From Sierra Leone to AI: Modern Crisis Communication Tactics

I think every business, large or small should

say, okay, if something hits the fan,

what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand

is not it. You want to address it quickly.

And welcome to a new episode of

Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett

Deister. And if you can please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting.

Absolutely. A five star review really does help with rankings. Let me know

how I am doing. But this week I have Angela with me

and she is a global communication professional with over 20 years of

experience. She has worked on projects across five

continents, including two years in Sierra Leone

during the Ebola virus crisis. She is the founder and CEO of

Benacourt Group, a strategic communication marketing

firm dedicated to amplifying individuals, businesses and organizations

driving positive environmental and social

impact. But welcome to the show, Angela. Thank you so

much. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes. The first question

I asked all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? I am

a coffee drinker. I love tea, so no hate on the tea, but I'm a

coffee drinker for sure. Anything specific or

is it just Starbucks or whatever else is in the Keurig? I

brew my own coffee at home. I have my little like percolator,

cafeteria thing that I use and I make myself very, very

strong, strong, strong cups of coffee in the morning. And then I have my own

little, my little favorite creamer that I put into it. But if I'm

out and about and need a bit of coffee.

Yeah, I try to go to coffee places that are unique

to the destination and if all else fails, can't go wrong with

a grande coffee from Starbucks. Yeah, it's

easier to find. But I get you about finding the little independent

shops that usually have the better cups of coffee. Exactly.

So I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give our listeners a

little bit more about what you do? Yeah. So as you, as you

mentioned, I've been working in PR marketing industry for over

20 years and my career trajectory has been

extremely nonlinear. I've worked in so many different industries. Started off in

hospitality and worked my way through several PR

agencies in New York and agencies with offices in

San Francisco and just, you know, the really big cities. And I worked

in house for some very large brands. And then the

last couple of years I've been working,

my work has been focused on environmental and social impact. And what does that

mean? Essentially, I love working with businesses,

organizations, individuals that are trying to do good

things for the planet. Whether that is a

ocean advocacy nonprofit, whether

it's a film that talks about

climate change in a really great storytelling way,

or a business that is creating products

out of recycled materials, these are the types

of businesses and organizations and individuals that I love

working with because they're doing such interesting, cool

things. And I just want to be there to help them amplify and

elevate these stories and their projects so that more people are

aware of what they are doing. Got you. So how do you adapt

messaging to resonate with diverse markets and cultures across

different continents? Absolutely. So it really comes

down to your audience. It comes down to

the people you're serving, who is the product for,

who is this nonprofit for, who are the

people that you are trying to help?

And once you have identified these

elements, then you create messaging

that helps you best deliver

your message, your story, what you're trying to achieve

to this audience. And so it doesn't matter

if I'm in, you know, working in Sierra Leone or

working on a client project in Kenya

or on a project in London, I

always think about, who are we in service

for? Who is this for? What are we trying to achieve?

And why does this product or service or film

or whatever, it might be important to the. To your

audience and how it's going to make their lives or their community

or the planet more generally

better? And so

that's true of the audience, it's true of the culture that you're in.

It's really about having your

audiences come first in your messaging and how

it benefits them. And once you know the context,

then you can adapt your message to

that context in a way that will resonate. And then what's of

the marketers, like, never been to that country, but they have to talk to it.

Like, how's the best way of figuring that out? Because I think most of the

problem is that if you've never been to a place, don't know the culture of

the place, don't know how they speak slang or whatever,

it's harder to make a message for something you have no idea about.

Yeah. And I think, luckily for technology, there are so many ways to

access culture these days. And so to

anyone who's trying to break into a new market or wants to

introduce a product to an entirely different culture, the first thing

is, I would say, is if you don't know anything about that culture, find someone

who does. You know, connect with them on social media,

reach out to them on, you know, on LinkedIn, on Instagram,

and schedule a call on WhatsApp on Zoom and talk

to them, talk, talk to them about their community,

about who they are, about what matters to this community

about. Because it has to be people first. It has

to be person first and humanity forward.

And so once you, you know, you can find someone

who's your, essentially your, your, your translator,

your introduction to a culture,

that local person is going to know that culture and so

rely on them, talk to them as a way to

understand what you're trying to achieve. Right.

