In this episode of Marketing Insights host and career coach Professor Shanita Baraka Akintonde sits down with two powerhouse voices in the field of crisis communication—Quentin Langley, author, professor, and internationally recognized expert in crisis PR, and Kimberly Willis Green, a seasoned communications strategist and writer specializing in crisis response. Together, they unpack the playbook brands must follow when faced with high-stakes moments that could make—or break—their reputation.
From corporate scandals to social media firestorms, Quentin and Kimberly share real-world lessons on how brands can turn adversity into opportunity. With decades of combined expertise, they reveal why some companies emerge stronger from crises while others never recover. This powerful conversation is essential listening for leaders, marketers, and communicators navigating today’s unpredictable landscape.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
- The role of transparency and speed in shaping public trust.
- Common mistakes brands make when under fire—and how to avoid them.
- Fresh strategies for building resilience into your brand story so you’re ready before the next crisis hits.
Marketing Insights: Crisis Marketing Mastery Transcript
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Greetings, and welcome to another special edition of Marketing Insights Podcast. I'm your host, Shanita Baraka-Akintonde, professor, author, career coach storyteller, and marketing shero. And I'm going to rewind to that storyteller line here for a second because bam, my book, the Front Porch Leader, Great Grand's Recipe for Success just launched, and I am popcorn pleased to be able to say that. Can I say that to you, dear listeners? Dear marketing maestros? Everyone who tunes in regularly to this Marketing Insights podcast. Speaking of this Marketing Insights Podcast, we are in our eighth season, and this season is sprinkled with some very special editions. The main one being that I have the honor, and privilege of interviewing experts in the field. Many of you are used to hearing me talk about the various topics that I espouse on related to marketing, branding, communication, et cetera. And now I'm going to spread my wings, and invite others to join in on this conversation.
And today is no exception. We are back to this topic of crises, crises, crisis management, crises in terms of how brands handle them, all of the above. And so I have two experts in the area of crises who are going to talk to us today, and what's interesting about us, the three of us forming kind of a triangle here, is that we all have education in our blood. We have educational backgrounds. They're going to tell you more about what I mean by that, either as currently serving as educators, having been obviously educated, but working within school systems. We're not necessarily going to suss that out specifically today in terms of brands, although they may want to, but we are going to have that invisible thread that connects us. In addition, all of us are storytellers in our own right, and so, to me, when you talk about how to handle crises, or how you deal with specific things that can cause disruption, being able to own your own narrative in that context is key.
But I'll pause for the cause for a moment, and allow you to meet our wonderful contributors for today. I'm going to start with you, Quinten. Quinten Langley, my homeboy from the Public Relations Society of America. We've done a lot of panels together. Facilitated, and moderated, and done a lot of other things together. But aside from that, Quinten, tell them about your background, please.
Quinten Langly:
Well, you can probably hear my strong Brooklyn accent. I live in Brooklyn. I teach at various universities in New York. I'm actually recording this here from Yeshiva University, that's Manhattan in the background behind me, and I've been working in public relations for decades. My first crisis experience was probably at Shell International about 30 years ago based out of London. I'll let you into a secret. I'm actually British. Though, I did pass the American citizenship exam not long ago, so we will see. Presently, I'm still just a British citizen. I've written a couple of books. Brand Jack is about crisis communications in the social media age, and business, and the culture of ethics, and I'm working on a new one about rhetoric, especially in the age of AI.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Excellent. Thank you, Quentin. And we'll hear more about your extensive background, obviously as we go through the podcast. My next guest has three names, and I always joke, and say about names because I'm into semantics, I'm into alliteration, and all of those things. But Kimberly Willis Green has three names, obviously, but she also has almost that long in terms of decades of experience in the field. She's a master at communication, as I said earlier. She looks at it from branding, communication through a DEI lens. Kimberly, please tell them about yourself, and welcome.
