The wrong viral video can damage the brand you’ve built over decades in just a few short hours. The adage that trust is built slowly but lost quickly has never been more apt. Major corporations spend millions on crisis communications, social media monitoring, and sentiment analysis. Google reviews, YouTube, and Twitter can preserve every bad customer experience indefinitely. For those of us without millions at our disposal, this is the Mash Guide to Handling Negative Information.

If you’ve just woken up with a pounding hangover, your friend’s advice about alternating water and beer is far more annoying than helpful. Assuming you’re not in the midst of a crisis, however, remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

In politics, candidates go through a vetting process, identifying potential vulnerabilities in their past. Failed marriages, bankruptcies, criminal charges, restraining orders…the really interesting candidate has already been shown the door before you ever had the chance to learn his name.  

Identify where your vulnerabilities lie. Do your employees interact with the public every day?  Do you have quality controls in place? 

Once you’ve identified where you’re exposed, establish internal checks, ensure you’re engaging in ongoing ethics and customer service training, and work to create a culture of accountability. This applies equally to your opponents and competitors: know who they are and why they might seek to harm your reputation. Be prepared rather than surprised.

Now, let’s say, despite all your vetting and preparation, a negative story is circulating and a crisis is brewing. It deserves your immediate attention, but the appropriate response will vary.

1. Ignore It Often the toughest option, and frequently the best. Many criticisms fail to gain traction. The danger of defending against every small attack is that you’ll be permanently on defence, responding to every sling and arrow that comes your way.  Responding also risks drawing more attention to the criticism than it would have generated if it had been ignored (see: The Streisand Effect)

2. Respond to Damaging and False Charges If a false accusation has legs or is being constantly repeated, you must put an end to it. This involves denying the charge with moral indignation (as the great Morton Blackwell says), proving it is false, and immediately pivoting back.  (See: Western Standard vs. Jason Kenney )

3. Respond to Defensible Criticism Sometimes an accusation is technically true but lacks context. In these cases, acknowledge the mistake, explain why it was the right thing to do or a common problem, and enlist third parties to help with the defence. For minor errors, sometimes the best path is to confess and laugh it off as not serious. (See: Justin Trudeau’s New Sunglasses)

4. Respond to Serious, True Accusations When the charge is both true and serious, the only path to survival is total transparency. You must confess the facts, articulate exactly what you did wrong, apologize, and commit to never repeating the behaviour.  (See: Ralph Klein, Ralph Klein).

Every situation calls for a slightly different response. By staying prepared and responding appropriately, you can often weather the storm of viral negativity and protect the business or career you have worked so hard to build.  

If not? Everybody loves a comeback story.

(More on that later)

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