Communication strategies for crisis management in sports organizations

Communication Strategies Used in Crisis Management

To operate successfully, sports marketing relies on a variety of processes and functions, including product, price, promotion, place, market segmentation and services marketing (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). However, one management process that is often overlooked by sports marketers and marketing authors is crisis management. The communication strategies used by sports and athletic organizations to manage crises or scandals is a very important part of sports management.

Crisis management, which is frequently referred to as risk or emergency management, is the process that employs strategies to counteract the negative affects of an event or action that can damage the reputation of an individual or an organization (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). Marketing and public relations professionals are constantly launching campaigns heavily based in crisis communications theory to counteract negative publicity. However, many fail to grasp the value of crisis management and are often unwilling to priorities communications efforts in relations to crisis management in regular operations.

One of the most important aspects of crisis management is the development and implementation of a theoretical and effective media relations campaign (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). The media plays a key role in an organization's attempt to send key messages to the publics. On the flip side, it can also send negative and damaging messages, particularly when there is a crisis or scandal involved. The media's ability to jump on a story as soon as it happens has forced sports organizations to develop crisis strategies that can be launched just as quickly as the media can report the news (Fink, 1986).

According to Tymson and Sherman (1996), good crisis management strategies focus on taking care of any causalities, controlling damage, and returning the organization to normal operating conditions as soon as possible (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). Failure to respond to the crisis often results in unwanted and negative reactions. For instance, emotion is a response that can affect the result of a crisis or scandal. While emotion often helps crisis situations, it can be very damaging, as well. The media frequently uses emotion to create newsworthy angles during crises, knowing that it attracts audience interest. According to Walsh (1997):."..people's often astounding willingness to publicly express emotional pain is matched by the audience's readiness to listen

" Therefore, effective crisis management must respond to an incident before the media uses it to create negative emotions in the public.

This paper aims to clarify the importance of crisis management in sport marketing operations. Further, the paper will describe how sports organizations can use communications strategies to combat the negative affects of a crisis situation.

Value of Crisis Management

The value of having an effective crisis communications plan cannot be underestimated. In sports organizations, the investment in this plan by management team is usually repaid many times over when they are called upon to use it (Hoffman, 1999). Time is usually a major priority when a crisis breaks. The ability to refer to this plan and start doing the right things immediately saves organizations a great deal of pain and aggravation down the road. Without such a plan, companies can quickly lose control while they decide who needs to be called and what message needs to be sent.

In the sports marketing department, a crisis management plan is key to the success of the department, as well as the entire organization (Hoffman, 1999). During crisis time, leaders of the organization will see how the marketing team responds to this crisis. If the department is unprepared, management will not be impressed. Such incompetence will leave them wondering if they should trust the department in the future. On the other hand, a team that quickly implements a well thought-out crisis communications plan can actually take advantage of a limited window of opportunity.

An excellent example of this occurred in January 1998 in the skiing industry (Hoffman, 1999). Within five days of each other, both Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono were killed in skiing accidents. The natural tendency of the media may have been to create fears about the declining safety of the sport. Taken to an extreme, this may have had a negative effect on the industry.

Fortunately, the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) had a crisis plan developed that they could immediately implement. The plan included the compilation of statistics that proved that the accident rate continued to average 36 fatalities a year for the past few years.

Within hours of the first reports of Kennedy's death, the Association faxed nine pages of information to the media and to their member ski resorts (Hoffman, 1999). As a result, the resorts could respond properly to local media inquiries with consistent information. They also were able to quickly contact a Ph.D. At the Rochester Institute of Technology who had studied ski injuries for 30 years. He was offered to the media as an objective authority on the issue.

The NSAA was protected from seeing these two tragic accidents spiral into a crisis for the whole industry because they had a crisis plan ready (Hoffman, 1999). Immediately after the accident, they did not have to create a plan, find the statistics, locate authoritative third-party source and figure out how to contact him. Instead, they had the plan in order and could immediately respond to the crisis. The message that was eventually communicated during the fiasco was that skiing was a relatively safe sport if the skiers followed basic safety practices.