If you, if you determine that your product or your service is

going to perform, is going to do good in this community,

all you have to do is get into this community. Then

starting with the people there, the local people there. You can't go wrong.

All right? And I mean even for like a preliminary like

research, is AI okay for that? Like just to do your topical research

and then talk to somebody? Because sometimes you don't even know where to start.

Absolutely. I think it's really great to educate yourself

about a market ahead of time. And I think,

you know, 40 years ago that would have been an encyclopedia or whatever

50 years ago. And then later on it would have been, you

know, you would just go, you know, you'd go on Google and look. So if

you tell AI or OpenAI or any of these Gemini or any of these other

platforms, hey, I need a brief history about this country. I need,

I need to understand, I need a little bit of understanding of

this story of this country and this AI platform gives you

the answer. I think that's great. I think it's really great. I think it's, it

shows your effort in wanting to understand a culture before, ahead of

speaking to someone there. And you can say, you know, I,

here's what I discovered online, right? That this, you know, X country,

X city, X whatever is such and such and such

and such and such. And historically xyz. And

now that I have that information, I want to hear it from you. What's your

lived experience there? What's your actual day to day?

What is, what is of the time right now? Right.

So 100% sure, use, use whatever

knowledge source you can to educate

yourself. Obviously you want to make sure everything's factual and that you're getting information

from credible places. And yeah, I think it's respectful

to educate yourself ahead of a conversation with a person.

But I don't think that Google research

and, or any artificial intelligence is a replacement

for a conversation with an actual person in this destination.

I think it's complimentary and I think it's a, it's a setting,

the foundation for a conversation. So basically, Gen

Z making chatgpt their, like, lifeguide is probably the

worst thing you can do right now. I think asking

ChatGPT a bunch to make a bunch of assumptions about people and a certain

culture, and then you just walk into that culture with all these

assumptions that whatever the platform gave you, I

don't recommend, I don't recommend. I

don't think anyone would want that to be their own experience. I don't

necessarily know if I want someone to just go onto, you know, an

AI platform, pull up a bunch of stuff about my city and then be like,

so this is what I know about your city and this is what I've assumed

about all of you, you know, everyone here, when that's

just. I don't recommend. I do think it's great for research.

I do think it's great to empower yourself with knowledge ahead of a conversation.

But this is, this is one of those areas where at the end of the

day, a Zoom call, a WhatsApp call

is still extremely necessary when you're talking about

bringing something to a market. And I think

some great people will tell you if you're developing a product, to test it out

in the market as quickly as possible. Right. Don't wait for it to be perfect

and you want to put it out there and get real human,

human feedback about the

product. So, yeah, AI does not replace a

conversation. And can you share example of a global

communication campaign you led that had a significant impact and

what factors contributed to its success? Yeah. So one

example that I'll share that I felt really, really felt international to

me. The two years that I was in Sierra Leone, there were a

lot of different things going on in this program, a lot of incredible things that

the people on this team were able to do that was just

brilliant and in the big scheme of things, had great impact in

society. But one of the things that I was tasked to lead, to help lead,

at least from the communications and marketing side, was the

country's first ever renewable energy conference.

And we had a very short window of time to pull this off,

and it required participation and

collaboration with the Minister of Energy and his team. At that

time of administration, it required a lot of input,

it required a lot of funding, it required a lot of different things. And

we invited several hundred people from around the world

to attend this conference. So the majority of attendees were Sierra

Leonean, but we had people come in from Nigeria, we had people come in from

China, we had people come in from Europe. The United States. I was part

of the team helping to literally send out those invitations and coordinate their

visas upon arrival. And then

this conference was part of a bigger story. Sierra Leone was one of

the first countries to sign a, an agreement or a compact

with the Energy Africa Campaign, which was at the time a

British led initiative to help bring renewable

energy power to a region of the world that

was so energy poor. And Sierra Leone was one of the first countries,

or I believe the first country to sign this compact. And so

we're talking like ministers from other countries. It was a big deal.

And this conference was born out of the sign signing of

this compact that was like, okay, well we're going to have these ministers come in

and sign this document. We might as well build a bear conversation around

it. And several things happened. One, it was

wildly successful conference, very, very proud of that.

