FleishmanHillard Strengthens Global Crisis Communications Practice with the Expansion of FH 2020

FleishmanHillard Inc., the world’s most complete global communications firm announced the expansion of its crisis communications practice with the deployment of FH 2020, a digital media crisis management solution offered in all locations needed by clients and in the areas most effective for them. FH 2020 enables businesses to prepare, anticipate, detect and mitigate crises in real-time through a strategic combination of people, processes and technologies.

By the end of 2014, around 40 percent of the world population, or 3 billion people, has an Internet connection. In 1995, it was less than 1 percent.[1] Looking at this growth, businesses today are faced with a different set of challenges – building and protecting reputation while moving at the speed of social. In addition to monitoring and understanding the ever changing traditional media landscape, crisis today is exacerbated by social media. Managing social dialogues around brands in this unpredictable environment is only going to become more challenging with most crisis situations now being aggravated (or initiated) by a digital crisis.

“There has been a major paradigm shift in the way crises break in today’s digital age. It is no longer just about managing your reputation in traditional media sources. It is also about managing and monitoring countless social media accounts, websites, platforms and forums to understand the social dialogue around your brand in order to prevent any crisis before it happens. And this poses a serious challenge to many businesses who are not accustomed to managing such a vast and extensive source of information,” said Brian West, Global Lead, Crisis, FleishmanHillard.

“While there is justified focus on the role social media can play as an accelerant in a crisis, it can also be a powerful mitigating agent. FH 2020 allows our clients to anticipate and prepare for crises before they happen and how and when to respond with confidence when they occur,” said Sam Huxley, Global Digital Crisis Lead, FleishmanHillard.

Designed as a digital media crisis management platform, FH 2020 comprises a distributed network of trained analysts based in key markets across the globe. These analysts work together to provide real-time, global, multi-lingual data integrated with a collaborative work space and a real-time content creation and distribution system. In a crisis, FH 2020 can be set up within minutes, providing critical real-time data and business intelligence to put insights into the hands of key decision makers:

• People – With a physical presence in 12 time zones and covering more than 20 languages, the FH 2020 network of more than 150 certified crisis counsellors ensures that FleishmanHillard can address local, regional and global crises immediately and on an on-going basis.
• Process – FH 2020 uses proven and tested approaches for on-boarding, threat assessment and anticipation, reporting, and deploying the most effective mitigation and response tactics across our network.
• Tools – FH 2020 uses best-in-class tools for monitoring traditional and social media, running crisis simulations, and establishing command centers, and can easily work within a client’s existing technology infrastructure.

As an all-encompassing digital crisis solution, FH 2020 will enable businesses with the ability to sift through the social clutter to anticipate threats before they happen and deploy the most effective and holistic response strategy when a crisis unfolds. FH 2020 has already been deployed in over 20 client implementations and has tracked issues in over a dozen languages. It is fully scalable to address crisis preparedness, incidents/adverse events, issues management, labour relations and litigation support.