On average it takes 21 hours before a company can issuea meaningful statement during a crisis according to asurvey of crisis communications responders by law firmFreshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

However, companies need to get their message outmuch more quickly if they want to avoid reputationaldamage. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer surveyed 102international senior crisis communications advisers whosaid that the speed with which social media spreadsnews around the world means global businesses tryingto defend their reputation during a crisis need tosignificantly accelerate their response systems.

The inability to control reputational crises in the earlystages can prove hugely costly for a business, affectingits value, revenue and long-term reputation.

Yet businesses are not moving fast enough tocontain a crisis when it breaks despitehaving between a few days and severalmonths’ notice to plan a response inalmost six out of 10 cases. On average ittakes 21 hours before companies areable to issue meaningful externalcommunications (signed off by theirlegal advisers) to try and manage theissue and more than 48 hours in a fifthof incidents.

Elsewhere in the survey:• Half of the communications advisers surveyedbelieve organisations are not adequately prepared tohandle such situations• A clear majority (94%) said that failing to prepare toeffectively handle the issue online leaves anorganisation open to “trial by Twitter”• Almost two thirds believe the businesses they haverecently advised in relation to a significant crisis couldhave foreseen the event and better prepared for it

Mark Clark, director at Navigate Response said:“The maritime industry needs to look at the way it

communicates in a crisis. Those moments we had forpause and reflection in yesteryear have gone forever.”

Speedy responses required

Crisis ManagerReputational Management for the Maritime IndustryWinter 2013 Newsletter

Speedy responses required•

How spies in the sky are revolutionising newsgathering•

Crisis communications management: 10 practical tips•

#hashtags and what they mean for crisis communications•

Maritime crisis communications: Are you ready?•

In other news...•

“Shipping is essentially a business to business industry,and unfortunately the only time the public will tend tohear about our activities, or have the chance to examinethem in greater detail is generally when an incidentoccurs and the spotlight swings upon us. The results arethere for all to see on the nightly news, within the pagesof our newspapers or on various social media platforms.It is the speed and effectiveness of our response to thoseevents which are clearly letting us down.

“Companies need to understand that they requirerobust structures and processes in place that willrespond quickly to the media; deliver key messages on avariety of social media platforms instantly; robustly dealwith the inaccurate or speculative story wherever itappears whilst putting such incidents in the context of

shifting global cargoes on a daily basis. And that’s just inthe first few hours.”

The respondents to the Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringersurvey said that: • More than a quarter of crises reported spreadinternationally within an hour, and over two thirdswithin 24 hours • News of a crisis that spreads outside of the country oforigin will reach an average of 11 countries • Social media now plays a significant role in spreadingthe story - within the country of origin in half of casesand globally in almost a third of cases

Of great significance to listed shipping companies, aprevious study on major global reputational crises andtheir impact on company share prices also released byFreshfields in 2012 found that companies typicallybenefit from a window of 24 to 48 hours, during whichfinancial market reaction to a crisis is limited. Of theglobal reputational crises analysed, half of affectedcompanies saw share prices fall on day one. A monthon, the findings show a peak in negative sentiment,with six out of 10 companies affected. A year later more than half (53%) had not seen share prices regain pre-crisis levels.

The inability to controlreputational crises in the earlystages can prove hugely costly fora business, affecting its value,revenue and long-term reputation.

Infographic link: http://www.freshfields.com/uploadedFiles/SiteWide/News_Room/Insight/Campaigns/Crisis_management/36574_11.pdf

The ever faster requirements of newsgathering andbreaking the story are now pushing newsorganisations to invest in unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs) - or drones for short - to get that elusive, butvital piece of film.

UAVs are capable of operating without an internalpilot; are tethered by a radio control link and can bepre-programmed for flight operations prior to launch.They differ from remotely-controlled aircraft and smallhobby planes in that they operate out of line of sightand at altitudes where a person on the ground cannotreadily see them. Replete with state of the art GoProcameras and loaded with large multi-gigabyte memorycards, the vehicles can stay aloft for hours gatheringpictures from above a scene of interest to journalists insuperb 1080p HD quality.

Drones enable journalists to deal with two problemsfacing newsrooms: a need for unique online video inan environment of decreased budgets; and restrictedor obstructed access to disaster stories.

Quite simply, they offer the possibility of being ableto gather images, video and data from the air for afraction of the cost and complexity of a mannedaircraft.

