Ep. 1458 Michelle Erland: Communicating In Times Of Crisis | wine2wine Business Forum 2022

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Italian wine podcast is delighted to present a series of highlights from the twenty twenty two White wine business forum, focusing on wine communication and bringing together the most influential speakers in the sectors to discuss the hottest topics facing the wine industry to Don't forget to tune in every Thursday at two PM central European time or visit point to wine dot net for more information. Good afternoon and welcome, to this meeting, on communication in times of crisis. Let me introduce myself. I'm, Natia Senato, and that together with, my brother, Alberto. We we are in the family winery business. We are located here in Verona in the Gardaleque and Valpoli Chrella. And we, invested a lot of, in this territory, Lugana and Valpoli Chrella. And when my father started in the nineteen sixty, he invested a lot of, in the indigenous grapes, in particular, in the Lugana grapes, and Corvina Veronese. And at that time, I was, not, of course, marketing or, communication that we do now. And, so, just, my other travel a lot to promote the wines, alone, and, with my mom. And, participate in some, exhibition as, in Italy or international events, So this is was the way to promote the wines. Nowadays change a lot. In fact, now we export our wines in a more sixty country, mostly in North America. In Europe, Italy. And, of course, now we have, in our estate, a team that, take care about the marketing, about the social media. And in particular, we have, a manager that they care about the hospitality because in the last ten years, increase a lot of the wine wine tour, the tourism of the wine, especially to visit the winery. So and we do a very important investment to have a a manager where they care about this. And, so, I like also to say that we are the the south of Ligana and the art of El puricella because this is our, our motto, our our claim that, I like, to define ourselves. And, so today for me is a great, opportunity to have here, Michelle, Orlando is a very senior account supervisor at Colangelo Partners. I met her many years ago, probably ten years ago, and when she came to visit our winery, and so for me is a very great woman that has a strong, a passionate of wine, And, so I think it's a great opportunity today for all of us to understand better about, how is the communication after, very important crisis that was of the issue. So as of the not only they were, but also the pandemic. And I think it's very important what uh-uh we have to to do for, to stay and to maintain, of course, the important values to promote in particular the the wines. So, thank you. And now I I give you the opportunity to to tell us, something very interesting. Well, thank you, Nadia. It is actually actually an honor for me to be here with you too. It feels like a full circle moment. The first time it came to Italy, the first winery I ever went to was Zenato, and, so it's it's great to be here ten years later as colleagues on stage. So now, as Nadia mentioned, I am a senior account supervisor with Colangelo and Partners Public Relations. We are the leading agency for fine wine spirits, and we also do, have food accounts as well in the US. With offices in New York, California and, Miami. And, so when I decided to speak on, communicating during a times of crisis, at first, I thought You know, I'm gonna be the the person bringing the bad news, right, to to this two day event. But after, you know, talking to a lot of you and talking to producers and media, I found that many of you, and many of my colleagues have said that, you know, they are noticing more crises that are coming their way to have to deal with on a regular basis within the wine industry. So I think that This is actually a very important conversation for us to be having. So I want to start today, with a little exercise. So I'm gonna make you all participate a little bit. So Please raise your hand if this crisis impacted your business or you in any way. Nobody. Oh, alright. In the back. Great. That's okay. That's okay. So if you're not aware of what happened, very quick summary here in nineteen eighty five, the Austrian, a few producers in Austria. Actually used an ingredient found in anti freeze. They put it inside of the wine in order to make their wine appear sweeter and fuller in body. What's important to note here is that while a small amount of producers actually did this, the entire industry collapsed. And it took sixteen years for them to rebuild their reputation and reach the export market, numbers that they were before the scandal. It was only two thousand and one when they got there. Alright. Let's try another one. So raise your hand if you or your business have been impacted by this scandal. Oh, we got hands in the back. Okay. Well, again, little summary here. If you know, this is this man basically committed the greatest wine fraud of our generation. A very brief summary. He was known to take some entry level, low quality, bulk, California wine, and he put it inside Bordeaux and Burgundy and some really, high end expensive wines. And one thing I want you to take note here is you can see just on the examples of the articles that have been published. But there has been hundreds and thousands of articles and a Netflix movie published about this man, also known as mister Konti. And including if you googled him, you'll see some recent articles where he was mentioned again because of a recent, crisis that happened in France. Alright. Now, raise your hand if this crisis impacted you or your business. Of