And so many pieces went into it. And it was

really about informing and letting the world know, especially

European markets, that Ebola was in the

past. The country was now looking forward to

the next step to recovery, to thriving, to bouncing back.

And the renewable energy market was ripe and ready for

investment. And so this, my part was

to get out press releases, help set up press conferences to let the

world know that Sierra Leone gets six months

of sunshine a year opposite of the rainy season, which is like another

six months. And that's a whole other thing. This country with so much

sunshine and so much opportunity was ready for

renewable energy sources from all over the world.

And long story, it's already a long story. But longer story short,

the campaign resulted in over two

dozen international media coverage. So from

Europe, from around the greater

African region, from London, which is a

really, really big deal. And so I would say that was

very successful campaign to let the world know that

Sierra Leone is ready for investment, ready for renewable

energy. Business got you. And

was there any pitfalls you had to overcome? And how did you overcome those pitfalls

with so many? One, it was, we were

a small team. I'm very, till this day,

I'm just in awe of what this team was able to accomplish

literally in like a three month period to pull something of this

magnitude off. The other worry is

that this whole conference was about

bringing renewable energy to a country that is energy

poor, that does not have a power

grid, that can be at the time

power and bring energy to everyone. One of

our worries that would have been super ironic, but

possibly also proving a point is

what if the power goes off during the conference?

What if that happens? It didn't. We prepared

adequately for that. Moment to avoid

that moment from happening. But that was something we had to overcome. We had to

come up with a plan. Another point to overcome

was the coordinating international visas

and the access of logistical

access from the airport of Sierra Leone to the mainland part

of Sierra Leone, which required a boat ride. So there was

a lot of questions around, how do we get people

that are coming in smoothly transitioned from the airport,

which required, you know, a bus ride, a boat ride, a bus ride,

and get them to this conference, especially people that have never been

to the country before. We wanted

to make sure everyone was. There was food at this conference

and so finding

partners that would cater

to this amount of people. So there were several challenges

that we had to overcome. One of the most interesting ones was

Sierra Leone has what they call Paramount Chiefs,

which is kind of a governor, if

you will. They have 149 paramount chiefs, which kind of represent these

different states within Sierra Leone. And they're kind of like governors would be in the

United States. Most of these

chiefs do not have Internet connection.

So to invite them it required old school

texting and keeping track of

this long list. Right. It was like, how do we

email? We can't email them, we can't

send them an invite and we can't mail them an invite. How do we

invite these Paramount Chiefs to come

to this event?

There was no other way than to just sit there one evening

with my colleague and just start texting on a flip phone.

It was sometimes you just have to get back to basics to

overcome challenges. When technology cannot

help you, you have to just go back to the basics. And I, and I

find that to be an interesting life lesson in many

ways. Yes. Sometimes old tech is the best. Tech.

Exactly. Or no tech is the best.

Yeah. So it was, it was interesting. You know, you really have to just be

resourceful and really creative. And so I really like

to think about those opportunities as they're not so much challenges. But,

you know, if you've ever wanted to try to think outside the box, here you

go. Here's the opportunity to get really creative and to literally think

outside of the parameters that you're accustomed to.

And then how can small businesses with limited budgets adopt a global.

And then how can small businesses with limited budgets. Absolutely.

And that's a great question because again, I think that probably now

more than ever, it's so easy to connect with people

around the world and, and really leverage the

technologies that are currently available. And it doesn't

have to cost a lot of money. I think the key, though, is strategy.

Where do you want to go? Why do you want to go there and what

benefit can you provide to the people there?

And so that is the main thing. I love

seeing small jewelry brands and other

businesses that have very small operations in the States,

but they're eager to bring their products, product and

ship to people. And so it's, it's, the question is if you really

believe in your product doing well there and it makes sense for what you're

trying to achieve and you can identify your target audience in these

markets, then there, it's, there's

never been a better time to set yourself up logistically

to support that. Right. It's easy now to

ship products worldwide, easier than it's ever been.

And so you think about what does that look like logistically for you?

