Last week’s re­place­ment of Lisa Agard as the CEO of Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT) was the most pub­lic ex­am­ple of the fall­out fol­low­ing a se­ries of cy­ber­at­tacks on mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies in T&T re­cent­ly.

How­ev­er, pub­lic re­la­tions ex­perts be­lieve that the lack of a prop­er re­sponse to the pub­lic in the face of these at­tacks has com­pro­mised brands even more than most may think.

Car­la Williams John­son of Car­li Com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­lieves the re­place­ment of the CEO has ex­posed just how poor­ly many com­pa­nies han­dle pub­lic re­la­tions.

“I think that the con­ver­sa­tion needs to hap­pen be­fore the cri­sis. I feel like too of­ten in T&T and by ex­ten­sion, the Caribbean, we will miss the quote-un­quote, PR work when there’s a cri­sis, but PR hap­pens long be­fore the cri­sis,” said John­son.

“It talks about rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment, vis­i­bil­i­ty, cred­i­bil­i­ty, show­ing up in the me­dia, let­ting the peo­ple know and trust you. Let­ting us see who the CEO. We need to un­der­stand that PR is the long game. It’s not ‘Oh, I’m hav­ing an event’. Let me just run in the pa­pers or let me just run on TV, or I’m hav­ing a cri­sis. Let me just send a press re­lease. No, it’s all about build­ing that rep­u­ta­tion,”

She be­lieved that in the case of TSTT, their in­ef­fec­tive pub­lic re­la­tions strat­e­gy left them in cri­sis mode over a month since the cy­ber­at­tack oc­curred.

“Yes, they are in cri­sis mode. I don’t even think they have moved to post-cri­sis. But I do think there’s a lot of things that could be done, could be said to make sure that the pub­lic un­der­stands that there’s some kind of plan in place to help re­gain their trust,’ said John­son.

“Peo­ple are now putting two and two to­geth­er to re­alise but wait, this on­ly hit the me­dia at this point but this was go­ing on long be­fore,” she ex­plained, not­ing that this made the pub­lic’s dis­trust of the com­pa­ny grow.

The se­ries of at­tacks and the un­der­whelm­ing re­sponse from var­i­ous en­ti­ties af­fect­ed prompt­ed John­son to write a post on the Pub­lic Re­la­tions As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T web­site en­ti­tled, How to pro­tect a brand’s rep­u­ta­tion af­ter a cy­ber­at­tack.

She ex­plained, “A lot of com­pa­nies han­dled it in the way that they knew how to han­dle it. But I do think a lot bet­ter could have been done. A lot more could have been done with quite a few com­pa­nies in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the pub­lic, when it did hit the pub­lic do­main, com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the me­dia, and in­for­ma­tion that needs to be shared as a PR per­son my­self, I do know that speak­ing about facts and the facts are very im­por­tant.”

In the post, she not­ed that com­pa­nies re­quire a pre-cri­sis plan, but should the sit­u­a­tion hit “CODE RED” or cri­sis, there should be a four-step roll­out:

A – Act im­me­di­ate­ly,

B – Be vis­i­ble,

C – Change strat­e­gy and

D – Don’t give up.

John­son said sim­ply fol­low­ing the old play­book of pro­tect­ing the com­pa­ny im­age would not cut it in this sit­u­a­tion.

“I do not rec­om­mend down­play­ing the sever­i­ty of a cri­sis to make the com­pa­ny look good. You must be able to let the (pub­lic) know this is what has hap­pened. I al­so don’t rec­om­mend al­ways us­ing press re­leas­es in terms of con­vey­ing in­for­ma­tion. I do think there are cer­tain in­stances where a press con­fer­ence would have been a bet­ter way to ap­proach things,” she said.

John­son ex­plained that with­out these plans and prop­er en­gage­ment or ac­tion in the pub­lic, the com­pa­ny could suf­fer even greater loss­es in the fu­ture as cus­tomers and even po­ten­tial em­ploy­ees may be less will­ing to en­gage com­pa­nies due to their ap­proach in such events.

