Exercising your crisis comms response is always the bit about my job that surprises people. When I talk about what I do, I describe a heady mix of media training, crisis communications and major incident response. But it’s playing out the scenarios in exercises that intrigues.
Most people I talk to understand the need for crisis comms and think it’s exciting.
The concept of training people before they give media interviews – for podcasts as well as TV, radio and print – makes sense.
That can be a job?
(Though I do regularly hear “so that can be a JOB?”)
But planning and running exercises? To test your comms response in an emergency? That bewilders and baffles. What do you mean? What do you do?
In 2003 I got caught trying to crash a military cordon and a bunch of squaddies kept me under armed guard for the rest of the day.
My close arrest was a fun distraction in the middle of delivering the media side of a major military exercise. I managed 70 journalists testing what the authorities would do in an awful scenario.
We hired a hotel complex in the middle of nowhere. For four days we created a TV studio, radio studio and a huge newspaper newsroom.
Simpress do just what journalists do
As simpress – the simulated media – we did just what journalists would do. We asked questions, applied pressure, and broadcast news (to a select few) about this imaginary scenario.
What we were doing was challenging their response to an incident. That means their information management, their media handling. And crucially their ability to warn and inform the public.
It was a test of their plans, their skills and teamwork, and their stamina. We challenged their ability to consistently source, clear and get out factual information and messaging.
We gave their press officers a very convincing workout (and gave their operational elements the run around and their senior officers heartburn).
Organising it gave me heartburn too, and contributed significantly to my premature greying. The scale, the admin, and the budget, were all huge.
I have done many other exercises down the years, for energy companies, ship builders, power stations, universities and government departments.
Warning and informing
(A lot of large facilities around the UK are obliged by their regulators to run exercises once a year. These ensure they can respond to an incident, work with “blue light” services and, crucially, do the ‘warning and informing’ bit).
But I’ve been struck lately by just how easy it has become to do this in the age of Zoom, Teams and lots of other new tech.
I remembered the 2003 job last week when I rolled out of my own bed, ate a bowl of porridge and ran a major incident exercise from my home office.
For a major client, we wrought havoc on one of the UK’s largest cities, creating a massive storm, floods, and a power blackout impacting 125,000 homes.
We involved local MPs, police and fire, government, the public and a whole range of media. All were simulated, ‘played’ by a team of comms professionals.
And when we called End-Ex at 4.30pm, I switched off my Mac and walked down the beach for a swim.
I don’t want to suggest that last week’s exercise ‘play’ was any easier than doing it in a bland ‘Travel Tavern’ in the noughties.
It was still intense, frenetic and challenging. And it still involved days of involved research, planning and co-ordination.
But it was so simple to actually stage.
Exercising your crisis response can be so simple
An open Teams chat for the response team, who were also spread across home and office locations in the UK, a Zoom link for broadcast media interviews, mobile phone calls into the press office, email for queries and press releases.
Add to that a ‘dark’ webpage set up by the company, and some simulated social media posts. We had a thoroughly practicable replica of how the media and public respond to bad things happening.
Nowadays you can even take it further, and simulate all your social media interactions and output in one live package (Polpeo is a great example).
And once you’ve finished you can have a quick debrief, shut it all down, and then head outside to catch the last of the sun.
That’s a long way from spending another dismal night on the A11 near Norwich before packing up all your gear and driving off to the next ex. And a very long way from being arrested by excited soldiers with automatic rifles.