Freshfields recently conducted a survey of more than 100 senior crisis communications professionals from 12 different countries, including the U.S. The report demonstrates persuasively that many corporations are not prepared to handle potentially damaging “digital age” crises.

What Freshfields means by “digital age crisis” is, really, “Twitter-age crisis.” One of the report’s big takeaways is how quickly Twitter and other social media platforms can spread news of a crisis – according to the report, more than a quarter of crises spread internationally within a single hour and over two-thirds do so within 24 hours.  While the border-jumping nature of social media is part of the reason HC co-founded the international Crisis & Litigation Communications Alliance some years ago, this is not to us the most interesting part of the report. Today, everyone understands that a tweet from Edward Snowden can be read just as quickly in the United States as it can be in Russia.

The key is preparation. A corporation cannot be ready to act quickly and effectively in response to crises unless it has planned to do so.

More revealing were the findings on how long corporations typically have to prepare for a crisis-inducing story (a long time, in most cases) and how long it takes them to formulate a response (also surprisingly long). From Freshfields:

Yet businesses are not moving fast enough to contain a crisis when it breaks despite having between a few days and several months’ notice to plan a response in almost six out of 10 (58%) cases. On average it takes 21 hours before companies are able to issue meaningful external communications (signed off by their legal advisers) to try and manage the issue and more than 48 hours in a fifth (18%) of incidents.

With at least a few days notice of a crisis story, corporations (and their legal advisors) should be ready with responsive action in far fewer than 21 hours.

What can companies and counsel do to improve these numbers, and ultimately save themselves the long-term damage to their stock prices that, according to the Freshfields survey, occurs in more than 50% of crises?

The key is preparation. A corporation cannot be ready to act quickly and effectively in response to crises unless it has planned to do so.  It’s an obvious concept that virtually everyone would agree to, and yet as the Freshfields report demonstrates, the corporations that adequately plan for crises are surprisingly rare. (A full 50% of survey responders said that their employers were not adequately prepared for a crisis.) One reason for this failure of planning, we believe, is that corporations understand the concept, but not the specifics. They may have a difficult time visualizing what “planning for a crisis” actually looks like, and thus push it off to another day.

It’s nothing too exotic, and in fact HC helps our clients with it all the time. A crisis-planning effort would include, for instance:

• Develop a protocol for crisis response: The protocol should assign specific responsibilities to key communications personnel and c-suite executives. And although parts of it will be adapted in any real-life crisis situation, it’s always better to start with a game plan.
• Running simulations: Dry runs give crisis responders the space, time, and practice to identify weaknesses and help fine-tune the company protocol.
• Enhanced social media expertise: A company may be great at building followers and running incentive campaigns over social media, but the skills needed to handle a crisis are different. Companies should train those who run their social media accounts on what to do in a crisis situation, or alternatively establish a procedure to hand over control of the accounts to others in times of crises.
• Relationship building with influencers: One of the best things that companies can do to prepare for a crisis down the road is to build solid relationships now with the most important media outlets and influencers in their field. If the first time you come to them is in the midst of a crisis situation, it will be hard to establish the trust necessary to turn a story your way.

Those are just a few specific steps that any company can take to get itself prepared for a crisis. And as the Freshfields survey shows, that preparation is more important than ever in the digital age.