From Our Brains to Yours
What are you saying to make people feel better?
This morning I fired our financial planner (a relative, natch). Not because our meager retirement savings plummeted on his watch; clearly he’s not to blame for that. I lowered the boom because we never heard from him. Not when the econopalypse started, not when we got our end-of year statements indicating that Caleb would have to fund more of his own college education than we’d hoped, not even when the bank the firm is associated with was rumored to be among ranks of the collapsing institutions.
We didn’t hope to hear good news from him, we just needed to hear something from the guy we trusted to navigate an arena we’re not comfortable in. Now that we’re even less comfortable in that arena, we’re not comfortable at all with a guy who doesn’t bother to communicate.
So I was intrigued to come across an article in my reader from AdAge titled, “Banks Went Mum as Trust Dropped: PR Survey.” It turns out it wasn’t just our finance guy who went silent just as we most needed to hear from him, it was almost half of folks’ finance guys. Worse: those that heard from their banks and financial institutions got communications that made them trust those institutions even less! From the report:
Almost half (44%) of the 1,000 consumers polled between Feb. 28 and March 2 said they have heard something from the industry, either through traditional or new-media outlets, but felt more negative about the industry after hearing it. Another 38% said banks and financial institutions haven’t communicated with them at all. A mere 11% said they actually heard something from a bank or financial services company that made them feel better about the industry after hearing it.
Ouch.
What are the lessons here? I think there are two:
- You can never communicate too much.
- Make sure you communicate a reason for people feel better about you – even if you’ve got bad news.
Crisis communications 101? Absolutely. But evidently not everyone’s taken 101. Moreover, in these times it’s just plain old Communications 101, crisis or otherwise.
-Shayna