Kimberly Willis Green:
Oh, thank you for having me, Dr. Shanita, and I see we're all in good company as we are PRSA members. So, I'm based out of Atlanta. I have 25 years of comms experience PR, and my specialty is crisis communications. I often tell everyone that I'm the calmest person in the war room. For those of you who worked a crisis, you know what the war room is. My background I started in transit PR at the MARTA, which is the transit system here in Atlanta. From there, I went to American Diabetes Association, but most importantly, I have 13 years of communications experience from Atlanta Public Schools, and Griffin Spalding County School system. So, I'm very happy to be here with you all.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Excellent, thank you so much. So, I'm going to jump right in with the first question for you, Quentin. You have a background in reputation repair. What is one of, and how about we just drill it down to a singular most important factor that you think contributes to a brand's, or business's ability to be able to bounce back after a crisis?
Quinten Langly:
Well, I will go straight to one of my mentors who introduced me to crisis communication. Terence Fane Saunders runs a company called Chalgate out of London. The first thing he told me about crisis was be the person who is telling your own story. There's a lot of instinct on behalf of organizations, especially if they listen to the lawyers to say nothing. The lawyers will tell you, you have the right to remain silent, and that's fine. You do have the right to remain silent. It's just a stupid idea, because someone else is going to be telling that story, and they will not tell it in the way that you want it to be told. You need to get your case out there. So, that I would say is rule number one.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yeah, that's good. We just want to start with one. I know you have a litany of things you could share, but [inaudible 00:06:20]
Quinten Langly:
Yeah, actually, maybe rule number one is stop the bleeding, then start telling your story.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Great. Well, thank you, Quinten. So, I'm going to pivot to you, Kimberly, and ask, you've worked with large organizations, groups turbulent times, helping them navigate through crises as well. How important is the idea of rebuilding yourself in relation to storytelling after a crisis has occurred? So, you've had the crisis, you've dealt with it, or you think you've dealt with it. What role does storytelling play in that, especially in the aftermath?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Well, during the aftermath, you really have to work on earning trust, or regaining trust with your stakeholders. And the instance that I can think of with the Atlanta public cheating scandal, we had to regain the trust of the community members, the donors, and most importantly the parents, and students. And so it's a matter of saying, yes, we admit to whatever it is that just transparency. And then from there, really going in, and explaining what you're doing to rectify what has happened. So, we had to, in the instance of Atlanta, we had to roll out all of these extra tutoring, and things just wrap around support services for the students so that they can get what they're supposed to get, in terms of quality education. And so we had to communicate, and over-communicate that through newsletters, videos, interviews with the media, meetings, going from school to school, community-based meetings. So, a lot of stakeholder engagement coupled with storytelling to again, earn the trust of your constituents.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yeah, that's great. And I should rewind listeners, and guests on the podcast, and say, the reason why this topic of crisis management, the two experts I have on here today is so important is because I think in the world of marketing, branding, communication, we don't often talk about how to manage things that are not going well. A lot of the focus tends to be on kumbaya things, things that make us feel good, the things that we are excited to actually work on in some cases, and I don't know about Quentin, and Kimberly, but I get a rush out of having to tackle a problem. I actually like when something is a little bit more challenging to me, as they say, some meat on the bone, I enjoy the other side of it. Now, obviously, when you're in the midst of it's not always a feel good situation, but even in that process, you're learning, you're able to strategically position yourself, help your client get to the other side, and all of that is a very specific skill set.
So, if you're listening, and you're still in school, I want you to really seriously consider positioning yourself in this area of crisis management, crisis communication, because it's an oft overlooked area. People don't necessarily gravitate toward it, or they respond reactively to it, versus having a proactive plan that means said, Quentin. There is a saying that says never waste a crisis, or a crisis is never a waste, or something like that. What in your opinion, is a way that you can use a crisis to build equity so that on the other side of it actually is a win-win?
