June 18, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew, host Brett Deister interviews Angela Bettencourt, a global communication professional with over 20 years of experience. Angela shares her insights on how businesses should prepare for and handle PR crises, the importance of adapting messaging for diverse markets, and the role of storytelling in rebuilding public trust. She recounts her experiences, including organizing Sierra Leone's first-ever renewable energy conference, and discusses the impact of AI on global communications and crisis management. Tune in to learn practical tips on leveraging technology, embracing strategic communication, and maintaining organizational values during challenging times.
3 Fun Facts:
- Angela Betancourt is a scuba diving enthusiast—her LinkedIn banner is a scuba diving photo!
- During a major conference in Sierra Leone, Angela and her team had to invite 149 Paramount Chiefs by texting each one individually on a flip phone because most didn’t have internet access.
- Angela brews very strong coffee at home with a percolator and prefers trying unique, local coffee shops when traveling.
Key Themes:
- Crisis communication planning and response
- Adapting messaging for diverse global audiences
- Leveraging technology and AI for research
- Challenges of international campaigns and logistics
- Storytelling to rebuild and maintain trust
- Navigating tariffs and international market entry
- Importance of organizational values during crises
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I think every business, large or small should
say, okay, if something hits the fan,
what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand
is not it. You want to address it quickly.
(00:29):
And welcome to a new episode of
Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett
Deister. And if you can please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting.
Absolutely. A five star review really does help with rankings. Let me know
how I am doing. But this week I have Angela with me
and she is a global communication professional with over 20 years of
(00:51):
experience. She has worked on projects across five
continents, including two years in Sierra Leone
during the Ebola virus crisis. She is the founder and CEO of
Benacourt Group, a strategic communication marketing
firm dedicated to amplifying individuals, businesses and organizations
driving positive environmental and social
(01:14):
impact. But welcome to the show, Angela. Thank you so
much. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes. The first question
I asked all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? I am
a coffee drinker. I love tea, so no hate on the tea, but I'm a
coffee drinker for sure. Anything specific or
is it just Starbucks or whatever else is in the Keurig? I
(01:36):
brew my own coffee at home. I have my little like percolator,
cafeteria thing that I use and I make myself very, very
strong, strong, strong cups of coffee in the morning. And then I have my own
little, my little favorite creamer that I put into it. But if I'm
out and about and need a bit of coffee.
Yeah, I try to go to coffee places that are unique
(01:57):
to the destination and if all else fails, can't go wrong with
a grande coffee from Starbucks. Yeah, it's
easier to find. But I get you about finding the little independent
shops that usually have the better cups of coffee. Exactly.
So I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give our listeners a
little bit more about what you do? Yeah. So as you, as you
(02:18):
mentioned, I've been working in PR marketing industry for over
20 years and my career trajectory has been
extremely nonlinear. I've worked in so many different industries. Started off in
hospitality and worked my way through several PR
agencies in New York and agencies with offices in
San Francisco and just, you know, the really big cities. And I worked
(02:40):
in house for some very large brands. And then the
last couple of years I've been working,
my work has been focused on environmental and social impact. And what does that
mean? Essentially, I love working with businesses,
organizations, individuals that are trying to do good
things for the planet. Whether that is a
(03:02):
ocean advocacy nonprofit, whether
it's a film that talks about
climate change in a really great storytelling way,
or a business that is creating products
out of recycled materials, these are the types
of businesses and organizations and individuals that I love
(03:25):
working with because they're doing such interesting, cool
things. And I just want to be there to help them amplify and
elevate these stories and their projects so that more people are
aware of what they are doing. Got you. So how do you adapt
messaging to resonate with diverse markets and cultures across
different continents? Absolutely. So it really comes
(03:48):
down to your audience. It comes down to
the people you're serving, who is the product for,
who is this nonprofit for, who are the
people that you are trying to help?
And once you have identified these
elements, then you create messaging
(04:10):
that helps you best deliver
your message, your story, what you're trying to achieve
to this audience. And so it doesn't matter
if I'm in, you know, working in Sierra Leone or
working on a client project in Kenya
or on a project in London, I
(04:34):
always think about, who are we in service
for? Who is this for? What are we trying to achieve?
And why does this product or service or film
or whatever, it might be important to the. To your
audience and how it's going to make their lives or their community
(04:54):
or the planet more generally
better? And so
that's true of the audience, it's true of the culture that you're in.
