Denver, CO, July 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Building your CBD business takes blood, sweat, and tears, as the saying goes, but do you have reputation protection? Protecting your company’s brand is key. What does protecting your brand mean? It doesn’t only mean protecting your logo, it means taking steps to protect the essence of your company’s identity.
What are the 3 main components to manage your reputation and protect your CBD business?
- Build customer loyalty and trust - tribe community
- Create a reputation safety action plan
- Figure out what’s next with the M&C Brand Protection Tool™
First, let’s take a look at how to build customer loyalty and trust.
According to recent Brightfield research, more than one-third of CBD customers moved online to make their purchases in the past several months. What is interesting about the online move, research tells us brand loyalty is not strong at this moment (so you aren't fighting an uphill battle against a big name, building your brand is essential right now). We know the majority of CBD buyers are Gen Z and Millennials. They report that self-care is the top reason they make a CBD purchase to combat anxiety and stress relief, which ties-in beautifully to your product. More than one-third plan to use CBD more frequently. So now is the time you need to build your tribe, with what call the 4 C’s: clear, consistent, compassionate, and conversational messaging on social media. Educate your customer and increase your thought leadership position. Your online community who knows and trusts you will support you when your reputation is in question.
There are 5 steps to prepare for a reputation safety action plan.
1. WHO makes a good crisis spokesperson?
You need to build a crisis communications team with a lead and backup spokesperson. It is very important that they have media training. If you have a large organization, they may be from the department that is most impacted by the crisis or brand challenge, if you have a smaller business it may be the owner. Many times the designated spokesperson is unavailable and so it is paramount, no matter the size of your company that you have two people media trained.
Your messages should be different for different audiences. Think about what is the most important information for your employees, your customers, and your stockholders. You must have an efficient and effective message approval process that is well understood prior to any event. The media will want the basics: who, what, when, where, and most importantly HOW? How did this happen, how were people impacted, how did you prepare, how are you going to handle this situation moving forward?
2. WHAT do you communicate in a crisis? Pictures & Video
Media will immediately be looking for visuals and it won’t matter if they are print or broadcast. The old adage of “A picture speaks a thousand words” still stands. So do you already have videos on your website or Facebook page? What types of pictures are on your Instagram or other social media? Do you have informative and passionate video interviews with your company leaders online? These are all items that can provide information that the media will just use and reduces the amount of time for speculation about who you are and what you do. Think about your policy on security camera releases. Pre-producing infographics can also be extremely effective in managing the media.
3. WHEN will you update the media?
Have an on location and social media plan for updates - who will do it, how will you manage it, how quickly can you get response approval and how will you monitor reaction to your message? Make sure you have a Twitter presence and identify your channel to the media.
4. WHERE would you stage press and how you would manage them?
Choose a location that has something you want to be shown in the background but also realize the media will want to get as close to a situation as possible.
5. HOW will you update facts and respond to mitigate negative reactions to the incident, to the personnel, etc
Your plan must be fast and nimble. Develop criteria for when you should bring in outside PR counsel and who would approve it.
Now it is time to figure out what’s next with the M&C Brand Protection Tool™
Use the 3-step Brand Protection Tool™ process to forecast crisis communication plans:
1. Brainstorm crisis scenarios
Get your team together and come up with every crazy scenario you can think of. Nothing is too outlandish. Make sure everyone who leads any part of your team is involved.
2. Score your crisis scenarios on a scale of 1-10
What could impact these scenarios to make them more or less likely to occur: legislation, taxes, geopolitical forces, new industry trends, customer sentiment change? Think about:
- How seriously will this crisis impact your business?
- How many departments could be impacted by this situation?
- What is the probability of this scenario occurring in the next 6-12 months?
- Would developing a plan improve the outcome of the crisis?
It was a surprise that in so many states dispensaries were identified as essential businesses, but who would have thought that a year ago. Probably this criterion would have knocked out considering a pandemic for crisis preparation. This is a perfect example of why it is so important for you to update your crisis plan forecast every year if not every 6 months. Add up your score. You might be surprised what types of scenarios rise to the top of the list. Choose the top 3 highest-scoring scenarios and develop your standby crisis management plans to mitigate the likely impacts on your business.
3. Develop your crisis management team
Make sure to involve all the team leaders who helped you brainstorm. Your goal is to encourage a team approach instead of a siloed approach; to have each member better understand the impact on other departments, what types of pressures they experience and how each department plays a role supporting the other.. Go through each scenario and talk about how it would impact each team member’s specific audience, such as HR, Marketing, Investor Relations, Legal and of course, your customers. Finally, designate a crisis leader and assistant leader to handle each scenario and develop a plan outline, no more than 1-2 pages, for each scenario based on the 5 step Reputation Safety Plan outlined above.
Taking these 3 steps, building trust with your customers, having an overall reputation safety action plan and forecasting issues or crises will not only keep you ahead of the storm, when the crisis occurs, but you will also be ready to protect your business while you effectively manage the turbulent seas of crisis and get to calmer waters.