Quinten Langly:
Well, I mean you can, I mean, that saying comes out of politics that you can double down on whatever your message was going to be anyway. I mean, the classic one we see in American politics is if there is a school shooting immediately, people who want gun control will say, "Well, that proves we want gun control." And immediately people who are against gun control will say, "Well, if there'd been a good guy with a gun there, it only happened, because that was a no guns zone", or something like that, both sides will repeat the message that they would've said anyway, and use that crisis to reinforce the same old message. You can use that. What you want to come out of it is people saying, well, I'm glad it was those guys dealing with that, because their competitors would not have handled it anywhere near as well.
People will accept that sometimes things do go wrong, and you are right. Emotionally, it can be a very difficult time, but it is exciting. I find students, when they're offered the chance to do a class in crisis communication, they will flock to that, and think, "Oh, this sounds fun." This is not just by these brand of Wheatie Flakes rather than this other brand of Wheatie Flakes. There is some reason behind this, and I've dealt with some emotionally very difficult situations at one company, actually, Shanita company that you, and I both worked at briefly, I was peripherally involved with a client that in upstate New York, an arts festival, and it was the arts festival where someone actually was stabbed.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Stabbed?
Quinten Langly:
Yeah. He was attacked on stage, and stabbed in the eye.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Oh.
Quinten Langly:
It was a horrible situation, obviously. His life was in danger for a while. The first piece of advice I gave people was turn off all your pre-programmed social media. You don't want something going out there saying, "Hey, come along with the Chautauqua Arts Festival. Everyone's having a great time." When plainly, they were not at that point, but that was a huge story. The guy was born in India. He's a British national. He was attacked in the United States. So, that's the three largest English-speaking markets in the world in terms of media, and it was a massive story globally, you can find yourself facing any situation crisis.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yeah, any situation is true. Kimberly, I'm going to ask you that same question. There's no such thing as a, or never waste a good crisis, I should say. There's no such thing as a good crisis. It's never wasted. What are your thoughts on that?
Kimberly Willis Green:
So, my thoughts are you can use any crisis, any issue as a learning lesson. You can take it back to the table, assess with your team in the war room, which your core leaders of the organization, and discuss what went wrong, what went well, and update your crisis communications playbook. And I think that's very important. So, there are lessons learned with every crisis, no matter how big, or small. So, in my previous organizations, we would have those post-crisis meetings, but we would also do tabletop exercises just to practice, and be ready for whatever is going to come. Whether you are working for a transit system, school district, large corporation, there's always a lesson to be learned in a crisis situation.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Right. I think both Quinten, and Kimberly are so poised, and versed. I'm going to give you all two examples, listeners. And Kimberly, and Quinten go back, and listen to some previous podcasts other than the ones I've sent you, because I get a little creative on this platform, but I'm just going to give two quick examples to elaborate on what these two wonderful, stellar professionals have said, in terms of how you can take that crisis, and not waste it, or to reverse it, and make it turn it into a reputational win, so to speak. So, these are a bit off the chart, in terms of they're not products per se, but brands can conclude entertainers. I think we can agree. So, I'll take one with Taylor Swift. Some years ago she was accepting an award, I believe, or she won an award in a category that Kanye West thought should have gone to another artist that we may, or may not know called Beyoncé.
And so he's on the stage, and he says, "I don't think you should have gotten this award." I'm paraphrasing. In other words, he tells her, you're not deserving of this. And she's shell shocked. The audience is shocked. She stands there. It's like a moment is frozen in time. But as we all know from that came this wave of adoration, I'm not going to totally attribute her success, and her wave of fan loyalty to that instance. However, I do know following that instance when I followed it in social media, and other platforms, that a lot of people felt a need to rally behind her to let her know how much they appreciated her music, et cetera, et cetera. And it was a building from there, is what I'm saying. And so-
Kimberly Willis Green:
Yes. That's where all the Swifties grown.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Hello? And now you all know how many millions of people tuned in into her engagement announcement to... You see what I'm saying? So, that is something that you could have slunk off the stage, and just bury the head between her legs, or tail between her legs, and been sad, but it actually turned into something that I felt she built on that.
