In a crisis, every hour counts

Crisis communications that work

Advisory experience in more than 30 crises

At Nestlé Germany I was responsible for issues and crisis management, at FTI Consulting I guided clients through critical situations. Before that, twelve years as a journalist at Dow Jones, the FAZ group and the dpa group. I know where a newsroom will press, because I spent twelve years doing the pressing.

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Lawsuit, NGO campaign, months of media pressure

Ausgangslage: Situation: An international food group came under pressure over one of its product divisions. Investigations by two foreign media outlets raised the question of whether the treatment methods used were compatible with how the products were labelled. The allegation therefore went to the basis of the business. An NGO filed a criminal complaint, a parliamentary inquiry opened, and coverage continued for months. In Germany, newsrooms wanted to know what the case meant for the products sold here.

My role: Handling media relations for the German market over the course of a year.

Strategy: An NGO campaign running alongside legal proceedings follows a dramaturgy. We worked through the possible next steps, from further complaints to test purchases to new publications, and prepared responses before they had to be written under time pressure.

Media relations: The case played out abroad and did not concern the same products sold in Germany. That distinction was repeatedly lost in the coverage. I contacted the newsrooms concerned, supplied the missing facts and placed the company's position. Including at Germany's highest-circulation newspaper.

Result: German coverage became more precise over the course of the year and set out the facts correctly. The company's position was represented in the key titles.