Right. And I think that really just having a

plan of action, of execution that makes sense for your

operations is the key. And thinking about

things like pricing, what about

shipping fees? What about maybe any import fees? Are

these things that you want to absorb? Are you going to work them into

your international pricing for your customers to cover those

costs? And so when you start thinking about the

customer first and their experience, that will

guide, I think that would really guide you as to the best

way to bring your product to a new country. Does the

infrastructure there support this? Do you want

to set up? There's a brand that I really love, she

does like home interior and she's just always been

British based. And she not too long ago she posted on her

Instagram that she opened up this huge warehouse in the United

States and she's high volume, high, you know, very

recognized brand in Europe and she posted this huge

warehouse in the United States and her thing was, okay,

US Folks, now it's going to be easiest as it's ever been for you to

order these products because she's thinking about people first.

And you know, in an age where you can

have same day or next day delivery and sometimes overnight

delivery, what does that look like? What does the delivery process

look like for your customer? So once you start thinking about customer first,

I think that is your North Star in how you enter any

new market, but especially an international market. And have the

tariffs actually played any role in maybe

negatively impacting all that stuff? Because I know at least in the

US we do have uncertainty in that. And so has it

negatively impacted going more global because of it's more

expensive, it's more expensive maybe to ship into the United States or whatever?

Yeah, and that, that's a really great question. I think it depends on the industry

and I also think it depends on your.

And I think it's, I think it's going to be very personal to the business.

So I think some industries are going to be feeling it a lot more than

other industries. I know in the, in the retail industry, I'm

hearing retailers that are again,

European based, that have US audiences, US

customers, some of them are just absorbing the costs.

They're saying we're not increasing prices, we're going to absorb the cost on

our end to keep things smooth for the customer.

And so it's really, I think that

to different degrees the tariffs are going to impact, especially if

you rely on international shipping, you have an international audience already.

I think it's going to perhaps impact your supply chain

and definitely some industries more than others. And so I think if you're

an industry where tariffs are going to impact you, it's rough,

it's a hard time. And I think it really comes down to

the current state of your business and where you're based

and what resources might be available for you as a business owner in

your particular area and, and also your

ability to absorb or not the price

of what it's going to cost your customer. And

we've, you know, I think I've already seen prices go up. I've seen, I've

gotten like notifications that prices are going to go up in some

stores and that really just comes down to

that individual business, some larger than others that are saying,

you know what, you know, it's, it's prices are going

to go up a little bit, we're going to absorb a little bit or we're

absorbing everything and we want to keep things the

same price for you. And that's what I've seen from

retailers that have one or two retailers that I've seen

that I, that I'm a customer of have they have

absorbed the price and just to keep it better for the customer.

So it's, it's, it's a great question, but it's a hard question because I think

it depends on the industry and I think it depends on your supply

chain and I think it depends on the, the

current status of your business. I think if you're hurting,

it might just hurt even more. And if you're in a position where you

can survive it,

I think, you know, that's good for you. I saw

in the news there was farmers, farming community

that said, you know, we can absorb the cost for the next couple of

months but after that we might be in trouble. Right. So I just think it

depends. And what do you believe are the most common mistakes companies

make when facing a PR crisis? And how can they avoid that?

So crises will happen, right? Just like in life,

right? Things happen. And to

avoid is not the approach I think

every business, large or small should say,

okay, if something hits the fan,

what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand

is not it. You want to address it quickly. You want to,

you want to research, get to the bottom of

things, and you want to be prepared

to explain what happened. But even more

importantly, accountability account of, someone's got to be

accountable for what happened. If it was an error that your organization

made, and I've seen it happen all the time in smaller levels of

sorry, this shipment just isn't going to get to you on time. We

made a mistake with our XYZ shipping process.

Here's what we're doing to correct it, here's what we're going to do in the

future to let it not happen again. And here's

10% off. Right? Like you never want to avoid.

If you're in a crisis situation and you're still needing to assess,

the first thing that you can do is say, we're in a crisis situation

and I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. We're getting to the bottom

of it, we're investigating, we're looking into it, we are taking action.

That is key. Avoidance. Denying is not

going to work, especially not in this day where things

will go, things will get tweaked, things will just get shared quicker than you can

even say, right? And so the key is

acknowledge, investigate,

understand what's going on, take corrective action.