Quinten Langly:
Yeah. And I will say Beyonce, for all her phenomenal success, and the inspiration she's given to a lot of people is not good at handling social media. She uses it to make announcements about her plans. She doesn't engage with people the way a lot of other celebrities do, and doesn't therefore use it as a learning experience. In fact, I think you were probably there on the panel with me, Shanita, when I presented something, a comparison between Beyonce, and Shakira for the way they use social media, and Shakira is phenomenal at it, apart from anything else, she engages Multilingually mostly in English, and Spanish, but she also speaks Catalan, Portuguese, and Arabic as well.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
No, I wasn't on that panel [inaudible 00:16:55].
Quinten Langly:
...many other people.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay. I wasn't on that panel with you, Quentin, and I don't know. I don't know we have any beehive, or whatever they call them here. So, that's Quentin's opinion. I love him.
Kimberly Willis Green:
Can I just add something to that?
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yes, please.
Kimberly Willis Green:
Can I just add something to that? So, I kind of agree with Quentin in terms of Beyonce not really engaging well on social, and I think it's because her social is so programmed, they're not letting her be her authentic self. I think if she were to go on, and talk to her fans, they would really pretty much appreciate that, but I think that her social comes off as scripted, and she has an entire beehive who would love to engage with her that way, but her team just doesn't, they don't do it.
Quinten Langly:
She has an obvious huge fan base, but as you say, there's not authentic engagement coming from her. I mean, obviously we all appreciate that she has a huge team, but it's announcements, it's rather than following people, talking to them, answering questions, things like that.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yeah, I hear you both on that, and that is actually a valid point because I think you can like someone, or be a fan of their music, or even in the case of brands be a follower, or user of a product, but it doesn't make them above critique, or feedback to make themselves better. I was just going to use Beyoncé as my other celebrity entertainer in a different way. I was going to talk about how also a few years ago, several years ago now, she was asked to sing the national anthem, I believe, at President Obama's inauguration, or swearing in of the office, and it was said that she lip-synced it, and a lot of people criticized it. And so she came back following that performance, and did a live version of the song, and showed that she actually had the ability to sing it.
But I think that resonates with the point you're both making, that being real, and true in a moment, whether it's in real time on social media, is something that resonates with people more than when it comes across as artificial, or scripted. And that actually is a good setup for the next question for you, Kimberly, which is when a crisis happens, news travels fast, especially on social media, right? Whoop, whoop, whoop. It's all over the place. What is something that you recommend that brands products can do to build on your comment about authentic voices, to manage that, but to also be cautious? In some cases you want to be too authentic because you may share some things you shouldn't share. So, can you elaborate on that?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Sure. So, earlier this year I did a crisis panel at PRSA, and one of the things that I mentioned is that what has changed. So, years ago in the war room, you would have your communications person, your operations person, finance, legal, whoever, whatever. You have to add your company, or organization's social media team in that same war room, because the messaging that you flush out, you have to make sure that social is on board. So, definitely include your social media team as a member of your crisis team, but also media is changing as well. So, traditionally, where you would go to your newspaper, your three, or four top tier television stations in your market, you have to start looking at some of the independent news outlets to see how you can get your information out in a timely manner. So, it's almost like you have to balance traditional media with your social media, your bloggers, your independent news outlets on social to make sure that that information is being disseminated at the same time.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yes, excellent, excellent.
Quinten Langly:
And create your own contact.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Right. I was going to ask Quinten, and in terms of it can be related to social media specifically, or not, when you think about brands, or corporations that have made a comeback, what are some ways in which they have orchestrated the best turnaround? Can you think of a brand that has done the best job in your opinion, of doing a turnaround, whether again it was via social media, and, or social media was just one of the tools that they used?
Quinten Langly:
It is difficult, because the better the job they do, the more quickly the story falls out of the news. But a crisis is a situation where more people pay attention to you. People who wouldn't normally be bothered, or interested in your brand at all start to look closely at you. And if you have got the other things in place, and you react in an authentic, and transparent way, then people will come away feeling reasonably impressed. People will accept that in a crisis as it's developing, you don't necessarily know everything that's going on. If we cast our mind all the way back to 2010, and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with BP, the chief executive kept saying, "I don't know", and it came off as, "I don't know, and I don't care."
