manage risks to your other investments and assets, but have you given thought on what you could do to protect the investment your company has made in building and maintaining its reputation?
At O’Brien’s Response Management, we’ve witnessed nearly every significant incident become a reputation threatening event. An incident that damages your company’s reputation can affect
- Customer relationships and approvals
- Financing/credit rating/analyst reports
- Current and future partnerships and alliances
- Ability to obtain insurance and other financial instruments at acceptable rates
- Future growth potential/market share
- Treatment by news media and increased scrutiny by government regulators (including new regulations).
Incidents can quickly escalate into a business crisis and a business crisis will last as long as there is news media interest in the incident. Is your business ready for global news media scrutiny in the event of an incident involving one of your ships or facilities? Does your company have processes in place and the ability to field a team to respond to an incident and return your business operations to normal as soon as possible? Have you managed this risk?
O’Brien’sRM provides Public Information Officer (PIO) representation for your company with our professional staff, which is fully integrated with the O’Brien’sRM Spill Management Team. Only O’Brien’sRM provides immediate and integrated PR coverage from the very beginning of an incident, including reputation and crisis management. O’Brien’sRM public relations staff are brought into an incident as part of the initial notification process run by our 24/7 command center--no other company can make this claim. We wrote your plans, we exercise your plans and we can now fold the critical, high visibility communications function into the rest of the coordinated services required for a successful response.
There is an important period of time called the "Golden Hour," the first hour of a response even before Unified Command is formed. It's important that your PIO is able to cover that period between the initial notification of an incident and when the USCG or state agency first sends out its first press release. This period of time can also be very short; it could be under an hour as the USCG is now under pressure to get a press release out as soon as possible.
We'll coordinate that first media statement between you and the USCG or other regulators to insure that you will know what the government is saying and that what they're saying is something that you can also use. Please send an email to toleary@obriensrm.com for more information about this inexpensive but important coverage. This service is provided separately from other plans.
O’Brien’sRM also provides:
- A free assessment of vulnerabilities potentially threatening your reputation
- Pre-agreed initial and follow-on public statement templates and pre-agreed vessel and company/owner data sheets to be used as news media briefing materials. This provides you with the confidence and knowledge that information being released about your company and assets are what you have previously approved. This also allows your PR representative to get ahead of the news cycle in the “Golden Hour” of response, instead of playing catch up
- Internal professional PR staff and a worldwide network of O’Brien’sRM vetted PR professionals
- Staffing of a Joint Information Center (JIC) with other Unified Command participants as required by the ICS
- Monitoring the output of print, broadcast and internet news media outlets, which is made accessible to the client via website for 24/7 access
- Global and/or targeted electronic distribution of press releases as needed
- Training on and writing of crisis communications and crisis management plans
- Training your staff on Incident Command System (ICS) O’Brien’sRM is an industry leader providing highly experienced ICS staff to handle your response. As ICS is the designated incident response structure in the United States, a basic understanding of this important response management system is beneficial for your staff
- “Dark” website preparation and utilization of social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in preparation for an incident
- Reputation-based crisis management exercises
- Public meeting representation, government relations and community outreach
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