In Europe and the US, however, drones live a in aregulatory grey area. Hobbyists can use them, butcommercial entities are not supposed to employdrones for any kind of monetary gain, says the USFederal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The question for any aviation regulator, then, is

whether or not newsgathering is considered acommercial exercise.

However, the FAA is considering loosening its dronerestrictions which may then lead the way in openingup some very high-tech means of reporting the dailynews.

In the United Kingdom, drone use is regulated by theCivil Aviation Authority. The BBC is currently trialling adrone, and has established some very clear strictfilming rules.

The BBC drone cannot fly within 50m of a road orbuilding unless it's in the BBC’s control, fly over crowdsor fly 500m horizontally or 120m vertically from thepilot . The operator is also expected to log a flight planbefore every take-off.

As an extra safety layer on the BBC’s trial machine,there is a GPS-based system on board that ensures thatif the radio link breaks down between the pilot and themachine it automatically flies back to where it took offfrom, and lands.

With low cost, easy to use UAVs readily available andan evolving regulatory landscape to cover their use,watch out for the next offshore shipping incident asthat camera you thought was anchored firmly on thecliff-top may well be hovering just near the bridgewing watching your every move.

We have already seen drones in action above thehigh profile Costa Concordia wreck site. How soon willit be before they make their appearance on the nightof the incident?

How spies in the sky arerevolutionising newsgathering

10 practical tips

Crisis communications management

Have a crisis communications plan. That means an easy-to-follow document that isupdated every three months. It should clearlyarticulate who does and says what, when andwhere a crisis occurs. It needs to be understoodby a core crisis management team who willfollow it when an incident occurs. It mustexplain contingencies such as who will takecontrol if the boss is indisposed, or where yourcrisis management room will be if there is apower outage at your head office, or where youwill gather (and how you will get there) if thecrisis is in a remote location. Updated mobileand home numbers are essential.

Know where your plan is and put it to the testKeep multiple copies in accessible places. Theonly way to learn how to move quickly is tohave practice exercises. Only those who havebeen through a crisis truly understand this.

Consistent messaging Don’t tell the media one thing, Governmentsomething else and your employees somethingelse again. It will catch up with you. Remain on-message with everyone.

Undertake media trainingDo media training regularly - twice a year. It willpay staggering dividends during a crisis (andalso help with routine media engagement). Ifyou are surefooted, easy to understand andknow how to exude a sense of honesty andcooperation, you are setting the scene forjournalists to swing in behind you.

Get external crisis comms helpYou must have enough experienced hands ondeck to keep journalists briefed and providerunning strategic counsel. A senior commsexpert needs to be in the crisis room or onlocation (not making occasional check-inphone calls from another town, city or country).

If you are at fault, acknowledge it If it’s your vessel stuck on rocks and leakingdiesel oil into pristine waters, it’s best to plainlyacknowledge what’s happening – quickly. Thenfocus on what’s being done to rectify theproblem. Acknowledgements (and apologies)days or weeks after the event don’t work.

Feed the mediaIf media scrutiny is unavoidable, stay engagedwith the media. Feed their hunger. Give theminterviews and picture opportunities. This givesyou control and builds rapport.

Don’t over-optimise or give valuestatementsResist the temptation to say ‘everything will befixed quickly’. Don’t express that the maritimedisaster is a ‘minor incident’. Call things as theyare. If you think things will get worse, say it. Thismanages expectations. Never set time-framesor speculate on outcomes if you don’t knowwhat’s going to happen. If you specify ‘thevessel should be re-floated by 0900 hours’ andit doesn’t happen, get ready for ‘failure’headlines.

Accept that ‘everyone’s an expert’‘Experts’ have a habit of popping up and tellingthe media the ‘simple way’ to fix everything infive minutes. Don’t be too distracted by suchcommentary. The main thing is that you arecutting through first with your own messages.

Don’t lie.You are finished if you are caught lying. Justdon’t do it.

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Managing the amount of information during ashipping incident or crisis isn’t easy given the hugeamount of information that will roll in and out in ashort amount of time. How do you keep track of thekey messages during such a digital tsunami?

Hashtags could be one way to help your keymessages be heard loud and clear above the rest of the noise.

What is a hashtag? Quite simply it’s a word or phraseprefixed with the symbol #. Short messages on micro-blogging and social networking services such asTwitter, Google+ or Facebook may be tagged byputting "#" before important words, as in: “#ships sailon the sea.

Hashtags provide a way of grouping relevantinformation for ease of following, finding and sharingon social networks. The easiest way to group all of yourcommunications in a crisis on Twitter is by using adedicated hashtag.