The proper answer is "We are actively trying to find out the answer to that question, and we will get back to you as soon as we can", because obviously unexpected things happen, and you don't know all of the answers straight away, but you have to make it clear that you are committed to be in public with the answers to those questions when you have them.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Great. Okay, same question for you, Kimberly. Any examples that you can think of a brand, or a corporation that made a strong comeback, whether in general on social media, or just things we can learn from?
Kimberly Willis Green:
I can't remember a specific one that has made a comeback, but I will say I think that Cracker Barrel had a 72-hour deal where they changed their logo, everybody lost their mind, and it was decided to revert back to the original logo. There's brand loyalty there, there are customers who really felt like there was nothing wrong with it from the get-go. I think that that was a situation where they were trying to make a change for DEI purposes, but they quickly learned that that brand didn't have any impact on the loyalty of the customers, the food, the locations. All I saw across social medias, that's where I stop when I'm on a road trip. So, don't do anything to it, don't change a thing. We love the restaurant the way it is, and they quickly reverted back to its original logo.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Right?
Quinten Langly:
And they've got a huge amount of publicity
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
They did.
Quinten Langly:
For not changing anything,
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Right, right. Another way that a crisis is not wasted. I talked in previous podcasts about regret, or sometimes when brands think they're moving in a different direction because of what the consumer wants, and some cases it's actually what the consumer may have told them directly, or alluded to that they wanted. I'm thinking of Coca-Cola, and I talked about that before, and others where they've made these drastic changes, or changed the logo, or changed something, and the feedback was immediate like, "Stop. No, we like the original." So, I think brands sometimes underestimate what their loyalty is attached to what people feel that is [inaudible 00:25:08] important.
Quinten Langly:
I think that's right.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
In trying to make changes, so.
Quinten Langly:
Marketing people spend a lot of time, and effort trying to make people loyal to the brand, and the image, and the logo, and then seems surprised when it turns out people are loyal to the brand-
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
All day.
Quinten Langly:
...that they've spent all this time [inaudible 00:25:24].
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
They're given that money, they look, stop wasting that money, Cracker Barrel, [inaudible 00:25:27] I could tell you. Okay, so you mentioned [inaudible 00:25:30].
Kimberly Willis Green:
Don't change a thing.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Don't change a thing if it ain't got that swing. Doo wap, doo wap. I think that was a song. Kimberly, you've mentioned this term war room a few times, and you're saying those of us in crisis, we know what it is, and that's true. But do you mind just taking a moment, and explaining that to listeners who may not know what a war room is?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Sure. So, in my experience as crisis comm person, if there's something that where an issue is becoming a crisis, or we have a crisis, there's in our playbook, in a crisis communications playbook, there's always a designated room, designated space that every member of the team goes to, and assembles to discuss the crisis, do your fact finding, and everything else to come out with a plan of action. So, I typically refer to it as the war room. The war room can be a physical room. You can also have a designated phone line where everybody calls in if you're not able to be there in person. But the war room is the room where we assemble, where we gather to deal with the crisis head on.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yes. Quentin, what's been one experience, and what you can share on this podcast that you can recall that stood out to you from any either recent experiences in the war room, or past, maybe back to when you were first in one?
Quinten Langly:
I use a slightly different terminology. Lot of people talk about gold team, and silver team. Gold team is what Kimberly's talking here about as the war room. So, that's the very top of the organization deciding the overall strategy where they are looking at the operations. So, from some of my background in energy, and chemicals, it might be physically clearing up a mess. Silver team is the communications team. The communications will be represented in gold team, but the head of comms will then come down to the silver team, and say, "Right, this is what we're doing. I need you to get that message out."
So, when I'm doing rehearsals with students, or whatever, I will often have them role playing the silver team, and I will come in as a representative of gold team to tell them this is what we're doing next. And I test them. I give them bad things to announce, and say, "This is what we're announcing next." And see who pushes back, and says, "Hey, we can't say that." Or The first question we'll get from a journalist if we put that out is such, and such. And yeah, that can be very instructive, shall we say.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay. Well, I'm familiar with the term [inaudible 00:28:29] Oh, go ahead Kimberly.