Crisis Plan in Action

Recently, Oklahoma University (OU) athletic director Joe Castiglione was forced to deal with the unpleasant yet crucial aspect of collegiate athletic administration: crisis management (Forde, 2004). The news that senior defensive tackle, team captain, honor-roll student and All-America candidate Dusty Dvoracek had been kicked off the team was embraced by the media and was promoted from the sports page to the front page of the Daily Oklahoman on a Saturday morning.

The decision was made following Dvoracek's involvement in an alleged altercation with a friend the Saturday before (Forde, 2004). The friend had come to visit Dvoracek from his home state of Texas, and watched the Sooners' 63-13 rout of Houston -- then the two went partying, and the party got out of hand. According to local media reports, the friend arrived at a Norman hospital unconscious and wound up in intensive care for five days. He later recovered.

According to Forde (2004): "Dvoracek had already been subjected to undisclosed discipline after an incident last March, in which he allegedly punched an OU student at a bar and broke his nose -- though the victim did not press charges and Dvoracek reportedly apologized and paid the man's medical bills. This second violent incident forced Stoops to take a harder stand against one of his most popular players and suspend him."

Sooners used a crisis management plan to deal with the university's decision, in an effort to prevent bad publicity for the school and the team (Forde, 2004). The following describes how the university handled the crisis the day before it hit the newsstands. In the early afternoon, OU issued a release saying that it had suspended Dvoracek indefinitely and replaced him as captain. The action had been implemented by coach Bob Stoops a few days earlier, but it wasn't made public until the day before the weekend Oregon game.

The school was prepared for the news to create a major rise across the state, starting with the evening newscasts (Forde, 2004). However, the situation did not end there, with the university's release and a canned statement from Stoops. In the late afternoon, the university was forced to deal with reporters, some of whom were escalating the crisis with news of another alleged Dvoracek assault in the past and of an alleged sexual assault complaint against Dvoracek in Oklahoma, neither of which led to charges against the player.

Deciding what to do was difficult for the university for two reasons: all these allegations and incidents resulted in zero police charges against Dvoracek; and he was so highly regarded off the field as an academic All-Big 12 player with a 3.4 GPA in business (Forde, 2004). However, he needed to be disciplined for his actions to preserve the reputation of the team. In the end, Dvoracek was dismissed, although he has the option to remain in school and on scholarship. Stoops, the man in charge of the program, instructed the PR team to disseminate the information to the media.

By morning, when the full story was laid out in the papers, the public was shocked but largely supportive of the action (Forde, 2004). "As Daily Oklahoman columnist Berry Tramel wrote in Saturday's paper, this was a firm signal that discipline matters to Stoops -- something most Oklahoma fans want to hear, with the embarrassment from the outlaw-program days of the late 1980s still remembered by many. When your starting quarterback winds up on the cover of Sports Illustrated in handcuffs, as Charles Thompson once did, it's not real good for the image."

Conclusion

The former example shows the importance of communications when dealing with a crisis or scandal. "No person is rich enough to buy back his past; a shattered reputation leaves little to rebuild," says Hessert (1997). This is true for both people and organizations, and is extremely costly.

Effective crisis management plans prepare sports organizations for crises and allow the response to be conducted systematically and professionally (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). For a crisis management plan to be successful, it is important that organizations take the time to communicate a clear and consistent message, and the need for decisions to be made quickly. According to Fink (1986):."..the more adept you become as a decision maker who has the ability to find opportunity where others routinely take detours, the more skill, success and regard you will have as a crisis manager...."

As more sports organizations credit public relations practice as a key business management tool, the benefits of strategic communications are becoming more apparent in the marketing process (O'Bierne and Ries, 2002). By using effective crisis management models, sports organizations are better prepared to identify 'spot fires' which will enable marketers to extinguish the flames before they damage the organization's reputation.