This dedicated hashtag:• Keeps all your defined communications organised. No one following the crisis will miss a tweet or any important news.

• Makes monitoring easier. Others know what hashtag to use to make it easier for your team to monitor information, news and enquiries about the crisis from your customers or stakeholders.

• Is essential for documenting your key messages post-crisis. Having all of your organisations, and many stakeholders’ tweets or Facebook entries grouped together makes the task of documenting and reviewing your actions that much easier.

Many web monitoring tools rely on consistent termsto track the ups and downs of a story. This is a prettybig deal.

Without consistency, the target shipping audiencewon’t know which hashtags to monitor for updates,information and help requests. Should it be the nameof the ship? Or the nearest landmass? Or the companyname? #MOLComfort was used to group togethernews snippets about the disabled, split (and now sunk)boxship in the Indian Ocean

A crisis hashtag ‘strategy’ should include:• Defining the role a hashtag will and must play within

your crisis communications• Guidelines and policies for using a hashtag within

your crisis communications• Where anyone can go to learn more about your

hashtag strategy, including what the hashtag actually is during any given crisis

• How you would like your audience to use the hashtag in a crisis

#hashtags and what they mean for crisis communications

Ask anyone else who’s been at thesharp end of a big maritime crisiswhat the worst part was, and theirresponse will typically be “Dealingwith the media!”

After reliving the terrors ofstanding before packs of demandingjournalists and cameras, the recountusually takes this course: “Thingshappened so quickly. We just felt soexposed and unprepared. If onlywe’d put more work into our crisisplanning.”

Or, as former BP global boss TonyHayward explained after theinfamous Deepwater Horizon oil spillin the Gulf of Mexico in 2010: “Thereality is we were completely over-run and just not prepared to dealwith the intensity of media scrutiny.”

Crises in the maritime sector areusually first-grade media fodder. Ifwe’re talking about a big vessel orpiece of infrastructure, a big messcreated, big environmental, socialand economic costs and powerful,striking or damning visualopportunities, we’re talking about the ingredients for amedia feeding frenzy.

Australia has had its fair share of these in recenttimes - the Pasha grounding on Newcastle’s Nobby’sBeach in 2007, the West Atlas oil rig explosion in theTimor Sea in 2009 and the Shen Neng 1 coal carriergrounding on the Great Barrier Reef in 2010. Across theTasman, the container vessel Rena’s grounding in NewZealand’s Bay of Plenty in 2011 was a spectacle worthyof global attention.

It’s critical to understand how fast and ferocious themedia can be when chasing information during a crisis,particularly during the opening hours. Informationtravels so much quicker today compared to only a fewyears ago. Anyone with a mobile phone is a Johnny-on-the-spot journalist and photographer. Pictures and

accounts of big incidents usually zap around socialmedia sites before mainstream media have evenblinked, sometimes influencing how mainstreammedia will follow up. It’s more likely that organisationswill learn about a crisis - and subsequentdevelopments - through media channels ahead ofinternal channels. Misinformation can tumble quicklythrough frantic news cycles and become accepted fact.Whilst handling crisis communications on-locationduring the Rena grounding, I lost count of how manytimes anxious journalists rang (often in the middle ofthe night) wanting comment on the Rena ‘sinking’ (i.e.before it had actually sunk).

“A social media rumour…” I’d explain. “Yeah, but it’s gotta be true, right?” “Wrong…”

Maritime crisis communications:are you ready?

One national media outlet even ‘broke’ the story ofthe ‘sinking’ that hadn’t happened (before retracting).

People and organisations in the thick of a crisisusually forget it’s not so much the crisis per se that’sthe challenge – it’s how you communicate. The mediaand the public can usually accept accidents andhuman folly. What usually compounds things is silence,evasiveness, obfuscation and a lack of empathy orremorse. Lies and cover ups are unforgiveable.

If you fail to handle the media, chances are you’llsoon have many other problems, such as a politicalcrisis, on your hands. What politicians would back youif you’ve become public enemy number one in themedia’s eyes? Chances are they’ll follow media cuesand start throwing punches too. Your clients and otherstakeholders – particularly your employees – willhardly have faith in you if you are being publiclybludgeoned, which can send morale into free-fall. And,once a pariah, it’s easy for broader questions andaccusations to be raised about a whole range of things– maybe your ‘poor safety form’ or your ‘questionablecorporate culture’. It’s sometimes staggering howmatters totally unrelated to the crisis at hand creepfrom the woods like exhumed zombies to haunt you infull public view.