It's really about having your
audiences come first in your messaging and how
it benefits them. And once you know the context,
(05:16):
then you can adapt your message to
that context in a way that will resonate. And then what's of
the marketers, like, never been to that country, but they have to talk to it.
Like, how's the best way of figuring that out? Because I think most of the
problem is that if you've never been to a place, don't know the culture of
the place, don't know how they speak slang or whatever,
(05:37):
it's harder to make a message for something you have no idea about.
Yeah. And I think, luckily for technology, there are so many ways to
access culture these days. And so to
anyone who's trying to break into a new market or wants to
introduce a product to an entirely different culture, the first thing
is, I would say, is if you don't know anything about that culture, find someone
(05:59):
who does. You know, connect with them on social media,
reach out to them on, you know, on LinkedIn, on Instagram,
and schedule a call on WhatsApp on Zoom and talk
to them, talk, talk to them about their community,
about who they are, about what matters to this community
about. Because it has to be people first. It has
(06:22):
to be person first and humanity forward.
And so once you, you know, you can find someone
who's your, essentially your, your, your translator,
your introduction to a culture,
that local person is going to know that culture and so
rely on them, talk to them as a way to
(06:46):
understand what you're trying to achieve. Right.
If you, if you determine that your product or your service is
going to perform, is going to do good in this community,
all you have to do is get into this community. Then
starting with the people there, the local people there. You can't go wrong.
(07:06):
All right? And I mean even for like a preliminary like
research, is AI okay for that? Like just to do your topical research
and then talk to somebody? Because sometimes you don't even know where to start.
Absolutely. I think it's really great to educate yourself
about a market ahead of time. And I think,
you know, 40 years ago that would have been an encyclopedia or whatever
(07:28):
50 years ago. And then later on it would have been, you
know, you would just go, you know, you'd go on Google and look. So if
you tell AI or OpenAI or any of these Gemini or any of these other
platforms, hey, I need a brief history about this country. I need,
I need to understand, I need a little bit of understanding of
this story of this country and this AI platform gives you
(07:51):
the answer. I think that's great. I think it's really great. I think it's, it
shows your effort in wanting to understand a culture before, ahead of
speaking to someone there. And you can say, you know, I,
here's what I discovered online, right? That this, you know, X country,
X city, X whatever is such and such and such
and such and such. And historically xyz. And
(08:14):
now that I have that information, I want to hear it from you. What's your
lived experience there? What's your actual day to day?
What is, what is of the time right now? Right.
So 100% sure, use, use whatever
knowledge source you can to educate
yourself. Obviously you want to make sure everything's factual and that you're getting information
(08:35):
from credible places. And yeah, I think it's respectful
to educate yourself ahead of a conversation with a person.
But I don't think that Google research
and, or any artificial intelligence is a replacement
for a conversation with an actual person in this destination.
(08:56):
I think it's complimentary and I think it's a, it's a setting,
the foundation for a conversation. So basically, Gen
Z making chatgpt their, like, lifeguide is probably the
worst thing you can do right now. I think asking
ChatGPT a bunch to make a bunch of assumptions about people and a certain
culture, and then you just walk into that culture with all these
(09:18):
assumptions that whatever the platform gave you, I
don't recommend, I don't recommend. I
don't think anyone would want that to be their own experience. I don't
necessarily know if I want someone to just go onto, you know, an
AI platform, pull up a bunch of stuff about my city and then be like,
so this is what I know about your city and this is what I've assumed
(09:40):
about all of you, you know, everyone here, when that's
just. I don't recommend. I do think it's great for research.
I do think it's great to empower yourself with knowledge ahead of a conversation.
But this is, this is one of those areas where at the end of the
day, a Zoom call, a WhatsApp call
is still extremely necessary when you're talking about
(10:04):
bringing something to a market. And I think
some great people will tell you if you're developing a product, to test it out
in the market as quickly as possible. Right. Don't wait for it to be perfect
and you want to put it out there and get real human,
human feedback about the
product. So, yeah, AI does not replace a
(10:26):
conversation. And can you share example of a global
communication campaign you led that had a significant impact and
what factors contributed to its success? Yeah. So one
example that I'll share that I felt really, really felt international to
me. The two years that I was in Sierra Leone, there were a
lot of different things going on in this program, a lot of incredible things that
(10:49):
the people on this team were able to do that was just
brilliant and in the big scheme of things, had great impact in
society. But one of the things that I was tasked to lead, to help lead,
at least from the communications and marketing side, was the
country's first ever renewable energy conference.