You know, take accountability, take corrective action. If it was something that's out of

your control, but it's still impacting your business

or it's still kind of brought into a crisis, same thing applies.

You have to recognize what role you played in a crisis.

And if there was no role at all, well, what role are you going to

play in the solution? You want to make sure you're taking action.

You want to make sure you let immediately communicate what you're doing to correct

the problem, what you're doing to avoid it from happening ever

again. And then you want to continue to take those

steps to show that you've made a difference.

Sending out a press release, but not taking any action behind

the scenes is a negative action. You

want to take action and you want to find solutions and you want to put

things into place to avoid these things happening ever again.

And then in your experience, how can storytelling play a role

in rebuilding public trust after a crisis? Because there is that after

the crisis ends, you have to rebuild that trust again. Right? And that's why.

But that's why your response to the crisis is so important for how things are

going to play out. Because by tackling it head

on, not sticking your head in the sand, by tackling it head on and

saying this happened. If apology needs

to be, if there needs to be an apology, then you apologize. And

then you take corrective action and you show transparency. Because

your response is where the trust is begins.

If you're avoidant, if you're in denial, if you push blame

to everyone else except for yourself or your company or whomever or

whatever happened, you are breaking the foundation of

trust. And so from the very beginning,

trust is on the table. How you respond

and what you do every step of the way until it's resolved.

And then what you do after is where

the trust is. If you're

shady, you're not clearing your communications, you're denying,

you're pushing, placing blame everywhere except for where you

need to be. If you're not taking accountability, if you're

screaming at people, yelling at people on

threads, Instagram, whatever it is, you are not

going to be seen as a trustful person. And

now a situation that was already bad is

now 10 times worse, and it's going to be much more difficult to recover

from just because of failure to take those

steps. So if you do those things and tackle it head on

and apologize sincerely if you need to, and take corrective

action and then demonstrate, show people. Don't just

tell people, show people what you are doing. What

does that look like? Maybe it's a tour of your factory.

Maybe it's, you know,

it's a visibility report. It's something.

But you're transparent about what you're doing and you're demonstrating that

you've taken actionable steps, then the next step is

here, here, the outcome of the steps we have taken.

And you're transparent and open. You know, it's a town

hall. It's a. Ask me, you know, ask me anything on,

you know, it's an Instagram live. It's whatever it is.

Now you are saying, gosh, you know, things happen, things

hit the fan, things go wrong, that this person was on top of it, they

stayed ahead of it, they are sincere, they're taking

actions. And that's all part of that storytelling,

right? Talking about who you are. And when a crisis

happens, leaning on those initial values

and tripling down on your stance and your mission is

extremely important. And so your storytelling is happening

in your accountability and the actions that you're taking.

Here's an infographic of the 10 steps we took to correct action.

Here is an IG live with

a non leadership, an employee, whoever, who is our

testimonial to what we're doing. Here's a third party

independent person that came in to

review and here's their outcome. We're putting it all out for you to see.

Here's you know, the story is that narrative that you're telling.

And so the actions

turn into the stories that you're telling your audience. And then

afterward you continue to tell the story of,

you know, a year has passed. Reflect on what you've learned,

reflect on the impact

show. Demonstrate a year later, two years later, that you're

still keeping your word about the things that you said. Those

are the stories that you want to start telling

very early on and continue to tell in your business,

service, organization, etc.

Got you. And can you share a specific story about a challenging crisis

you managed and how you successfully navigated that?

I have a few. I'm

trying to think, I would say

part of me is I'm also grateful that I haven't been a part of

a crisis that was like, so, you know, an international

incident or anything like that. I'd like to think that the

organizations and the businesses that I've worked with have been really good about

putting practices and procedures in place to avoid those types of things. But

I will share one story that I think was kind of interesting. In my experience

in Sierra Leone around this conference, we had someone,

you know, I was mentioning that we had these international visas that needed to be

established as a landing visa so that number one, they would be emailed

ahead of time to the attendees and there would be a

visa available for them, the actual visa available for them at the airport.

