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by Tammy Koolbeck

Crises Management…do you manage the crisis or does the crisis manage you? Crisis as defined by American Heritage Dictionary is: a) crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point; b) an unstable condition as in political, social or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change; c) an emotionally stressful event or traumatic change in a person’s life.

Do any of the following situations sound familiar?

• It’s a packed house and the artist has made the crucial decision that he wants to finish his x-box game instead of taking the stage and the crowd is getting restless.

• The booking manager has succeeded in booking a great concert; however, the act is a controversial artist Public outcry is fierce and the Mayor is on the phone within a day of the announcement.

• The local high school’s all-class reunion has arrived for its banquet. The guarantee given to your food and beverage department is too low. In your rush to provide more food, the chicken is served undercooked.

• The opposing team wins the final game of the football season securing an undefeated conference record, fans stream onto the field towards the goal posts.

• The patrons are coming into the theatre on Good Friday evening for a Broadway production when you hear an urgent radio call looking for the home phone number of the operations director. You go backstage five minutes before curtain and find black water pouring down the wall and stagehands holding up cords… a sanitary waste line has collapsed outside the building which has compromised the entire plumbing system of the theatre.

• The Home and Builders’ Show is in its second day and traffic is steady when you hear a call on the radio about a bag that has been left unattended in the skywalk that connects your facility to the hotel and parking. A note is found on the top of the bag that reads: “Are you paying attention?”

Every facility manages the day-to-day “fires,” but what about the “big ones”? Do you have a plan?

Every facility needs crises plans. Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for severe weather, fire evacuation and bomb threats are found in many facilities. IAAM’s Safety and Security Task Force has been hard at work assembling and dispensing information on Venue Emergency Planning and has made “Best Practices for Emergency Preparedness” available for its members.

This article focuses on your public relations/marketing department’s involvement with the plan and the importance of media relationships. The components of a media relations plan will vary by market size and locality. All plans should include the following: a designated spokesperson who is calm under fire; a team, built with staff from different departments, who can identify problems and respond quickly; a designated decision-maker who works well in stressful situations and a network of community partnerships. Remember, you may have the best plan in the world but will it work without relationships? In time of crises, the quality and quantity of community and media relationships may determine the outcome.

Does your plan include contact with the media when a “crisis” has occurred? In most markets, we deal with media on a daily basis. Does your staff, both full- and part-time, know what to do if someone with a camera turns on the light and starts asking questions? Is dealing with the media part of a training program for all of your staff? Does your marketing and public relations person know all of the local media?

Dealing with the media is not always an easy job. It can be overwhelming. We know what we want the media to write about our shows and we know how often they don’t do that. Our marketing and public relations departments spend hours creating what we believe to be newsworthy material, yet for the most part it gets ignored until a crisis hits the fan. What you need to remind your marketing and public relations staffs is that spending the hours talking to the media can pay off in the long run. Being available when the media calls, returning calls when you say you will and treating all media outlets fairly go a long way in building the relationship. The relationship is a key component when handling a crisis.

Here are a few examples of how peers in our industry prepare and deal with crisis situations:

Clear Channel Entertainment—Motorsports has an Emergency Executive In Charge (EEIC) policy. This policy is shared with venues when the show is booked and at pre-production meetings. The EEIC meets with facility directors, event managers, tech directors and others involved with the event. If other members of the CCE-Motorsports staff are approached by media, emergency personnel or patrons, they use whatever language is appropriate and direct the questions to the EEIC. It is part of the company-wide training program and is used at every event. CCE—Motorsports chooses the EEIC based on years of service and experience. Rico Hawkes, director of risk and safety for Clear Channel Entertainment—Motorsports said the EEIC program has been in place since 1995 and has worked well for years. “There have been many seminars dealing with crisis management since 9/11 and we are pleased to see that many of these seminars are a repeat of our EEIC policy,” said Hawkes. “Our relationships with building personnel and their relationships with the local communities is what makes our EEIC effective.”