Kimberly Willis Green:
I was just going to say the gold team, and silver team, I understand the layers. In the experience that I've had, we've always had the entire comms team in the room because if they have a fact finder, or journalism ear, they'll ask questions that I may not even think of, or someone else in the room may not think of. So, for me, I feel like it's good to have everyone in the room so they can ask specific questions, because they're crafting messaging for internal, external, social, all the different channels that we have to deal with. So, a lot of times we could even have our webmaster in the room if needed, but I definitely understand the layers.
Quinten Langly:
Yeah, I think that makes sense. It's going to depend on a lot of things. How many people are in the room by that point. If it's a very large organization, you can't run a room with 50 people sitting around the table making the decisions. So, yeah, I'm just to give you one example of it. This is a fictional scenario so I can use it, but an exercise I've done with students, and with professionals actually training them it's a sexual harassment case, and one of the board members wants to put out a statement saying that she's deeply offended by the rumors about her having a relationship with another member of the board. And I've had a lot of people, "Oh, yeah, let's go ahead, and do that", but it was a student who pushed back on this, and said "Yeah, but is it true?" The fact that she's offended by people speculating on this, the journalists are going to ask if it's true, or not, that you are offended is not news. Are you denying it? Are you confirming it? Whatever. That's that's a key part of what people are going to be asking.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
You just have all these salacious examples. You got somebody getting stabbed, and sexual mis... Oh goodness.
Quinten Langly:
I know, I know.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
So, actually [inaudible 00:30:50].
Kimberly Willis Green:
...those, too.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yes. Let me say this, because I'm looking at the time, and I know we are going to switch into our round robin round here in 20 seconds, but I want to have one final question. What you just stated, Quinten actually is a perfect setup for my last question for you, and that is when you are in the process of dealing with counseling leaders on how to give feedback in the midst of a crisis, or in the midst of a situation like the one you just explained, you don't have all the facts yet, but you've got others who are demanding a response, maybe the media, maybe the public, maybe employees at the organization, people [inaudible 00:31:25].
Quinten Langly:
The police.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
What kind of advice, or counsel do you give to those leaders so that they can provide the feedback, but to do so in the spirit of transparency, but again, not revealing inappropriate things.
Quinten Langly:
Yeah, I mean you have to be as transparent as you can be, but you can't be transparent about everything. Publicly traded companies really understand this because you can't reveal market sensitive data at random. It has to be released at an appropriate time to everyone at once, and things like that. Otherwise there are legal consequences if you don't do that. Publicly traded companies have an understanding of what their reputation is worth, because it's included in their books. I find partnerships, law firms, accounting firms don't necessarily understand that because they don't have a share price, they don't see it going up, and down when they're in a crisis situation.
