In this section, we will first examine a wide range of tactics for successfully delivering our risk messages while avoiding the pitfalls that are common to news conferences and community meetings. This section contains takes about eight minutes to read.
A full introduction to the details of delivering a message to stakeholders through mass media, social media, news conferences, or public meetings is well beyond the scope of this handbook. However, we will now cover certain basic tactics and strategies for delivering your risk messages in ways that are more likely to manage community outrage.
For an in-depth guide to delivering risk messages via mass media during high-stress situations, consult The World Health Organization’s Effective Media Communication during Public Health Emergencies, available online or through MessageMaps.org.
Basics of delivering risk messages
In any risk controversy, we should deliver the initial information in three stages, according to Covello, Minamyer and Clayton (2007).
First, we want to deliver our preamble, which should focus on communicating empathy and gaining trust while also preempting the most damaging points our critics are likely to make. (We discussed this in detail in Section 5.)
Next, we will present our key messages and supporting data from our overarching message map. We will want to stress our three key messages, using the supporting data to amplify, clarify, or bolster these messages. This is a case where less is more. Keep the focus on the most essential information that stakeholders will need to respond effectively to the outbreak.
Covello’s model for delivering the overarching message map is known as the Triple T Model:
- Tell your audience what you are going to tell them: State your key messages from your overarching message map. Keep in mind you want to keep this message at less than nine seconds for broadcast media and twenty-four words for print media.
- Tell them more: State the first key message and then state the three supporting messages. Do the same with the second and third key messages and their supporting messages.
- Tell them what you just told them: Repeat your three key messages.
Finally, we should be prepared to answer questions from stakeholders and journalists. For this, we should rely upon our eight other message maps, which should anticipate most of the questions the spokesperson will field. Remember: If you don’t know the answer to a question, say so. If you are uncertain about the answer, say so. If you need to bring forward a subject-matter expert to clarify your answers, do it.
The question-and-answer section is absolutely fundamental to the reduction of stakeholder outrage during a foodborne outbreak and product recall. We must answer questions, relying on our message maps to guide our responses, and on bridging techniques to steer the discussion back to our maps as needed. But we must also stand in the dock and allow stakeholders to vent their outrage toward us, in person or through the news media. What’s more, we must respond with total contrition.
“You have to be humiliated, ashamed—and it has to show,” Sandman says. “This is the secular equivalent of the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance—the final step in forgiveness. The dynamics of apology/forgiveness hinge on shame. If you don’t visibly mean your apology, if it looks calculated, brazen, and unashamed, it doesn’t count (Sandman and Burrow, 2005).”
A Q&A session is difficult for anyone, and especially for the CEO. However, in any risk controversy, the company must own the situation, and the face of the company is usually the CEO. To send a proxy to deal with hungry reporters and outraged stakeholders will signal a lack of courage as well as a lack of leadership. It is also likely to stoke the outrage, not calm it.
Using visual aids
Visual aids such as charts and graphs are often highly effective, especially if they are tailored to the preferences of our audiences (Covello, Minamyer and Clayton, 2007).
“If the information about risk being conveyed involves data and numerical ratings of risk, numerical visuals or charts are the best choice,” safety consultant Pamela (Ferrante) Walaski says in her book, Risk and Crisis Communications: Methods and Messages (2011). “The effects of the risk that … can be seen are best presented through the use of photographs or illustrations.”
Everyone in the room must easily see our visuals, so a projected image is usually best, Walaski says. Posters may work if the information is very simple and could easily fit on one side of a letter-size handout. The judicious use of color also tends to enhance charts, graphics, illustrations, photos, and other visual elements.
Preparing the primary spokesperson
Selecting the primary spokesperson should depend upon his or her ability to convey caring and empathy, and not necessarily on expertise and status. Keep Covello’s research in mind during the selection process: Stakeholders under stress are far more concerned with issues of listening, caring, empathy, honesty, and openness than they are in competence and expertise (Covello, 2003).
Training and practice for the key spokesperson should emphasize repetition of the key concepts that are vital to conveying essential information to our audiences. This is especially true of the overarching message map.
In addition, the main spokesperson should diligently practice the art of the bridging statement.
At first, it may seem difficult to transition from one set of information back to information you need to repeat. It’s not. Covello has identified at least thirty-three phrases that will allow a spokesperson to move smoothly from map to the next (2003). These phrases are known as bridging statements because they allow us to build rhetorical bridges that carry our audience from one statement to the next or to steer the discussion back to the message maps.
Among the most common bridging statements are:
- “And what’s more important to know is …”
- “However, the real issue here is …”
- “Let me point out again that …”
- “Before we continue, let me emphasize that …”
- “Let me put all this in perspective by saying …”
Practicing these statements will allow our spokespeople to easily and seamlessly transition back to our key messages. For a more extensive list of bridging statements, download Covello’s essay on bridging, available through a link at MessageMaps.org.
In addition to general bridging statements, like the ones above, the skilled spokesperson will practice bridging statements for more specific situations. Among them are:
Bridging over questions you cannot answer: In almost any risk controversy, there will come a moment when we are asked a question we cannot answer. Reasons will vary. It could be that we don’t know the answer right now, but will know later. It could be that we are prohibited by law, policy, or circumstance from answering. It could be that we are not the best source to provide an answer to that question. Or it could be that the answer is unknowable. In this situation, Covello, Minamyer, and Clayton (2007) suggest a six-step approach:
- Restate the question as accurately as you can, but leave out any negatives.
- Bridge with:
- “I wish I could answer that.”
- “My ability to answer is limited.”
- “We’re still looking into that.”
- Or, if there’s no other choice, “I don’t know.”
- Explain, as best as you can, why you cannot answer the question.
- Promise to follow up with an answer by a deadline.
- “I expect to be able to tell you more by …”
- Bridge again to what you can say:
- “What I can tell you is …”
- Return to your message maps.
Bridging over requests for guarantees: Sometimes a stakeholder or a journalist will ask our spokesperson to guarantee a result. This is, of course, dangerous territory. Covello, Minamyer, and Clayton suggest handling the question this way:
- State that the question requires you to predict the future.
- “You’ve asked me for a guarantee, to promise something about the future.”
- State that the past and the present may indicate the future.
- “The best way I know to talk about the future is to talk about what we know from the past and the present.”
- Bridge to what you do know (your message maps)
- “Here’s what we do know …”
Bridging over hypotheticals: Sometimes a stakeholder or a journalist will ask the spokesperson a hypothetical: “What if this happens?” According to Covello, Minamyer, and Clayton, the best response is usually:
- Repeat the question as best you can, without the negatives.
- “You’ve asked me what might happen if ….”
- Now bridge to “what is.”
- “I believe there’s value is talking about what we know now.”
- Go back to your message maps.
- “What we know is this …”
Bridging over hostility: In a risk controversy, a spokesperson will frequently face a hostile question, a false allegation, or a critical statement. According to Covello, Minamyer, and Clayton, the best response is usually:
- Paraphrase the question while leaving out the negatives by adding the opposite language, or an underlying value, or neutral language.
- “You’ve raised a serious question about X.”
- Indicate that the issue is important.
- “X is important to our company.”
- State what has been done or will be done to address the issue.
- “We have done the following to address X …”
- Return to the appropriate message map.
The advanced spokesperson also will want to master strategies for reducing outrage during public meetings. These are complex strategies that require much practice and training, and are well beyond the scope of this handbook. For initial guidance, look for a 2005 article by Peter Sandman, available online at his web site (psandman.com): “Games Risk Communicators Play: Follow-the-Leader, Echo, Donkey, and Seesaw.”