And we had a very short window of time to pull this off,
(11:11):
and it required participation and
collaboration with the Minister of Energy and his team. At that
time of administration, it required a lot of input,
it required a lot of funding, it required a lot of different things. And
we invited several hundred people from around the world
to attend this conference. So the majority of attendees were Sierra
(11:33):
Leonean, but we had people come in from Nigeria, we had people come in from
China, we had people come in from Europe. The United States. I was part
of the team helping to literally send out those invitations and coordinate their
visas upon arrival. And then
this conference was part of a bigger story. Sierra Leone was one of
the first countries to sign a, an agreement or a compact
(11:57):
with the Energy Africa Campaign, which was at the time a
British led initiative to help bring renewable
energy power to a region of the world that
was so energy poor. And Sierra Leone was one of the first countries,
or I believe the first country to sign this compact. And so
we're talking like ministers from other countries. It was a big deal.
(12:19):
And this conference was born out of the sign signing of
this compact that was like, okay, well we're going to have these ministers come in
and sign this document. We might as well build a bear conversation around
it. And several things happened. One, it was
wildly successful conference, very, very proud of that.
And so many pieces went into it. And it was
(12:42):
really about informing and letting the world know, especially
European markets, that Ebola was in the
past. The country was now looking forward to
the next step to recovery, to thriving, to bouncing back.
And the renewable energy market was ripe and ready for
investment. And so this, my part was
(13:04):
to get out press releases, help set up press conferences to let the
world know that Sierra Leone gets six months
of sunshine a year opposite of the rainy season, which is like another
six months. And that's a whole other thing. This country with so much
sunshine and so much opportunity was ready for
renewable energy sources from all over the world.
(13:27):
And long story, it's already a long story. But longer story short,
the campaign resulted in over two
dozen international media coverage. So from
Europe, from around the greater
African region, from London, which is a
really, really big deal. And so I would say that was
(13:51):
very successful campaign to let the world know that
Sierra Leone is ready for investment, ready for renewable
energy. Business got you. And
was there any pitfalls you had to overcome? And how did you overcome those pitfalls
with so many? One, it was, we were
a small team. I'm very, till this day,
(14:13):
I'm just in awe of what this team was able to accomplish
literally in like a three month period to pull something of this
magnitude off. The other worry is
that this whole conference was about
bringing renewable energy to a country that is energy
poor, that does not have a power
(14:36):
grid, that can be at the time
power and bring energy to everyone. One of
our worries that would have been super ironic, but
possibly also proving a point is
what if the power goes off during the conference?
What if that happens? It didn't. We prepared
(15:00):
adequately for that. Moment to avoid
that moment from happening. But that was something we had to overcome. We had to
come up with a plan. Another point to overcome
was the coordinating international visas
and the access of logistical
access from the airport of Sierra Leone to the mainland part
(15:23):
of Sierra Leone, which required a boat ride. So there was
a lot of questions around, how do we get people
that are coming in smoothly transitioned from the airport,
which required, you know, a bus ride, a boat ride, a bus ride,
and get them to this conference, especially people that have never been
to the country before. We wanted
(15:46):
to make sure everyone was. There was food at this conference
and so finding
partners that would cater
to this amount of people. So there were several challenges
that we had to overcome. One of the most interesting ones was
Sierra Leone has what they call Paramount Chiefs,
(16:09):
which is kind of a governor, if
you will. They have 149 paramount chiefs, which kind of represent these
different states within Sierra Leone. And they're kind of like governors would be in the
United States. Most of these
chiefs do not have Internet connection.
So to invite them it required old school
(16:31):
texting and keeping track of
this long list. Right. It was like, how do we
email? We can't email them, we can't
send them an invite and we can't mail them an invite. How do we
invite these Paramount Chiefs to come
to this event?
(16:56):
There was no other way than to just sit there one evening
with my colleague and just start texting on a flip phone.
It was sometimes you just have to get back to basics to
overcome challenges. When technology cannot
help you, you have to just go back to the basics. And I, and I
(17:16):
find that to be an interesting life lesson in many
ways. Yes. Sometimes old tech is the best. Tech.
Exactly. Or no tech is the best.
