Crisis Averted: Communicating Clearly with Key Audiences

Situation:

A higher education institution approached KC Communications after a former professor had conducted an interview sharing false information and accusations against the university. The institution enlisted the assistance of KCC to help create a communication strategy to correct misinformation and keep the crisis from negatively impacting its key constituents.

Strategy:

KCC immediately conducted research and spoke with institutional leaders to understand the accurate details of the situation, identify the university’s core audiences and determine typical means of communicating with each audience group. From the information obtained, KCC built a strategy for communicating with key audiences, in order of importance. We worked to build out a baseline message that provided consistency from which all communication could be built. Next, we built a message action plan that identified a timeline of specific communication and specific messaging for each audience group.

Success:

The university received positive feedback from internal audiences as it began to implement the message action plan with very few negative responses. Once clear communication with information directly from the school was sent out, the inquiries and negative comments dissipated, and the university was able to put the situation behind it and continue fulfilling its mission of educating students.