Insights during a communications crisis
How should a property company respond when a social media storm hits? Frasers Property Australia’s Lisa McCutchion shares her must-read insights after managing the communications response to a recent Sydney site accident.
Residents at Sydney’s Discovery Point were enjoying a leisurely breakfast at 9.30am on Sunday 6 August when a crane fell from Probuild’s Marq East construction site onto the adjacent and occupied Arc residential building.
“Within eight minutes, residents were posting photos of the crane on social media,” says McCutchion (pictured, right), Frasers Property’s general manager of corporate marketing and communications.
The accident prompted the immediate evacuation of 485 apartments across four buildings, and put the company’s crisis communications strategy to the test.
Probuild, the construction company responsible for the crane, managed the assessment, stabilisation and removal of the crane. Meanwhile, Frasers Property took responsibility for logistics and communication.
“While we weren’t responsible for the crane falling, we had the skills and staff to manage the human side of this rapidly unfolding crisis,” McCutchion says.
“Within hours it was clear that hundreds of people – some of them still in their pyjamas – had no idea where they would sleep that night. We stepped into the breach without pause.”
By stepping in, Frasers Property exposed itself to the perception that it was responsible for the incident itself. “But we decided to accept this risk because we couldn’t countenance the idea of leaving this community adrift,” she says.
By mid-afternoon, Frasers Property had secured 1 hotel rooms, and by early evening had residents on buses to their hotels. Pets, including a chicken, were housed with friends.
Most residents returned home on Sunday evening, although all four buildings lost access to car parks, and any cars parked there, for eight days.
But for the residents in 88 apartments at Arc, who were “quite literally homeless” for eight days, the logistical challenge was large.
“We managed accommodation for over 100 people for eight days – including families, the elderly, nursing mothers and home-based workers,” McCutchion says.
Frasers Property, on behalf of Probuild, provided out-of-pocket expenses for those affected, established a fully-equipped community centre and converted a display apartment into a parent zone.
Testing times
The incident really “put our social media and communications policy to the test,” McCutchion says.
“I can understand that there are companies reluctant to engage in public conversations on social media. There is no question that as soon as we made ourselves present on social media, we exposed ourselves to public criticism and some of this was vitriolic. People were angry and felt entitled to be so.
“But our responsibility to our customer doesn’t finish when we hand over the keys.”
Like every large company, Frasers Property has a well-documented, detailed crisis communications policy. But at no point in eight days did anyone reach for the crisis communications strategy, McCutchion says. Instead, her team executed it intuitively, according to the values of their organisation.
McCutchion and her colleagues established a communications hub to disseminate information, clear roles and responsibilities, and a ‘single source of truth’ for information. “Our general manager Nigel Edgar was on site within an hour, and barely left for the next eight days,” she explains. They also started “listening” to both social and mainstream media, with Wise McBaron Communication handling media liaison.
By 3pm on the day of the incident, the crisis communications team had posted its first message on social media. Over the next eight days, this team monitored, listened and posted on Facebook, issuing formal updates up to four times a day and replying to hundreds of public comments and private messages. Staff based on-site managed phone, email and walk-in enquiries for up to 12 hours a day, and contact centre hours were extended into the late evening.
Facebook was the primary social media channel, because “that’s where the conversations were happening”, particularly on local community pages that had been established and nurtured over many years.
Facebook allowed Frasers Property to solve problems very quickly before they escalated. “Being seen to address problems quickly and publicly built trust,” she says.
Social media also amplified Frasers Property’s message.
“It was like ‘word of mouth’ on steroids. Our posts very quickly became the authoritative source of information. If someone asked a question, it was highly likely that another community member would reply by linking to our posts.”
Top five tips from the coalface
McCutchion says her team’s biggest learnings were:
- Take a multi-channel approach.
“While Facebook was by far the fastest way to disseminate information to thousands of people, you can’t be seduced by its delicious reach and immediacy. We also used phone calls, SMS, email and letterbox drops to ensure we reached people on their preferred communications channel.”
- Choose your conversations carefully.
“Our role was to be an accurate source of information, not to engage in peripheral conversations. The community was rising up as a tribe, and conversations were sprouting around tenants’ rights, compensation, construction hours and who was responsible. We stayed focused and chose not to engage in these conversations.” - Complete a comprehensive social media scan.
Frasers Property’s team learnt to expand its listening on social media to new platforms, such as Chinese language site WeChat. “There are important conversations happening on WeChat and in other foreign languages and we need to find ways to be attentive to these conversations.” - Compile a contact database.
The contact database of affected people was an invaluable resource. “On reflection, we should have started sooner and assigned more people to this task because that database was the engine behind our entire communications strategy.” - Respond with generosity and compassion.
Generosity was an appropriate reaction to this deeply distressing and disruptive event, and it was a sensible risk management strategy, McCutchion says. “In a highly fluid situation we simply couldn’t provide certainty, which put us in the firing line. We came to realise that the only appropriate response was a deep breath and compassion.”
A crisis can occur in any business and in any industry, McCutchion muses, but in the property industry, the stakes are extra high – financially and emotionally.
“We are not talking about toothpaste or fashion. We are talking about shelter. Because the stakes are so high, the only appropriate response in a crisis is generosity and compassion.”