Yeah. So it was, it was interesting. You know, you really have to just be
resourceful and really creative. And so I really like
to think about those opportunities as they're not so much challenges. But,
(17:40):
you know, if you've ever wanted to try to think outside the box, here you
go. Here's the opportunity to get really creative and to literally think
outside of the parameters that you're accustomed to.
And then how can small businesses with limited budgets adopt a global.
And then how can small businesses with limited budgets. Absolutely.
And that's a great question because again, I think that probably now
(18:02):
more than ever, it's so easy to connect with people
around the world and, and really leverage the
technologies that are currently available. And it doesn't
have to cost a lot of money. I think the key, though, is strategy.
Where do you want to go? Why do you want to go there and what
benefit can you provide to the people there?
(18:26):
And so that is the main thing. I love
seeing small jewelry brands and other
businesses that have very small operations in the States,
but they're eager to bring their products, product and
ship to people. And so it's, it's, the question is if you really
believe in your product doing well there and it makes sense for what you're
(18:47):
trying to achieve and you can identify your target audience in these
markets, then there, it's, there's
never been a better time to set yourself up logistically
to support that. Right. It's easy now to
ship products worldwide, easier than it's ever been.
And so you think about what does that look like logistically for you?
(19:11):
Right. And I think that really just having a
plan of action, of execution that makes sense for your
operations is the key. And thinking about
things like pricing, what about
shipping fees? What about maybe any import fees? Are
these things that you want to absorb? Are you going to work them into
(19:34):
your international pricing for your customers to cover those
costs? And so when you start thinking about the
customer first and their experience, that will
guide, I think that would really guide you as to the best
way to bring your product to a new country. Does the
infrastructure there support this? Do you want
(19:55):
to set up? There's a brand that I really love, she
does like home interior and she's just always been
British based. And she not too long ago she posted on her
Instagram that she opened up this huge warehouse in the United
States and she's high volume, high, you know, very
recognized brand in Europe and she posted this huge
(20:17):
warehouse in the United States and her thing was, okay,
US Folks, now it's going to be easiest as it's ever been for you to
order these products because she's thinking about people first.
And you know, in an age where you can
have same day or next day delivery and sometimes overnight
delivery, what does that look like? What does the delivery process
(20:39):
look like for your customer? So once you start thinking about customer first,
I think that is your North Star in how you enter any
new market, but especially an international market. And have the
tariffs actually played any role in maybe
negatively impacting all that stuff? Because I know at least in the
US we do have uncertainty in that. And so has it
(21:02):
negatively impacted going more global because of it's more
expensive, it's more expensive maybe to ship into the United States or whatever?
Yeah, and that, that's a really great question. I think it depends on the industry
and I also think it depends on your.
And I think it's, I think it's going to be very personal to the business.
So I think some industries are going to be feeling it a lot more than
(21:23):
other industries. I know in the, in the retail industry, I'm
hearing retailers that are again,
European based, that have US audiences, US
customers, some of them are just absorbing the costs.
They're saying we're not increasing prices, we're going to absorb the cost on
our end to keep things smooth for the customer.
(21:46):
And so it's really, I think that
to different degrees the tariffs are going to impact, especially if
you rely on international shipping, you have an international audience already.
I think it's going to perhaps impact your supply chain
and definitely some industries more than others. And so I think if you're
(22:06):
an industry where tariffs are going to impact you, it's rough,
it's a hard time. And I think it really comes down to
the current state of your business and where you're based
and what resources might be available for you as a business owner in
your particular area and, and also your
ability to absorb or not the price
(22:29):
of what it's going to cost your customer. And
we've, you know, I think I've already seen prices go up. I've seen, I've
gotten like notifications that prices are going to go up in some
stores and that really just comes down to
that individual business, some larger than others that are saying,
you know what, you know, it's, it's prices are going
(22:53):
to go up a little bit, we're going to absorb a little bit or we're
absorbing everything and we want to keep things the
same price for you. And that's what I've seen from
retailers that have one or two retailers that I've seen
that I, that I'm a customer of have they have
absorbed the price and just to keep it better for the customer.
(23:14):
So it's, it's, it's a great question, but it's a hard question because I think
it depends on the industry and I think it depends on your supply
chain and I think it depends on the, the
current status of your business. I think if you're hurting,
it might just hurt even more. And if you're in a position where you
can survive it,
(23:38):
I think, you know, that's good for you. I saw
in the news there was farmers, farming community
that said, you know, we can absorb the cost for the next couple of
months but after that we might be in trouble. Right. So I just think it
depends. And what do you believe are the most common mistakes companies
make when facing a PR crisis? And how can they avoid that?