I had somebody coming in from China that

I guess the email was sent to them en route to Nigeria,

their connecting flight, and they never

couldn't access their emails or didn't have Internet connection. And now they're in a

connecting flight in Nigeria and the Nigerian airport wasn't going to let them leave. So

I start getting calls at 3 o' clock in the morning like, hi, I'm coming

from here. I need to get into this. You know, this is someone who we,

we needed to have at this conference. And

I quickly knew that this was going to be a problem. And almost like, how

do I sought, Like I'M not an intern. Like, I'm not a, you

know, visa person. I'm not part of this government at all.

Like, it's wild that they're calling me. But I guess because I, you know,

as part of this invitation process, they were calling me at three o' clock in

the morning. I remember speaking to Nigerian authorities

about that. In fact, we had sent this visa to this person that they're not

staying there. They're trying to get in transit. Talk about

interacting with someone of a different culture, of a powerful position.

And I'm not a person of government authority of any kind,

but I'm trying to work out with this person. They were a little bit panicked,

a little bit. If you can imagine, you're traveling this long way. And

then once again, I was able to

somehow talk to them. They were able to get on the flight, and when they

landed in Sierra Leone, their visa wasn't there. So now it was

more phone calls. And I'm just sitting here thinking,

this is bad. How do we get this person in? And I can't solve

this. I need to call some people. I didn't really know what to do, and

I was feeling a little bit panicked. But I realized that

we did have these. Even though the documentation wasn't there, I knew that we

could produce this documentation eventually. I

just took a deep breath, I calmed myself, and I thought, okay,

let me start calling some people that can make these

decisions to let someone into a country that's not me. It was

just interesting that they were calling me

again. It was very early in the morning at this time, and I spoke to

a lot of authorities and I also

said that, well, the Minister of Energy will vouch for

this, you know, because I had a good relationship with the Minister of

Energy Wild,

and it worked out. But I realized I was. It did all work

out in the end, but I realized it was a very. I felt like it

was a situation where I could have overstep boundaries or

the immigration officer did get mad at me.

I'm like, this is not, you know,

so of course you don't want to.

You want to keep a clear head and you want to

ensure that you are bringing people into. If you can't solve

a problem, you need to bring the people into the fold that can solve the

problem. And if they're not available to solve the problem, then you

need to refer them to other people that can't solve the problem.

And I think it was like, if you couldn't get in, they were going to

send him back. It was this whole traumatic, dramatic thing. In

the end it was like, look, I know that the Minister of Energy would be

okay with this person coming in. And

in the end it worked out. But it was a little bit

nerve wracking for me. This is international officials

and I'm just someone working

there, you know, it could have been a

crisis, I think, but it turned out not to be. And I think I

like to think that I took the right steps in de. Escalating in talking

to people, in leveraging relationships, in talking, you

know, just pulling from resources that I can in order to

make it so that this person can indeed attend this

conference. And they were really upset, which is

kind of added extra intensity

to the situation. But it worked out. It was a crisis averted

story, I would say. And how do you

advise organizations to shift public narratives during polarizing

and emotionally charged situations? Oh,

that is. We're seeing that play out

right now in real time. And

I very much admire the

organizations that are sticking with

their mission and sticking with their

initial approach to things

and are not wavering in their

commitment to, to what they said they were going to set out to do.

I truly. Because that's the hard thing to do.

It's easy to say okay and change course with the wind.

It's much harder to say no,

we will always represent these people and we're going to continue

to represent these people no matter who says we need to not

represent these people. That is sticking with your values.

Sticking with your values is

not easy. And you know

the strength of your values when they're tested. Right? When

you get, when you get tested, that's when you really

know the strength of your values and your conviction to your mission as an

organization. And so

if you, if you've established a business

with a certain mission and a certain value system

and it's worked for you, you are a thriving business. The business people love

and you stick with it during hard times. That says something about

the character of that business. And it's the same thing about that person. If somebody

is really

passionate and authentic and true about their intentions,

good intentions, and they're tested and they

stick with it despite pressures, outside pressures,

that's extremely hard to do. And I

admire organizations that say,

we're sticking with our value system, we're sticking with our mission. We're not

changing course because it doesn't work with

some external factor. Got you. And then what advice would you give

an organization aiming to integrate proactive crisis communication

planning into their overall marketing strategy? Yes,

everyone should have one. Everyone should have one. No matter what size of

your organization, you know, whether something. Do a SWOT analysis,

right? Old school SWOT analysis. We always hear about SWOT

analysis forever and ever in college and ever and ever do the SWOT

analysis. Because in that SWOT analysis you have what, your

threats, right? And so the old school

SWOT analysis I think is

underrated. Look into that, right?

