By Eric Wamanji

If you are a corporate in Kenya concerned about your image, better be petrified. Chances are, your crisis communication strategy is pathetic. Indeed, recently a number of top-flight corporates have been helplessly trapped in a surge of crises and received a thorough thrashing.

Their attempts at handling the crises were hopeless. They mumbled, fumbled, lost cool and blundered spectacularly.

Defense, denial, threats

Hit by crises, the Kenyan corporate mostly takes the godforsaken turn and unwittingly slide to toxicity of defensiveness, denials and threats. Indeed, in Kenya, response to crisis is irrational, hubristic and absurdity. Any attempt to handle a crisis adds fuel in the fire. This is because folks are woefully incompetent. Press releases and mindlessly produced, social media actions hopeless. Stupidity even hires keyboard warriors with toxic harsh tags either full of praise of the organisation are savagely attacking enemies real or imagined. That’s off folks!

A few choose the hilarious. They take flight. Classical example are school heads who dash into maize plantations when journalists come calling for a small chat.

Such amateurish behaviours have exposed the fraternity of Public Relations, also called corporate communication, which ought to be the compass, the solid conscience, that soberly and tactfully facilitate management of crises for corporates and individuals.

Such amateurish behaviours have exposed the fraternity of Public Relations, also called corporate communication, which ought to be the compass, the solid conscience, that soberly and tactfully facilitate management of crises for corporates and individuals.

Take the Patel Dam tragedy for instance. The owner, Mr Mansukulal Patel, has vanished. His manager took to TV to wax lyrical about their altruism and asked locals to pray for the rains to stop. It took the farm a week to buy press space to accuse rains in Dundori Forest for the tragedy. The Patels displayed gross callousness.

And remember Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH)? It was rocked by scandals real or manufactured. Still, denials and hard-line defence was the default mode of engagement. Poor handling of the crisis spawned changes of the hospital’s leadership. The boss was fired! The hospital sustained a bloody nose, and an egged face!

In Kenya, the chain of unseasoned crisis management is infinite offering graduate students ready fodder for research.

This is very unflattering. The market place economy is largely driven by polish and mastery of communication nuances. These dynamics are more desirable especially during a crisis. This is because image and reputation is the soul of any enterprise.

Maybe in Kenya we have regularised mediocrity. But in mature markets, a PR debacle is a sure ticket to losses. In 2017 United Airlines bungled its crisis management. It paid the price.

That’s why it’s scaring that even elite organisations that pour a fortune into consultants of communication can hardly hack a crisis. Their communication edifices are mere scarecrows that are clueless on the nuanced operations of crisis mitigation and management.

Yet, in Public Relations, there is a simple but solid truism – on crisis, it’s not about if, but when it will happen. Crises are innate in our systems. How to communicate during this period determines the arc of the corporate going forward.

But, there seem to be an ideological incongruity in understanding the nitty-gritties of corporate communication let alone strategic communication and their contribution to organisational growth and prestige.

Our lenses are still clouded by narcissistic yearnings for press publicity. In this persuasion, flattering media is the antidote for bad image. When the media turns hot, the script ordains, threaten them with consequences of freezing adverts.

Yet, the communication realm has undergone massive revolution. There is a monster in town that holds no franchise to anyone. A monster that explodes and burns on its own fuel like the sun. It’s ruthless. It stings like a dragon. It’s called social media. No amount of coercions can stop its acrid no-holds-barred fangs.

Objectification

Then there is, sadly, the ideological twist on looks. To most naïve and even aberrant corporate honchos, beauty is synonymous to PR. This cheapens the profession and objectifies mostly of women. While we know beauty drives the primitive mind, but, hey, good people, we absolutely need brains to drive the PR agenda.

Read: Forget beauty, PR about brains… http://rococo.co.ke/prreview/2015/09/25/forget-beauty-pr-is-about-brains-period/

And if you thought FMs killed radio journalism, our boardrooms are also killing professional communication. In this warped wisdom, anyone who has appeared in the media is hot cake ignoring the rigorous training mandatory for such a delicate and high intensity job.

For this flawed logic of engagement, it’s unfair to expect much from such folks. It explains why PR people are largely treated like African maids in an Arabian castle.

And most of them are happy with organising cocktail parties and to decorate venues, or to fire poorly crafted press releases. Yet, the world over, PR has evolved from its propaganda and spinning stripe to a critical strategic management tool.

Ask any random PR practitioner about the basic such as theories of crisis communication and your are likely to about 95 % blanks.

Yet the enterprise of PR or corporate communication should be intellectual rigour and meticulousness anchored on sound scholarly foundation.

Change Mind-set

To save this situation, organisations must change their mind-set towards corporate communication. They must reconfigure their structures to honestly anchor strategic communication thinkers in the boardrooms.

Then, any organisation worth its salt must plan for crisis. Anticipating a crisis is at the heart of any strategy. If not, you will be caught flatfooted like most people we have seen lately.

Executives should undergo thorough training on communicating during crises. Hubris, bravado, burying heads in the sand has never helped anyone. Nor is it sexy to shift blame. Be bold enough to take responsibility.

During good times construct and augment a reservoir of reputation. You’ll need it in bad times. As they say, make hay while the sun shines.

But then the happenings in Kenya’s corporate have offered us a peek into boardrooms, a panorama of an unpolished crisis communication management strategy. Corporates should be fretful- the fortresses are fragile.