Crisis is part of life. We may be able to avoid some through adequate planning, strategy. Crisis explosion is now given a wing to fly online, brand must add knowledge. Recent cases are there to access. Crises do strike many brands but it affects unprepared brands more than the ever ready brands. Interestingly most crises do not discriminate against any industry. If it is peculiar challenge of all it does mean it can reach brands in that industry. Every crisis has the potential to damage the reputation of a company.  Some crises have capacity of not only draining the financial reserves of some brands but can also affect the mental health of the brand at large. Certain factors are now available to show why many brands fail in their bids to cub brand crisis on time.
Our focus here is not about crisis prevention, that will be for some other days. Our intention is to outline process of online crisis formation

1. Concealed: online crisis at this level will begin with scattered comments, offline discussions, and casual exchanges of words which are typed on the internet. People have started asking questions from friends, colleagues as well

2. Emerging: at this level, there is an increase on the stakeholders’ awareness of the issues, some opinion leaders and industry influencers are beginning to take interest in the casual conversation of the community members.

3. Consolidation:  At this level of online crisis process, issues are reaching maturation and audience are already forming opinions and pushing it to the front burner of online community. People are already taking sides, forming beliefs; passing judgment. If a brand waits to this time to begin to act, it appears the effort is way behind the action. Most times this result when a brand do not have an online, community manager or it has uneducated manager in the field of digital reputation software, knowledge management. Since times are changing, brands need to create this position especially those that have global reach as their aims.

4. Critical: the worst and final stage of online crisis is the critical stage. Strong presence and planning before hand can safe a brand from total damage that this level of crisis can bring. Using all online social media tools here is required but even at that there is need for counsel from either a recognized consultant or a trained in-house staff. Brand must acknowledge that even though public forgives accident, but they hardly forgive corporate, personal brands whose attitude, response is either inadequate or not forthcoming. So where are you know and what plans do you have to combat online crisis when one happens

As brand owners or the brand itself (Personal Branding), it should be a concern to us to build a lasting brand that does not fizzle out before its time. In Africa, very few corporate brands have crossed the two hundred years of existence. Meanwhile, we have up to seven hundred years corporate brands in western world.

This has usually being a source of concern to me as an individual and that is one of the reasons for the creation of this webblog.

I do strongly agree with Charles Darwin’s position when he wrote ‘it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but one most responsible to change’. Charles made some salient points about what determines the survival of any brand. The key words he mentioned were responsiveness to change.

Few brands that have survived hundreds of year are not rigid in approach to issues neither are they strongly attached or controlled by the family of the founders alone. Some of the factors that made age-long brands last are discussed below.

1. Financial conservativeness: most of them are very prudent in the use of financial resources. Decisions on what to spend on what are not at the caprices of few who spend at will just to show off. But financial decisions are based on sound, proven ethics.

2. Sensitivity to the environment: they have their arsenals, radars positioned to comb the environments 24/7.They also act as fast as possible to the feedbacks gotten from environmental monitoring.

3. Strong identity awareness and promotion: every brand has an identity or cultural values in terms of location, culture and their visuals. Most use this to their advantage and promote their traditional values, culture everywhere.  

4. Vulnerable/tolerance of new ideas: Build to last brands are always open to new ideas. They are not afraid of taking calculated risks.

5. Value people: People are the major assets of any build to last brands. So it is not uncommon for some of their staffs to have become part owners of the business. Strong system or not, they are ‘raiser and not users’ of men.

6. Learning culture: Build to last brands place premium on improving the skills of their people. They do not fire people who are good but who made a mistake of judgment once.

Let us weigh our brands’ behavior against these parameter and we can determine the future of the brands with what score we get.