MH370- 100 DAYS LATER.....What have we done so far?

We are approaching 100 days of the unfortunate disappearance of flight MH370 on 8 March 2014.

100 days down...what did we do so far?

If you browse the internet for crisis communications and MH370, 90% of the articles that you will find are negative. Which is, in my opinion very unfortunate.  There are two very important aspects that we need to see when one wants to analyse the crisis communications aspect of this tragedy. One is the response of Malaysian Airlines and the other is the response of the Malaysian government. Both have been very different. Malaysian Airlines should be commended for what they did. The way MAS handled this crisis is first class crisis communications, both social media and mass media.  On the other hand, the Malaysian government (or the officials representing the government) could have been better (I am mincing my words here).

If there is something I or other PR practitioners can learn is : learning from MAS on how they managed it so well. The media relations team of MAS consistently updated the media through numerous press release (I will not go into details here for the timing, but almost every 2 hours press releases were uploaded in the website, available for the media and its stakeholders. The press releases not only provided timely information, but clarified speculations and wrong reports by the media. How can you be on top of this when a crisis is evolving? Kudos to the PR  team of MAS. Compare this with the Asiana Airlines crash (6 July 2013), where the airlines released the first press release after approximately eight hours after the crash.

It is also very interesting to note that MAS focused on the families of the passengers, which is the most important aspect of any crisis, the stakeholders/victims/families. A Go-Team was available in China to constantly brief families there.  There were many things that MAS did that we can learn from them; activating the dark site (a dark site is a dormant site and only activated during a crisis situation), removing all promotional materials from the website, creating direct phone numbers of the media, having a media centre at Everly Hotel, having daily press conferences, uploading videos of the caregivers, having media interviews for the spokesperson (CEO) in major news channels to get their side of the story out, etc. That is A-class crisis communications!

Currently, MAS is creating a lot of positive stories on its own to instill confidence amongst its stakeholders. For example, 'Business As Usual' video by the CEO of MAS, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya was posted 22 May 2014 is a good example. Similarly, other videos by the MAS crew is commendable.

Business As Usual for MAS

Unfortunately, all these efforts were overshadowed by the way the government officials handled the crisis. Why? Because the government never had a crisis communications plan, which any government should have. Just like how an organization should have a plan, similarly, governments too should act as organizations and have a plan, where during a crisis situation such as terrorist attack, natural disaster, healthcare emergency, community/racial tension etc, this plan should be activated. Just like an organization, where the CEO takes charge, here the Prime Minister leads the crisis team, followed by the Minister, KSN, and followed by the respective agencies.

MAS' crisis communications efforts very overshadowed by the way the government officials mishandled the incident

What the government can learn from this is that:

a. National Crisis Communication Plan- We need one now. We should learn from this incident and create a strategic national crisis communication plan which is regularly tested, so that when faced with any crisis, we can activate a trained crisis communication team to manage the media and all stakeholders.

b. Spokespersons should be trained to face the media- this should be done annually prior to a crisis

c. Too many spokespersons- this is why we need (a). When different agencies are involved such as the police and immigration, DCA, there is no need for everyone to have a press conference and worse, contradict each other.

d. Don’t have a press conference when you don’t have the answers- why not use a press statement instead?

e. Visual aids during the press conference- this is huge crisis with too many facts, too many jargons (pings? Handshakes?) Powerpoints would have helped

f. Bring in the experts: Malaysia has top, world class PR agencies and experts in this, why not utilize them? If we had the JACC, we should also have a JPRCC (Joint PR Coordination Centre).Why? We had the Ministry of Transport, PDRM, Malaysian Immigration, DCA, foreign agencies. Who was coordinating the communications aspect?

g. Managing the press- why foreign press was given more priority? The national media should have been given the privilege to interview the PM, interview the Acting Transport Minister on a search and rescue mission. Did the government down play the importance of the national media?

We should not stop here.  We have weathered the storm and now we should be able to share what was done right/wrong and what other countries can learn from us. Malaysia should spearhead the crisis communications agenda. Hence, why we are organizing the 1^st Global Crisis Communications Conference (GC3) this coming 20-21 November 2014. GC3 will be a platform for eminent thought leaders in this area to share their insights, as the MH370 incident is a wakeup call for all of us- regionally and globally to strengthen our crisis communications preparedness.