A stabbing at the FleetCenter led the Boston late evening news on April 4, 2000. At a Ruff Ryders/Cash Money concert, a stabbing melee had occurred backstage. The incident was isolated to the backstage area and no patrons were involved but as most of us know timing is everything and the incident occurred as the local 10 pm and 11 pm newscasts were about to begin and live television trucks descended on the first police call. Jim Delaney, director of marketing/PR, took the call at home and rushed back to the building. When he arrived, representatives from operations, security, PR and legal met as the core team. “It is often said in crisis planning that the first 24 hours are crucial and that was certainly the case in our situation,” said Delaney. “Effective communication, both externally and internally, and strong relationships with our local police and media proved to be very important in managing the process.”

At the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids, one of our most recent claims to fame was the final Marilyn Manson concert following the Columbine tragedy in April 1999. Our staff prepared for public comment when the show was announced but nothing happened. There were no phone calls and no media requests. Then the Columbine tragedy happened and with it came press reports that the teenage killers listened to Marilyn Manson music. Our days went from normal to frenzied. National and local outcry was immediate and the tour cancelled all dates after ours. The good news was that tickets started moving immediately. The bad news was that we were swamped with phone calls. Sharon Cummins, executive director, and myself made the decision to split the media calls since there were so many requests for interviews. If media called or stopped at the building, the staff knew to contact either of us and then run the other way! By the time the concert began, we had received more than 500 calls from the public and set up our first media area for a concert to accommodate three satellite trucks, as well as national, regional and local news organizations.

The concert went off without a hitch. Concert-goers were surprisingly pleasant and thanked many of our staff as they worked their way through the line. The broadcast media completed their last live shot and were on their way out of town by the time the concert ended. The staff had just breathed a sigh of relief when the call came over the radio that the police had formed a riot line at the back of the building. What had happened was the fans were apparently disgruntled that Manson had cut his concert short and they had circled his bus and began rocking it back and forth. This brought out the police. When we reached the scene, all hell had broken loose with patrons running down the streets and police officers arresting others. Security staff immediately surrounded the area and, with the help of the police, pushed back the local television cameras and newspaper reporters.

When order had been restored and the police commander in charge and I had an opportunity to decide what we were going to release to the press, I again spoke to the cameras. Because we had focused all of our attention on dealing with scenarios if something happened inside the building, we had not prepared for what might happen outside. This came back to haunt us and could have been potentially damaging if not for our media relationships.

Another glitch came about when a hotel security guard (our facility is attached to a hotel) decided this may be his chance at 15 minutes of fame and started conducting media interviews on the street. Fortunately, we were able to discount his interviews because of our relationships with the media.

Cameras of Another Sort
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) produces live television events in many of the venues across the country. Adding television to a live event is always an adventure as the importance of camera angles dictates seating arrangements in most venues. Natalie Woods, live event consultant for WWE remembers a show held in a Midwest city a few years ago. “We played a building that had been built for football and didn’t have great sight lines for our fans or our cameras. When WWE broadcast production arrived on the morning on the show, it became apparent that we would need to move people around for the cameras,” recalled Woods. “We ended up moving a lot of people off the floor into less expensive seats so the show would look good on television. We were handing out $10 bills left and right.” The show started a few minutes late but went off without a hitch. The “crisis” occurred the next day when an article appeared in the local newspaper quoting a member of the venue’s operations staff about the seating fiasco caused by WWE.

“The venue’s marketing director was as surprised to see the article as we were, “ said Woods. “It was not our most favorite memory of the venue and the city and I believe they have put policies in place about who talks to the media.”

It’s All About Relationships
CCE-Motorsports prides itself on its relationship with venues. Its EEIC policy depends upon those venues and their relationships with local media. The FleetCenter developed a core team and included legal counsel which they believe is an integral piece of the plan. The U.S. Cellular Center learned that even the best prepared and executed plans can be overshadowed by unforeseen circumstances. The plans worked because of the relationships that had been developed. WWE depends on professionalism and strong partnerships with the staffs of the venues they play.

Tammy Koolbeck is the general manager of the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena and serves on the IAAM External Affairs Committee.

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