Three Golden Rules of Crisis Comms

We’re going to need a bigger hamper: everything that went wrong with Fortnum and Mason’s paralympic snub.

A reception with the King of England to celebrate your Olympic success? Sounds lovely, thanks! An after-party hosted by one of the biggest luxury brands in the country? Ahhhh, not for you heroic Paralympians, no. You’re back on the bus home I’m afraid.

There is no doubt the decision to invite only able-bodied Olympians to a Fortnum and Mason after-party following a right Royal reception last week was a huge misjudgement. But the hamper supplier to the stars has made things so much worse with their response, which achieved the one thing all crisis comms activity seeks to avoid – making the story hang around even longer. More than half of the media coverage following the gaffe is now focussed on Fortnum’s response, which is almost as badly judged as the decision not to invite Paralympians to the party in the first place. 

The response ignores almost all of the golden rules of crisis comms, namely:

Image credit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

1. Be fast

Medal winning paralympic sprinter Zac Shaw PM’d Fortnum and Mason twice to ask why he and his team mates weren’t invited. He got zero response and so took to Twitter to ask publicly instead. Big missed opportunity here to have an honest conversation in private before the foie gras hit the fan.

2. Be honest

When will business leaders realise that people aren’t stupid? That our bullsh*t radars are actually very finely tuned after decades of social media guff and months of AI-generated content? 

When Shaw did get a response, firstly via PM, secondly, more publicly, Fortnum and Mason said (and I’m only slightly paraphrasing here) “Well obviously we’ve been planning a separate party just for Paralympians all along, only it’s on a different day and we’d forgotten to mention it to anyone. And anyway, the room’s too small for all your wheelchairs and stuff. So you don’t mind though, yeah?”

I mean, seriously. Talk about making it worse. 

3. Be sincere

OK I’ll admit as part of their statement Fortnums did say sorry, properly. That’s important. But it would have been far better to own the mistake, and apologise sincerely for it. Perhaps make a donation to ParalympicsGB, and a few hampers in time for Christmas wouldn’t go amiss as a sign that it’s been taken seriously. 

Don’t panic!

Now, I completely understand the benefit of hindsight. It’s so easy to criticise from the sidelines after something has happened. Far harder to make the right call when everyone is panicking, media are calling and everyone has an opinion.

That’s why we regularly run crisis comms training sessions with our clients, helping them to prepare for the unexpected, and giving people tools to manage crisis comms internally and externally.

We also offer crisis management – for many clients, we’re an invaluable third party with the media experience, cool head and external perspective organisations need when something goes wrong. 

Find out more about our crisis management work here.

Final thought

The most depressing thing of all? That the story itself made headlines for less than a day, when the issues and prejudice it highlights are systemic. This is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the misjudgement and mistreatment that some people face on a daily basis, and it deserves longer in the limelight. By making the story bigger, perhaps Fortnum and Mason did Paralympics GB a favour after all. 

Lisa Gibson

Lisa is Head of Comms and PR at Yours Sincerely with 20 years of experience in agency PR working with brands such as Salesforce, NMRN, Graham Budd, Panasonic, and Open University. Lisa conducts crisis comms training and is responsible for global coverage for our clients. Find Lisa on LinkedIn here.