course. Finally, everyone participates. I don't think we need a summary here. But what I do wanna focus on is what do these three crises have in common? And what they have in common is that stakeholder trust is in jeopardy. So whether you realize it or not, if you make a wine and you're in that luxury category, and consumers read in the main news about what Rudy did. That impacts a consumer from trusting your products. Right? There's that that sense of confidence that trust is gone. So this is what we really want to focus on today. One small note, as you know, with any industry, the most important value any brand has is trust. And naughty. I'm sure you know that your your consumers trust you, your restaurants that buy from you trust that your wine is going to be consistent in quality year after year. So that's very important here. One thing, again, I wanted to mention is recently, Pew Research Institute in the US did release a report that said, in general, consumer trust is down, in the United States. So people right now are not trusting governments. They're not trusting businesses. Some people are not even trusting media. So the fact that we're already starting at a disadvantage makes it even more important that we have a crisis communications plan in place today. To really build that brand loyalty and either maintain, build, or restore that trust. So before we dive into how we protect that trust or build that brand loyalty, let's look at what a crisis is. So we did talk about three major events, but a crisis is actually anything that, keeps an organization or a business from fulfilling its mission. So this could be something that's real, perceived. It could be human error. Someone made a simple mistake. It could be an act of nature, like a wildfire or a storm. It could be, you know, something you have no control over. And it also could be something you should have known better. I'm sure the Austrians probably should have known better back in nineteen eighty five, but, what we wanna look at is that a crisis really is a pressure test for an organization. So it should we should look at it as a crisis exposes things in our organization that need to be addressed, need to be fixed. And this could be not only in your products, and and the way, you know, you do things, but also in leadership, but most importantly in our communities and our culture, especially communities that you're serving or that you're trying to reach in that demographic. So, here are some current crises challenges impacting the wine industry in twenty twenty two. And I when I went through this list, I found articles written, social media posts within the last month or two about every single one of these things. So take a moment, and really think, you know, how have your business, or you've been impacted, or have you dealt with these different situations, or are you thinking, like, do I know how to approach these different things? So, before we get into how we prepare a crisis communications plan and execute it, let's really break down the crisis. So what we do is we're gonna break down the crisis into two categories. And these categories do work together. So when a crisis does hit, you are going to be, you know, the management side and the communication side will always be working together. But these two categories that we wanna look at are containment and communication. So with containment, we are really dealing with the reality of the crisis. That's crisis management. Your job is essentially to stop what's happening. Not so much ask how it happened or why it happened, but just stop it, right, contain it. And it's important when you are developing a crisis management plan that you do consult with your legal team, your HR team, your board of directors, anyone who could potentially be involved in the operations or logistics of this particular issue. And no matter what infrastructure is in place to manage, the problem, communication is always the first thing that happens. So, crisis communications is going to deal with the perception of the reality that's happening. And for the purpose of today's presentation, we're really gonna focus on the crisis communications and how to plan and execute. That's it. Alright. So, did you have some I think you had some questions to put in. Right? Yes. So in this time of crisis, the communication, Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp. For fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond. Meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now, back to the show. So how do you, prepare a plan to to face a crisis? Well, that's so great that you ask because we're getting into that cat that, so slide right now. So what we wanna do is really look at the crisis communication strategy as the command center. So it's the central place where not only are your consumers and getting their information, but also media can get that information. Employees can get that information. So we really want to, you know, look at the plan as the heartbeat or or the soul of of the, overall strategy. So what I want to do today, because, you know, each scenario should really be its own strategy, but I want to give you three essential points or key takeaways where you can look at your particular vulnerability or your particular, crisis and really use these points or these tools to develop a plan, prepare for it to potentially happen and then execute it. So these three key key takeaways are lead, don't manage. Build crisis memory and know your audience. So let's start with lead, don't manage. This is all about being proactive versus reactive. We want to build trust and credibility through proactive communication