What are the threats that are

facing your business? And just get your team together

and say, gosh, what are all the things that could go wrong?

You know, play devil's advocate. What are all the things that could go wrong? What

if someone says this? What if we put out this message and they start wanting

to cancel us? What if we decide that we want to put out this

product and it turns out to be a bad product that malfunctions?

We need to do a recall. It's a fun

exercise, you know, do the whole swap. Because it's nice to see your opportunities and

it's nice to see, you know, your strengths and what are your

weaknesses and what are your threats. And

that is a great way, old school way

to really get into the

things that could potentially hinder your business or

hurt your reputation, right? From a PR

side, what does that look like? Do you have messaging

points? Are your people media trained?

Your employees are your best, best, best, like

cheerleaders, right? Or not?

Right. So what is your culture?

Is there some stuff going on that if it's, you know,

if it made the news or someone, you know, did a tick tock about

it, or if somebody did something,

can that hurt you? You know, is there what's shady? And so when

you look at these, when you look at these weaknesses and threats in your

business, I think that gives you a really good foundation as to,

okay, here are really the things that can hurt us if it goes wrong

and goes in violation of our values and our

culture. Let's put in a process in place.

Once you have that process, delegate, delegate.

Who's going to be in charge of

putting. You have your messaging points, but then who's going to be in charge

of the specific messaging points of the situation? Who's going to take this

point and put it on social? Who's going to get in front of the camera,

do a press conference? Hopefully the CEO or the business or the leader of the

organization, or you or whoever. You know, you want to have

a plan. And your plan starts with understanding your vulnerabilities

as a business. Vulnerabilities in your culture,

vulnerabilities in your, in your operations, vulnerability in

Your business practices, all of these areas

can be potential sparks

for crisis. And you also want to think about,

well, what if a crisis falls in our lap? Has nothing to do

with us. You know, we are just minding our own business. But somebody,

somebody packaged something in a bad packaging

and you happen to use a similar type of packaging, but it's different.

And now you get dragged through the mud because of whatever.

It's good to think about these things too and have

a game plan, you know, acknowledge,

investigate, take corrective action if it's

necessary, issue an apology if it's necessary, accountability,

and then the steps to make things better.

That's going to look a little bit different for every organization, especially large

organizations. You really want to have

your team, your

crisis team that you activate

in the event that you need to do it so that there's not pandemonium and

craziness going around and panicking. Right. So, yeah,

that's. That would be my advice. Gotcha. And then what future trends

do you foresee in global communications and crisis management that

businesses should start preparing for now?

Absolutely. I think AI is.

AI is like the best thing ever and the worst thing ever. Right.

In many ways, I think I could be your best, best friend or it

could be just. I mean, I think about

the people that are just getting these deep fake things made of

them. People that are creating entire. There was a

journalist. Here's, here's a crazy thing. And you can look this up because it's happening.

Journalists that are interviewing fake people, they don't know that they're

fake. There was an NPR story about a summer

reading list of books that didn't exist. And authors were like,

I didn't write that. Right.

So these are all crises that you have that you

were just minding your own business. And now someone fake

wrote an AI book and put your name on it or something. And now it's

ranking in npr and you're like, what? I didn't, I didn't

write this. I didn't put this out there. So we're definitely getting

in. In an era where crises can just

come knocking at your door for no apparent reason and you're just minding your own

business via whether it's like deep fakes or scams.

There was the, the author of Diary of the CEO,

Steve Bartlett, he put out a message

not to give people money because people are setting up fake entire

websites with his personality and ask and like

defrauding people out of so much money. And he was like,

no, that is not me. I'm not doing that.