I will come back, you raised the point about talk about salacious things like sexual harassment, racial harassment, things like that. One of the reasons I use those as examples is that everybody listening to this podcast works in a firm where those things could happen. Whereas if I use an example of spilled chemicals for most people think, "Oh, well we don't do that." And the worst thing is that the people who are in the business only want to prepare for a crisis that is directly related to their core business. They don't anticipate the thing that is outside of their day-to-day expertise, and you do have to be ready for those. They are the scariest crisis. If you're a chemicals engineer, and you've spilled some chemicals, you can answer all of those questions, because you know that issue inside out. It's when you get the question about corruption, or harassment, or discrimination that you don't quite know how to handle it, because it's not the thing that you studied when you were at university.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
That's an excellent point, and I'm glad that you raised that because that's what we're talking about. The things that are not going to be, the answers are not readily accessible, and you don't know what to do, which is where experts like you two come into play. So, thank you Quinten, and Kimberly for you, the last question is this, in terms of internal communication, we don't also talk a lot about that. A lot of our talks, and I say our, not the three of us, but just in general focuses on external communication, but there's another side of that which are the employees, and other stakeholders. What do you advise to get them to have buy-in, especially in terms of rebuilding reputation after a crisis has occurred?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Yes. So, I often say that your employees are your ambassadors. They carry the water, they're the people in the grocery stores, the barbershops having conversations at dinner across the dinner table. So, you definitely have to communicate to your employees as much as you can without revealing, or compromising an investigation. So, my thing is I always say at the crisis table, we have to communicate from the inside out. So, when you're crafting the messaging for your various channels, definitely craft something for your employees to say, this is what we know now, or we're acknowledging as much as we can, like I said, without compromising the internal investigation of it all, but just to inform them of what's happening because they're going to leave from there, and cascade out to all of their various networks. So, the worst thing that you can ever do is have your employee see something on the news that their company did not share with them. That is very detrimental. You want your employees to be on board with this is what I know, and this is what we plan to do. So, communicate from the inside out.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Nice. I use a loose analogy of it, sort of like a marriage of sorts with employees, and employers in that you want things to be transparent in the process, and people to be aware of what the right, and left hands are doing. So, I appreciate that example of you don't want to hear it from an external source first, and you're in the house. You're like, "Why am I learning about this on the outside when we live together? We're married, I'm your employee, and I don't know these things", so very good. Well, thank you both. I'm going to skip to three very quick round robin questions. I'll call them. You all can take 60 seconds to answer, and then we'll wrap this wonderful podcast up in terms of how to manage, and deal with crises. We could spend more time on this. I know both of you have so much more to share, but I want to be respectful of everybody's time, including the listeners.
So, I'm going to skip around a little bit here, you all, but here's my first question for you. So, what is the danger of moving too quickly when you are dealing with a crisis versus over apologizing, or staying stuck? So, you've got a continuum, one end moving too quickly, other end over apologizing, apologizing too much, staying stuck. What can we do to avoid either of those scenarios? Kimberly, I'll start with you.
Kimberly Willis Green:
You definitely want to allow your organization time to do fact finding, because if you come out the gate with the wrong response, it can bite you later on. So, gather information [inaudible 00:37:29] as much as you can, just enough to inform your ex-journal. We can confirm this is what happened, and we're currently investigating. That gives you time to get more information as you're continuing to investigate whatever the crisis is.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Got it. Quentin?
Quinten Langly:
Absolutely. I mean, yeah, we are actively trying to find out that information, and we will get back to you as soon as it's available. People will understand that you don't know everything at the first hour. But they will not understand if you're deliberately trying to keep information from them.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay, so on that Quentin, second question. Your company organization brand just took a reputational hit. What is your day one week one month, one playbook?
Quinten Langly:
Well, it depends what your brand is already known for, but you have to build up from the ground up. It may well involve acknowledging significant amount of blame. As Kimberly says, don't rush into that. Don't admit liability before you found out whether it was actually your fault, but you can always express regret, and then, yeah, I mean it can involve all sorts of things. Maybe people are going to be dismissed. Maybe you're having to start whole elements of your brand again, every situation I'm afraid is different. It would be great to give people rules. That's why I wrote a whole book on this.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay, because I gave you a rule. I said, day one, week one, month one, Quentin. But that's okay. You didn't break it down in those categorical boxes, but you wrote a book on it. Which one? Tell them again.
Quinten Langly:
Brand Jack.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Brand Jack. It's [inaudible 00:39:30]
Quinten Langly:
How your reputation is at risk from brand pirates, and what to do about it.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay, there we go. All right, Ms. Kimberly?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Yes.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Day one, week, one month, one playbook after a reputational hit.
Kimberly Willis Green:
Day one come out, and say that we are acknowledge what the situation is, and we're looking into it. Week one, providing information that from the top that it can be an organizational change. It could be something where you're trying to make a change with whatever that issue is. Month one, get back to your stakeholders, in terms of we heard you, and this is what we're doing to move forward. So, again, earning trust.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay, thank you. All right, both of you, either of you can go first on this one. Some brands, as we said earlier, come back stronger after a crisis. Others just fade into the twilight. What separates the winners from the losers? Quentin? I said, I'll let you choose, but I'll choose for you.