leading up to a crisis. So, you know, you don't wanna wait for the crisis to happen and have that be the first time your stakeholders receive any information from you. We want to communicate quickly, transparently, and truthfully. We we say the five Cs, so clear correct, complete, concise, and compassionate. And one thing to note here about the complete is this does not mean you wait to have all the information. It means that you communicate what you know and what you don't know. The point is to establish that line of communication. So stakeholders trust you to update them with information when you have it. You know, during times of crisis, the reality is you are actually never fully in control. And the only tool or weapon that you have is, how you respond and the actions that you take. And whether you choose to speak or not, you are making a statement. And what's another important thing to note is that If you don't communicate your message, someone else will. Now, whether that's someone on social media or that's media, it's important for you to, again, establish that line of communication and that voice of authority and be that person that the stakeholders trust deliver accurate information. This is important, point because we are in the area of social media. So I think that, is very important to understand what is, the best way in this moment, in this particular moment to to communicate with the social media. Absolutely. And we do have a slide coming up where we get into the social media error. But I think what's important to note is that people want in your communication, they want you to take ownership or responsibility. They want you to communicate your values and your authenticity. So they all those things matter in how you communicate, whether it's on social or to the media. The goal is always to establish that they can trust you and that you are not a bad person or a bad company. And that this one crisis is not just an example of a systematic problem within your organization. Build crisis memory. This is all about preparation. So this is all about the plan that that you asked about. You know, you would not go take a big test without studying. Right? And it's the same here. So how do we go through this process of building crisis memory and, and preparing? So The first thing we wanna do is really assess our vulnerabilities. So if we went back to that slide that showed all those crises in the wine industry that were in the media being discussed, look at those and see where your vulnerabilities are. Then we wanna develop potential responses. So have a holding statement ready. What is a holding statement? This is And we'll have an example coming up a little later in the presentation, but this is a statement that acknowledges you are aware of a crisis and provides information. And that should be what goes out very quickly in order to, again, open that line of communication. And then as part of your preparation, once you pull out these vulnerabilities, draft a couple of press and social media captions or statements, to practice because you don't want all of this to happen or try to figure out how to do it when a crisis hap takes place because you're also going to be, flustered and and and trying to get to the bottom of what happening. So finally, build the plan. And this is all about infrastructure. You wanna build the infrastructure and test that it works. So this means and I know Nadia, you have a a point here, but do you have a way to quickly communicate with your customer base? Or are you always communicating through other people? Can you reach out to your your customers? Can you deliver a message? Do you have a way to reach your internal partners, so whether that's your importer, your distributors, anyone else in the supply chain? And who has the ability to make decisions? So if Nadia, you have the ability to make the decision. If you're unreachable, there should always be people behind you that can make the decision in your absence. And finally, know your audience. You know, this is really not about you in times of crisis. It's about your stakeholder. And it's not a one size fits all situation. So we do want to be prepared to calibrate our communication strategies to reach that particular audience, depending on, you know, severity of the crisis and and the community or the the, customers we're talking to. This is a very important note, and this is something that quite a few people brought up when I was discussing over the last couple days this topic. Employees are your most important stakeholder during times of crisis. So What does this mean? This means that we have to constantly be giving approved information, updated information to our employees because when a crisis hits, They become our network of ambassadors to really help deliver a message. And then finally know your media landscape. You know, where are your stakeholders getting information from? Because, you know, that's where you need to be, and and it's not always in the same place. So you might have to have a couple different strategies. Let's talk a little bit about the media because we do need the media during times of crisis. So we do want to, build media relationships before a crisis takes place. And this morning, Felicity Carter and Rebecca Hopkins gave a presentation about building these these relationships and how to be really successful in the US market. It's important to, have those open lines of communications, but it's even more important during times of crisis that the first time you sit down with a journalist shouldn't be when there's a crisis and they're interviewing you about it. You want to become a regular