He's just someone, you know, he's this person building this business, building this empire. And

now you have someone over here taking advantage of that, creating these crises

that you have nothing to do with. So it's

crazy time. It's a crazy, crazy time, I think, for

crisis communications because you can get dragged into something you had absolutely nothing to

do with. So just like

Steve did, in response to that, I would say

you need to put this into

your future plans and know that there are people out there

who might want to ruin your image, ruin your reputation, steal your

ideas, do your ideas.

I mean, think about like, this hermes bag, Chinese

TikTok video, and the. The fallout

of, like, oh, my gosh, you know, what are bags really worth? And,

you know, I think those luxury brands were kind of like,

some of them are doubling down. Like, no, no, no. We really do make our

things in Italy. Here's video proof, you know, like, let's discount that.

Another example of how crises can just develop around you. So I think it's really,

really important, number one, to,

again, if you get caught up in one of these crises, you do not

want to spend a second of hesitation to get out there

and correct the record. Nope, that's not

me. Nope, that's not us. Nope, this is not us. This is

who we are. And use every platform

you have to debunk

any thing that's being said about you. And even

then, it could still be. It could still have a tarnish

on your reputation, right? And that's when storytelling becomes

more powerful than ever, because

eventually that will fade. The next crisis

will erupt. That will fade into the background, given

time. And now you need to be out

there doubling down on your vision, your mission, your

statements, who you are, and produce

lots and lots of content across as many

platforms as you can in order to

continue to debunk, even if it's been years

to continue to double down on who you are as a business organization.

But, you know, it's very interesting times. And I'm.

I'm constantly seeing crises pop up that have nothing to do with the person

involved, like the person they're mentioning. No fault of their own. It's

just someone decided to do a deep fake. Somebody set up a fake webpage and

took millions of dollars from people. It's really

unfortunate. But storytelling

and establishing your reputation and your brand about who

you are, right? Because brand is not just the logo, the brand is who you

are fundamentally. And

really strengthening that over and over again, right? Through

marketing practices, through public relations, communications,

is going to be the best way

to avoid

or, and, or survive any type of a crisis of

this nature. Got you. And then people are listening to this podcast and they're wondering

where can they find you online to learn more. Yeah, so my LinkedIn,

which is I think just Angela Bancorp one I think is my like LinkedIn thing.

Angel Betancourt. You'll see my picture. I have a, my, my LinkedIn banner

is scuba diving. So you can, you can find me there. That's a

really great place. From there you can get to my business website. It's

groupbettencourt.com There's a contact me for form there.

That's easy to get to me there too.

The bet in Court group on Instagram is a great way to

reach me there too. Yeah. But I see

LinkedIn because I'm very active on there. So that's a really good place to just

send me a DM and I'll see it.

Yeah, that, that's, you can email me too. You can

email me@Angela Group.com can email me there too. That's

fine. I, I, I try to read as many emails as possible.

Sometimes they go to spam. So just bear with me. If I don't respond, hit

me up on LinkedIn because then I'll see that that's fair. That's fair.

Anyways, any final thoughts for listeners? I think this has been great

interview. I really appreciate that you are having these

conversations because it's really important.

Everything is changing so fast with technology. I think it's really

important that you, I'm definitely of the embrace

technology for your business.

I also, my also advice is no matter what industry you're in,

experiment with some of these AI tools that are out there. I know

for Bancorp Group we're always looking for really innovative ways to tell

stories. And I've been working on just in off

hours on a day when things are quiet around the house. I'm just on my

computer. I've been working on creating interactive

games on educational ones about my

industry on some of these platforms. And it's

fascinating what you can create and it's wonderful. So

when it comes to storytelling, think about all the different tools that are available

that you can leverage to tell stories in innovative and

fun and creative ways. That's something I'm practicing, but I'm

preaching it to you because I think it's going to really help empower you and

your team for the continuation of

much more advancements and changes and things in

technology. All right, thank you, Angela. For joining Digital Coffee Marketing

brand sharing your knowledge on global communication and crisis management.

Oh thank you. Thank you so much. No, this has been great. I'm so happy

you had me on. I really appreciate you. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you

for listening. As always. Please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting

apps. We'll leave a few five star video really does help with the rankings. Let

me know how I'm doing and join me next week as I talk about what's

going on in the PR marketing industry. All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding

what you need to make better crisis plan and for your global

communication and see you next week later.