Issues and crisis management

One way to avoid brandjacking is to identify in advance the issues that might cause a problem for you. Sometimes this will be easy but don’t stop with the easy choices. When I joined Shell International in the 1990s, crisis preparedness was heavily focused on exercises around an oil tanker going down. It makes a lot of sense, when you ship more oil around the world than anyone else, to consider what will happen if — or rather when — a tanker goes down. But this is far from the only risk facing a global oil giant. What about a chemical plant exploding? Or some of the real crises Shell has faced concerning a reformulated petroleum that was damaging car engines, the disposal of a North Sea oil storage platform, or the company’s relationship with a brutal dictatorship in Nigeria?