Thank you to everyone who joined us for our recent webinar: Q&A with Melissa Agnes.

During the presentation, Melissa Agnes answered many of your questions. Due to time constraints, there were 2 questions that we were unable to get to. As promised, Melissa has kindly provided her take on Oxfam and L.L.Bean. 

Q: What is your opinion on how Oxfam is communicating and what might the impact be?

A: This is proving to be a cultural crisis – and even an industry crisis – which is the most challenging type of crisis to manage as it runs extremely deep, and the right people need to be held accountable, in order for effective crisis management to ensue. Oxfam has not yet taken on the role of holding itself and its leadership accountable. The longer they take to do this on a very real and impactful level, the more of a Crisis Response Penalty (CRP) they will continue to experience.

Q: How could L.L. Bean have been so wrong in anticipating customer response?

A: While I have not spoken directly with L.L. Bean, what I can speculate based on my experience, is that they made the decision to change their policy for business reasons – i.e.: the impact it was having on their bottom-line – and failed to evaluate the emotional and values-based connection that this policy had created with their customers over time. This means they neglected to evaluate the 360 degrees of potential risk involved with this business decision. Had they done this effectively, they would have come forth with a stronger strategy that continued to align with their values and relationships with customers, while also mitigating business impact.

Video Clip of the Q&A

Melissa also discussed defining a crisis for an organization versus an issue during the webinar. She explained that you must look at the long term negative impacts on people, environment, business operations, reputation and bottom line. For more on this, watch the short clip below for Melissa’s opinion on the biggest corporate crisis of 2017.

 

 

If you missed the webinar, you can view the full recording here.

Melissa Agnes to Keynote ICMC 2018

Melissa will be the keynote speaker at the 3rd annual International Crisis Management Conference in Boston.

If you have a specific question you would like to ask, come see her speak on April 25, 2018! Register HERE. 

Melissa Agnes is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection and is the author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World.