“Peo­ple may not nec­es­sar­i­ly want to work for the com­pa­ny. So maybe re­cruit­ment may suf­fer as well. They may have a hard time in fill­ing po­si­tions with­in the com­pa­ny.

There’s a lot and it’s be­cause it’s such a dif­fi­cult thing to put your fin­ger on. If it’s not dealt with prop­er­ly. These faults could be over a long pe­ri­od of time,” John­son said, as she sug­gest­ed that lo­cal com­pa­nies could take a page from Star­bucks’ han­dling of racial bias in their Unit­ed States stores in 2018 as an ex­am­ple of how to ad­dress a cri­sis in the pub­lic eye.

The con­cern over the ap­proach­es tak­en by lo­cal com­pa­nies was al­so shared by an­oth­er pub­lic re­la­tions prac­ti­tion­er Te­nille Clarke.

Clarke, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and prin­ci­pal pub­li­cist, Cham­bers Me­dia So­lu­tions said she was sim­i­lar­ly per­turbed by the de­ci­sions made by Prices­mart and Courts fol­low­ing rev­e­la­tions of cy­ber­at­tacks on their com­pa­nies.

“In my ca­pac­i­ty as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions and pub­lic re­la­tions con­sul­tant, I do be­lieve that a lot has been left to be de­sired and that there is a lot of right­ful dis­ap­point­ment in the pub­lic do­main. And you have to think about it from a con­sumer stand­point. No­body wants to find out that their per­son­al sen­si­tive in­for­ma­tion has been leaked on the dark web, from da­ta ex­perts or oth­er per­sons in the pub­lic do­main,” said Clarke.

“And then on top of that, there’s noth­ing that you can do about get­ting the in­for­ma­tion of­fline. So at the bare min­i­mum cus­tomers want to hear the truth of their cir­cum­stances, where the bond of trust orig­i­nal­ly ex­ist­ed, which is be­tween the cus­tomer and the cor­po­rate en­ti­ty, and that is when your cor­po­rate val­ues should be tak­ing the reins and stand­ing front and cen­tre in the midst of these kinds of cir­cum­stances.”

Clarke ex­plained that while the chal­lenges of these at­tacks are pre­sent­ing new prob­lems for these com­pa­nies from a tech­no­log­i­cal stand­point, the or­gan­i­sa­tions al­so have to fac­tor in the key re­la­tion­ship of busi­ness: cul­ti­vat­ing trust with their client base.

“There’s the thing that you can­not phys­i­cal­ly touch which is the trust fac­tor, the trust that a cus­tomer places in you as an or­gan­i­sa­tion to keep their in­for­ma­tion safe, and we’ve seen pro­gres­sive re­me­di­al ac­tion be­ing tak­en with every dis­cov­ery of a breach in the last few weeks. It is a form of rep­u­ta­tion man­age­ment. And I think all com­pa­nies should be think­ing about the fol­low­ing pur­pose-dri­ven com­mu­ni­ca­tions that are both ef­fec­tive and eth­i­cal. So the first thing is au­then­tic­i­ty. Have you shared a po­si­tion that ad­mits where you’ve gone wrong, and where you in­tend to im­prove? Are you hold­ing your­self ac­count­able as an or­ga­ni­za­tion pub­licly?” she asked.

Clarke al­so ques­tioned if these com­pa­nies were even re­spond­ing to some of the con­cerns be­ing raised by the cus­tomers.

She said, “The sec­ond thing is en­gage­ment. Are you ac­tive­ly lis­ten­ing to what your au­di­ence has to say? That your mes­sage res­onates with them, with the val­ues that they hold true? What do you think is an im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion for them? And are you pro­vid­ing them with the ve­hi­cle and the plat­forms to ex­press those con­cerns? And then the fi­nal thing is im­pact; Has the be­hav­iour of your au­di­ence changed as a re­sult of you com­mu­ni­cat­ing with them? And have you re­tained their trust? And I think that those things are im­por­tant, but crit­i­cal­ly quick and de­ci­sive ac­tion be­comes the or­der of the day when it comes to clear com­mu­ni­ca­tion. And that be­comes the dif­fer­ence in turn be­tween a com­mon sit­u­a­tion and a cri­sis that every­one wants to avoid.”