For the Red Cross a natural disaster is an everyday occurrence and not a reason to break out the crisis communications handbook.

Anita Foster, chief communication officer for the North Texas chapter of the American Red Cross, spoke with my JOUR 5350 course on Wednesday about navigating through a true communications crisis. Foster said that 85 percent of the time a crisis is scandal resulting from something that someone in your organization did. She also said that many times a crisis could have been adverted had someone pushed the alarm bell faster.

The Red Cross communications staff showed their composure in the face of a possible crisis earlier this year, when one of their employees accidently tweeted a personal tweet to the Red Cross Twitter account. The #gettingslizzard tweet and the Red Cross’ quick and humorous reply is now a classic example of sound crisis communications.

In fact, the Red Cross was actually able to bring in donations from the potentially scandalous situation. The Red Cross could have over-reacted, but instead they recognized that human beings make mistakes and showed made their organization more relatable.
Some other tips that resonated with me from Anita’s talk were:

• News doesn’t break anymore; it tweets – it’s usually faster to get 140 characters approved during a crisis than a whole news release.
• Sometimes it’s important to know what not to say during a crisis.
• Don’t forget your audience – media is important, but donors and other important constituencies can be even more important.
• Whenever possible get out ahead of the story – be proactive with the media.

Anita’s presentation really opened my eyes to a different perspective on crisis communications, and reminded me that not sometimes we need to stop and ask ourselves: is this really a crisis? Sometimes we take ourselves and our brand so seriously that it is hard to distinguish between true crisis and something that might turn out to be a blip on the radar.