Quinten Langly:
It's the way you handle it. I mean, it's not necessarily a matter of who was originally to blame. One of the biggest brands that entirely disappeared after a crisis was Pan Am one of the biggest airlines in the world. One of their planes was brought down by an act of terrorism. It plainly wasn't their fault, but they closed up. They didn't want to respond. They didn't respect the fact the bereaved families would want to go to the area. This is the thing they're geared up to do is to help people travel from one place to another. They could have understood that people will want to go to the area where this happened, that that's handling things badly. But if people see that you are handling the situation as well, or better than any of your competitors would do, you absolutely emerge stronger. People may pay more attention, and if they think you're doing it well, you'll end up stronger than you were before.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Okay, Kimberly?
Kimberly Willis Green:
I want to say that Target has taken a hit after dissolving their DEI practices, it seems like the brand has, or the stores have gone like business as usual. They're not really acknowledging the issues from their customers, so they're just business as usual, continuing the same ads back to school, whatever. They have not stopped to acknowledge what's going on, or even to create a bridge, or communication of understanding, and what can we do to regain the trust of the customers that they've lost.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Yes, very true, very true. What's also true is that you all have been outstanding guests. I'm so thrilled that you took the time out to join us on this special edition of Marketing Insights, talking about crises brands. I'm going to share with you all listeners, and marketing maestros what I would do week one, or excuse me, day one, week one, and month one. Day one, what I encourage all of you to do is go back, and listen to this episode of Marketing Insights with Quentin Langley, and Kimberly Willis Green, and you are truly the host, Shanita Baraka-Akantande, so that you can get a clear understanding of how you can deal with crises. Because we have shared some very poignant points with you on this episode. What I would suggest you do after that for week one is get what's the name of your book again, Quentin?
Quinten Langly:
Brand Jack
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Get Brand Jack, look at it, read it. He says he has additional points in that book, and as I do in mind, the Front Porch Leader, Great Grand's Recipe for Success. It may not sound like it has tips on crises, but it has tips on everything to do with life, including crises. So, it will be available on Amazon beginning the end of October. And what I suggest you do for month one is reach out to both Kimberly, and Quentin via their social media, their networks, their contact information. Kimberly, I'll start with you. How do folks get in touch with you?
Kimberly Willis Green:
Sure. On X, kwgreen, on Instagram kwgreenpr, and then my website is Kwgreenconsulting.com.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Excellent, and she's in Atlanta. Quentin, how about you? How do they get in touch?
Quinten Langly:
LinkedIn is by far the best for business. I mean, Quentin Langley is fortunately a very Googlable name. Someone once told me that I was the only person who'd ever Googled who had the whole of the first page except Barack Obama.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
So, you heard it here. He's on LinkedIn as well, Quinten Langley, and I am as you know, also on LinkedIn. This is Professor Shanita Akintonde signing off on Marketing Insights episode, dealing with crises communication. Until next time, which will be another great time, I ask that you share, and follow us. This podcast, and all of the Marketing Insights Podcast can be found wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. In addition, don't forget to go out, and go back, and listen, should I say to us on this episode, I can be found on LinkedIn under Professor Shanita Akintonde, also on Twitter at underscore Shanita Speaks. And with that, Quinten, what's your last remark? You want to wave? Say Adios? What do you want to say to everybody?
Quinten Langly:
I want to say connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always keen to make new connections.
Kimberly Willis Green:
Excellent.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Kimberly, anything else?
Kimberly Willis Green:
You can reach me on LinkedIn as well. Kimberly Willis Green. There are like 14, or 15 Kimberly Greens in Atlanta. I'm Kimberly Willis Green.
Shanita Baraka-Akintonde:
Got it. Okay. Well, I want to thank you all again for being on this episode. I want to thank the listeners, and until next time, bye-bye.
