In The Eye Of The Storm

How best to prepare your brand for unforeseen situations that lurk in the business landscape.

- Ramya Ramamurthy

Every brand manager worth his salt knows that the first rule of crisis management is to be prepared. And yet, this preparation may preclude the possibility of a crisis occurring due to malicious intent, competitor activity, social media slander, or a failure in consumer insight or technological innovation.

Today, crisis as a concept has evolved, and this makes it imperative for companies to be prepared for any kind of eventuality. It is no longer just the large environmental disasters that spring to mind. Both the British Petroleum oil spill in Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Bhopal gas tragedy at the Union Carbide plant in 1984 were environmental disasters that took lives—humans and wildlife—devastated the eco-system, cost millions, and affected generations to come.

Arguably, in the hindsight, perhaps these crises could have been prevented, but the truth is when they occurred, they were unforeseen and uncontrollable disasters that happened in a split second and impacted these companies and the environment for years. There was barely any time to contain them, and it was only once they tided over that the companies involved began to clean up and make amends (and some would argue that Union Carbide has still not done so, by evading full culpability and adequate compensation to victims). The simple truth is that not all disasters announce their arrival and not all disasters are spelt with a capital D like these two were.