trusted source by providing updated information throughout the year. An important note here too with journalists, as I mentioned in the beginning, we are in a crisis of public trust. So Cision recently released the state of the media report, and, maintaining credibility as a trusted news source is the biggest challenge currently facing the media. So knowing that, you do want to be that trusted source for the media so that they know that They can believe your side of the story or believe what you're telling them when the world is in crisis or there's a particular problem. And a steady stream of positive press before a crisis occurs. This means you know, pitch positive news, share positive news so that when a crisis happens, your stakeholders, and they Google you, you'll have a lot of positive press out there, and not just something written about the problem. And then we're gonna move on to social media. And I know this is very important to you, Nadia and Sonato, winery, but, we are the digital landscape, we're is very combustible. These days. So as you can see the stat, as of April twenty twenty two, four point seven billion or fifty nine percent of the world's population were social media users. And this is just came out this year, that stat. So the opportunity here is if, you have a message to get out and you're not successful getting it out through traditional media, You have the ability to utilize your social media challenges to make a statement and share information directly with your stakeholders. The challenge of social media is that, well, it can get a little difficult to get ahead of a story because you really need to have quick communication when something happens. And you can see this sign here. This is actually sold in the United States. It's not a joke, but it says, in case of fire, exit building before posting on social media. There have been numerous, documented situations where people have taken a picture of a crisis or an accident, posted it on social media before calling nine one one. And what happened in these situations is that the company got a call from the news before they even knew what was happening with their their their products. Right? So, this is a challenge, but I do want to show one example. This is not a wine brand. This is, an airline in the United States that really mastered the crisis response on social media. So what happened a couple years ago is this airline, Southwest Airline landed knows first into New York's airport. And, a lot of people were hurt and emergency responders, of course, came immediately, but Southwest went to social media and said we're confirming emergency responders assisting with the evacuation, and we will provide further details when available. So they did that holding statement. They took responsibility, acknowledge something was happening. And shared information and then gave next steps as as to that they would be pro providing additional details when available. I know you probably can't see it, but if you look at the comments, Every comment was now supporting Southwest Airlines. They said, we love that you've told us first without waiting for media to come. Thank you for the prayers. We support you. So they were able, because they were quick with their communication, they were able to open that line of trust and become the trusted source of information for their customers. So, no. I left you speechless, didn't I? No. Because it's very interesting. No. About the area of the social media, you know, that, in particular, in the fashion, but also starting, the other in the other products, probably also for the wine in the MetAverso, you know, where they they do the fashion week online, and they do the opportunity not to present but only in, online. And, so this is, a good opportunity, but I would like to ask you, for, the new generation for the new millennials, that probably they don't have the opportunity to travel, you know, because, probably they want also to have more information very fast, very quickly. And so give to the opportunity to see, for example, in my case, the the winery. So, I can show, all the the winery start up in the vineyards inside the the cellar. Inside the VINification during also, when we have the most important moment as the harvest time. So, to to have, you know, in Italy, they call Metaveras on our, you can, in three six, sixty under grace. So you can see all, what what's happened, but quickly. Mhmm. So this is, I what do you think is a good idea for, the wineries to to to have the opportunity to do this? Well, I I think the opportunity there is this is a way of communicating prior to a crisis and building brand loyalty and trust. In in your brand, so in your product and your winery. So I think that's a tool that can be used, to communicate. I'm not sure in times of a crisis, how to communicate in the universe, maybe we want it to disappear there. Yeah. But I think it's definitely a tool that, you know, you can use as part of your strategy to create positive press and brand awareness and can, and engage with your stakeholders. Yeah. For example, but, I, Vspane Veraro, so the producer, I think that, during this pandemic for, for us, it was really important to have, very contact with our our importers. We are our distributors with the consumer. So in my in my example, we organized a lot of Zoom call, but not not only Zoom call also testing. So we organize testing, in the vineyards, where we present a wine, and we present, and, for example, also the people that work with us. So this is, I think that this crisis of the pandemic, help us to do this, probably, in in the past, nobody, think to do this because we