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By Jerry Brown, APR*
Pay attention to the Vulnerability Index if you're ever called on to handle crisis communications for your organization.What's the Vulnerability Index? The number of people who feel vulnerable -- and the seriousness of the vulnerability they feel-- to whatever threat is posed by your organization's crisis. Some examples to explain what I mean:
Last week I heard a journalist recently back from Afghanistan make the point that 600 people have been killed by terrorist attacks in the past year in Afghanistan, a country of several million people, while the murder rate in Washington, a city of 500,000, is 300 a year. Why are the 600 deaths in Afghanistan a bigger crisis than 300 murders in Washington? Because the randomness of the deaths in Afghanistan means more people feel threatened by them.
The sniper attacks in the Washington area two years ago raised the public fear factor far more than they raised the overall murder rate. Why? Everyone in or around the city felt vulnerable.
Cab drivers in Washington, or any other major city, pay closer attention to the murder rate than the average resident --especially if they work late at night. They feel more vulnerable. If one or more cab drivers were murdered while on duty, that would generate news. If there were a series of such attacks, the city might be on edge. But the group most on edge would be other cab drivers because they would be the ones who felt most vulnerable.
Incidents like Columbine, Oklahoma City and September 11 trigger a strong emotional response that reaches well beyond the people directly involved. In fact, all of you know the incidents I'm referring to from those shorthand descriptions -- and many of you remember exactly where you were when you first heard about all three. Why? Because those kinds of incidents make all of us feel vulnerable -- even if we don't know anyone involved. Next time it could happen to us or someone we love.
Here's the bottom line. Pay attention to the Vulnerability Index if your organization is in crisis. The more people affected or who feel threatened -- and the more serious the threat they feel-- the higher the Vulnerability Index. The higher the Vulnerability Index, the more urgent the need to communicate what you're doing to fix the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again.
*Jerry Brown is Senior Counselor, Public Relations, at Corporate Advocates, www.corporateadvocates.net, author of A Practitioners Guide to Media Relations.
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