Crisis Communications

Who will be there to protect your reputation? Your company might be next.

Every successful organization is vulnerable to a crisis. Service stoppages. Product recalls. Criminal acts. Political pressure. Attacks on your reputation. If left unchallenged, a crisis can erode the public’s trust in the way you do business. Your job as a business leader is to prepare relentlessly for the expected and the unexpected. Our job is to help you prepare, execute and succeed, because what you do today will determine your success when navigating a crisis tomorrow.

Our communications consultants served as senior media advisors to Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., who now heads Womble Carlyle’s Maryland office.

Our services are built on four central tenets learned from decades of experience shaping public opinion from both behind the podium and behind the camera: 

• Speed: First impressions matter and a rapid response is critical to shaping those first impressions. 
• Candor: Your constituencies—customers, employees, investors, regulators—deserve the facts. 
• Discipline: Your ability to communicate in a crisis depends on identifying a clear message and the proper voices to communicate it. 
• Commitment: The sooner your constituencies understand your commitment to a fair and positive outcome, the better.

Womble Carlyle professionals will help you prepare for the crisis around the corner. And when a crisis occurs, we will be by your side, deploying our expertise to help you succeed.

Gather the Facts: Whether in advance of a crisis or in response to one, Womble Carlyle will gather the facts, determine your vulnerabilities, define your constituencies, assess media coverage, and identify short and long-range goals.

Develop a Plan: Womble Carlyle will determine the challenges confronting you. Is the press at your doorstep? Are critics orchestrating against you? Are politicians exploiting the situation for their gain? Womble Carlyle possesses a wide array of resources to win not just tomorrow’s news cycle, but every news cycle necessary to help you protect your reputation.

Deploy our Expertise: Womble Carlyle will utilize proven communications strategies, including filtered, unfiltered, earned, and paid media campaigns to achieve your objectives. We will help shape news cycles with sustained penetration of a clear and
disciplined message.

Crisis Communications
Womble Carlyle offers clients decades of experience managing high-stakes reputation crises, scrutiny of business acquisitions, natural disasters, and terror threats.

Our professionals know what it’s like to be in the spotlight and will draw on their unique experiences to meet your challenge with speed, candor, discipline, and commitment.

Message Development
Womble Carlyle knows that the right words can change minds. Our communications professionals possess decades of experience developing clear and disciplined messages for local, state, national, and international audiences. We will work with you to target your key audience, tailor a message designed to persuade that audience, and help you deploy your message in a sustainable way.

Media Training
Our experienced professionals have helped senior corporate executives, high profile elected officials, regulators, and others to harness the power of the media to effectively communicate with the public. We will coach you on the basics of media interaction, the nuances of print and electronic media, and how to capitalize on one-on-one interviews, background discussions, and press conferences.

Media Relations & Event Planning
Womble Carlyle has built quality relationships with reporters, editors, news directors, editorial board members, and bloggers across the country. Our communications professionals also possess in-depth experience planning and executing complex media events that saturate a predetermined market with a clear message. We will help stage your event to harness the power of imagery and content to persuade your constituencies.

Resource Inventory
Our media professionals know how to audit communications resources within large organizations—from communications officers and audio/video equipment to web resources and press distribution lists—and recommend how to deploy them to help you succeed.

Internal & Web Communications
Womble Carlyle will work with you to develop an internal communications plan designed to improve your organization’s public response to a crisis. In addition, our communications professionals can help you win on the web with innovative online strategic and tactical planning.