we travel a lot. We go, you know, we we take open some some flights to go to visit our, our customer, our distributor. So and this is a pandemic, help us to do, to change also this, this way to communicate, to promote also our wise. Yeah. So think about, this is a a new era, a new way to to Yeah. And I think during, like I said, in the beginning, during times of crisis, the crisis is actually an opportunity, and it shows us opportunity, and whether we like it or not. So I think, you know, you, like many others during during the pandemic pivoted to continue to reach your stakeholders and continue to do business. But that leads us into a very important part of a crisis communication strategy, which is the recovery phase. Right? So once the crisis is contained, and we have you know, your reputation is is under control. We we go into this recovery stage, and this is when our objective is to return to normal or as whatever the new normal is, and the major goal of communication during the recovery stage is to continue to update information as it comes in because once everything is settled, people still want to know what kind of steps you're going to take to prevent this from happening again, or, you know, what kind of resources are available. And this could be what you're talking about. Maybe if there was some sort of, impact that the the pandemic had that stopped you from being able to reach someone, you make sure these lines of communication are open for the future. So we don't see this, method that, to put. To communicate, so that's a good sign. That's up to you to decide, but I think, yeah, you should consider any any all options. Yeah. Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. So again, in this recovery stage too, we want to, you know, like I mentioned, what is your brand going to do to prevent this from happening again? Social media is an effective tool during this stage, again, directly reaching out and and providing updates And then finally, we want to evaluate the overall crisis communications plan. If it didn't work, we wanna tweak it and we wanna so it can work better in the future. And I'm going to leave you with one final thought. This is a very nice. This is a very famous quote, from American businessman Warren Buffett. It takes twenty years to build a reputation in five minutes to ruin it. And if you think about that, you'll do things differently. And I'm sure if the Austrian wine industry had this quote, nineteen eighty five, they may have thought differently. Ah, yes, for sure. Thank you so much. No. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you for, we'll we'll give out of this value, contribution, and, probably there are some questions from, the panel. Do you have any question to Michelle or maybe some, also some experience that, you want to share with us? I was actually gonna ask you, Michelle, to give an example, you know, Can you give an example of a a crisis, not obviously a huge complex one, but something you've had to deal with and how you responded? Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. So I have the I'm fortunate enough to work on some Italian business, but I also do work on a lot of business in California. And right now, a majority of our clients are building communication plan crisis communication plan in preparation of potential wildfires. So, you know, I find it interesting that while they are working with, fire marshals and you know, law enforcement to do things like bring firetrucks onto their property at all times and how to set up places to, essentially, combat a fire with water hoses and all this other stuff, they are coming to us to really communicate all these changes and make sure that people, their stakeholders see what they're doing, but also have trust in that they will be there tomorrow. So I think that's one thing. Something else that is probably a little bigger, would have to be we dealt recently with a politician being on-site of at a winery and it caused a lot of, bad publicity, you know, where in the US, Fox News, was publishing stories and things like that. So we really, developed a strategy to separate the brand with our communication and make sure the stake stakeholders knew the wineries values, authenticity, and, you know, where they stood in terms of, well, basically, that their beliefs were in line with this politician. So that was a few. I offered you. Thank you for that. Does this sound right? Yeah. Okay. So on one of your slides, you spoke about, you know, being a trusted source to the media to have that relationship. So I guess my question to you in your experience and collective experience through your different clients is how did you reach the how do you reach a point where you become a trusted source? Like, how do you build that relationship with the media? Great question. So I would say the simplest answer is we got some PR professionals. You can always come talk to us, and we can talk about a communication strategy. But, you know, just an event like this, there's loads of media here, so introducing yourself. And then checking in from time to time, emailing, providing information. It doesn't always have to be selling, selling, selling. It could also be, hey, This is what's happening in our region. This is what is new. This is what's going on, and you'll see over time that, the media is going to trust you to provide information for them for a story. So Well, thank you. Thank you. Take care. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcast. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, EmailIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment, and publication costs. Until next time.