FleishmanHillard Bangkok holds media interview on “Five paradigm shifts in crisis management and a way forward to AEC competition”

BANGKOK, October 15, 2014 — Companies are facing the perfect tsunami when crisis hits in today’s hyper-connected, always-on social media world. When normal business is suddenly interrupted, a company can find itself unprepared and unable to rapidly gather and assess the necessary information to understand what has happened and what they should do to respond. Then a wall of intense scrutiny – from the community, media and government, questioning, rumors and speculation online, and often outrage – crashes over the company and its management team, threatening to quickly drown them before they can even contemplate launching the lifeboats.

FleishmanHillard Bangkok office has arranged a media interview “Five paradigm shifts in crisis management and a way forward to AEC competition”, invited journalists of business section in newspaper and website to participate. The interview has delivered by Crisis communication expert from the world’s most complete global communications firm, Brian West, Managing Director, Reputation Management, Asia Pacific and Global Lead – Crisis Management. He explained that there have been five paradigm shifts in crisis communication management in the past five years, which are:

1. The need for speed of response in this always on, wired world
2. The threat posed by the internet and social media
3. The opportunity presented by social media – companies are moving to create their own newsrooms
4. The need to empower frontline staff – the first responders in a crisis. Centralised command and control crisis centers are relics of a past era; and
5. The need for companies to shorten their chain of command in a crisis.

Sophis Kasemsahasin, Senior Vice President & General Manager, FleishmanHillard Thailand added that “the Thai companies moving forward to the AEC, should prepare crisis management plan in respond to the five paradigm shifts. Cross cultural barriers can increase the risk. Crises no longer break, they tweet and within 30 seconds. Many companies are now only just starting to think about having 24/7 social listening tools, but they need to think of planning and building infrastructure allowing them to respond immediately across all communication platforms and channels, different languages, and across cultural barriers.”