More often than not the smartest way forward is totake control by stepping up to the mark quickly (VERY

quickly) and talking honestly about what’s going on. Ifyou’re in the wrong admit it, or, at the least,acknowledge it. Provide factual clarity and contextabout what’s happened and, more importantly, whatwill happen moving forward. Show that you havegrabbed the problem with both hands. If you don’tcommunicate quickly during a crisis you are leavinginformation in the wind, leaving yourself exposed towhatever may come.

Matthew Watson is managing director of Australian-based Repute Communications, part of the globalNavigate Response alliance that specialises in maritimecrisis communications management. Matthew has wonmultiple industry awards for spearheadingcommunications campaigns for crises including thePasha Bulker, Shen Neng 1, Endeavour River and Renagroundings, and the West Atlas Oil rig disaster.

If you fail to handle the media,chances are you’ll soon have manyother problems, such as a politicalcrisis, on your hands.

Matthew Watson at the Rena

Date for the diaryNavigate’s Chemical & ProductTanker conference takes placein London, 11-12 March 2014.Held in conjunction with theInternational Parcel TankerAssociation, the conferencefocuses on market and operational issues and attractsshipowners, operators and charterers from around theworld.

See www.navigateevents.com for further details.

P&I Club endorsementNavigate Response is now a recommended mediaresponder for a number of leading P&I Clubs and lawfirms including North, West of England, Standard P&IClub, Ince & Co and Holman Fenwick Willan.

Navigate Response director Bill Lines said: “We’rebuilding relationships with the leading clubs andlawyers, demonstrating to them the importance of aprofessional response and the rapidly changing mediaenvironment. We’ve already delivered seminars formembers of the Standard Club in London, West ofEngland in Piraeus and look forward to supporting theirmembers in the future.”

Ince & Co presents ‘CaptainPhillips’ On 21 October, London based maritime law firm Ince &Co held a special preview for shipping clients andpartners of the new movie ‘Captain Phillips’ starring TomHanks, about the piracy and eventual rescue of theMaersk Alabama and its master in 2009 off the coast ofSomalia.

Navigate Response chairmanand former senior partner atInce & Co, Richard Sayer wasinvited along with fellowdirector Mark Clark to the fullhouse. Hats off to StephenAskins who organised the eventand who said it was probablythe best dressed cinemaaudience in London thatevening!

In other news..

Ports under the spotlightHow would a port, large orsmall, cope under intensemedia pressure in the eventof a major incident? NavigateResponse director Mark Clarkaddressed senior portexecutives attending theAssociation of UKHarbourmasters conferencein London this November.

He presented on the speed of social media impactingon the news agenda and of his own experiences inconfronting the media during major shippingincidents. He said: “Ports need to be prepared to dealwith the mainstream, trade and social media. Manyharbour masters feel very exposed and ill-prepared todeal with the public fall-out from a major incident intheir port. But preparing a crisis comms plan, regulardrills and presentation training can make all thedifference.”

Drill, drill, drillNavigate Response has been on the road over the pastfew weeks training clients in Asia and Europe ondealing with the aftermath of a serious maritimeincident. Ranging from family run tanker companies tolarge multiple vessel type owners, the Navigate teamhas been running exercise drills and providing hands-on media training for senior management teams.Navigate has a range of training options designed tohelp shipping companies and ports respondprofessionally to any type of incident which can impacton their reputation.

To find out more, please contact Mark Clark.E: mark.clark@navigateresponse.com

Navigate Response LtdThe Baltic Exchange, 38 St Mary AxeLondon EC3A 8BH, United Kingdom

T: +44 (0)20 7283 9915 | F: +44 (0)20 7369 1684E: enquiries@navigateresponse.com

Follow us on Twitter @navigate_group

www.navigateresponse.com

About usNavigate Response is a global crisis communications networkfor the international shipping industry.

Our experienced team of professional communicators are onhand 24/7 each and every day of the year to provideemergency media handling, reputation management andtraining services to companies in the maritime sector. EngagingNavigate Response allows your team to focus on dealing withthe operational side of an incident without being distracted bythe pressures of the media. This can also involve acting asfamily liaison contact and assisting your logistics team on bestpractice during incidents under the media spotlight.

Headquartered in the heart of the shipping markets atLondon’s Baltic Exchange, the Navigate Response network hasrepresentatives around the world and is able to provide a rapidresponse to your maritime incident or corporate emergency.