(24:01):
So crises will happen, right? Just like in life,
right? Things happen. And to
avoid is not the approach I think
every business, large or small should say,
okay, if something hits the fan,
what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand
(24:24):
is not it. You want to address it quickly. You want to,
you want to research, get to the bottom of
things, and you want to be prepared
to explain what happened. But even more
importantly, accountability account of, someone's got to be
accountable for what happened. If it was an error that your organization
(24:47):
made, and I've seen it happen all the time in smaller levels of
sorry, this shipment just isn't going to get to you on time. We
made a mistake with our XYZ shipping process.
Here's what we're doing to correct it, here's what we're going to do in the
future to let it not happen again. And here's
10% off. Right? Like you never want to avoid.
(25:10):
If you're in a crisis situation and you're still needing to assess,
the first thing that you can do is say, we're in a crisis situation
and I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. We're getting to the bottom
of it, we're investigating, we're looking into it, we are taking action.
That is key. Avoidance. Denying is not
going to work, especially not in this day where things
(25:34):
will go, things will get tweaked, things will just get shared quicker than you can
even say, right? And so the key is
acknowledge, investigate,
understand what's going on, take corrective action.
You know, take accountability, take corrective action. If it was something that's out of
your control, but it's still impacting your business
(25:57):
or it's still kind of brought into a crisis, same thing applies.
You have to recognize what role you played in a crisis.
And if there was no role at all, well, what role are you going to
play in the solution? You want to make sure you're taking action.
You want to make sure you let immediately communicate what you're doing to correct
the problem, what you're doing to avoid it from happening ever
(26:19):
again. And then you want to continue to take those
steps to show that you've made a difference.
Sending out a press release, but not taking any action behind
the scenes is a negative action. You
want to take action and you want to find solutions and you want to put
things into place to avoid these things happening ever again.
(26:41):
And then in your experience, how can storytelling play a role
in rebuilding public trust after a crisis? Because there is that after
the crisis ends, you have to rebuild that trust again. Right? And that's why.
But that's why your response to the crisis is so important for how things are
going to play out. Because by tackling it head
on, not sticking your head in the sand, by tackling it head on and
(27:04):
saying this happened. If apology needs
to be, if there needs to be an apology, then you apologize. And
then you take corrective action and you show transparency. Because
your response is where the trust is begins.
If you're avoidant, if you're in denial, if you push blame
(27:24):
to everyone else except for yourself or your company or whomever or
whatever happened, you are breaking the foundation of
trust. And so from the very beginning,
trust is on the table. How you respond
and what you do every step of the way until it's resolved.
And then what you do after is where
(27:46):
the trust is. If you're
shady, you're not clearing your communications, you're denying,
you're pushing, placing blame everywhere except for where you
need to be. If you're not taking accountability, if you're
screaming at people, yelling at people on
threads, Instagram, whatever it is, you are not
(28:08):
going to be seen as a trustful person. And
now a situation that was already bad is
now 10 times worse, and it's going to be much more difficult to recover
from just because of failure to take those
steps. So if you do those things and tackle it head on
and apologize sincerely if you need to, and take corrective
(28:30):
action and then demonstrate, show people. Don't just
tell people, show people what you are doing. What
does that look like? Maybe it's a tour of your factory.
Maybe it's, you know,
it's a visibility report. It's something.
But you're transparent about what you're doing and you're demonstrating that
(28:53):
you've taken actionable steps, then the next step is
here, here, the outcome of the steps we have taken.
And you're transparent and open. You know, it's a town
hall. It's a. Ask me, you know, ask me anything on,
you know, it's an Instagram live. It's whatever it is.
(29:14):
Now you are saying, gosh, you know, things happen, things
hit the fan, things go wrong, that this person was on top of it, they
stayed ahead of it, they are sincere, they're taking
actions. And that's all part of that storytelling,
right? Talking about who you are. And when a crisis
happens, leaning on those initial values
(29:36):
and tripling down on your stance and your mission is
extremely important. And so your storytelling is happening
in your accountability and the actions that you're taking.
Here's an infographic of the 10 steps we took to correct action.
Here is an IG live with
a non leadership, an employee, whoever, who is our
(29:58):
testimonial to what we're doing. Here's a third party
independent person that came in to
review and here's their outcome. We're putting it all out for you to see.
Here's you know, the story is that narrative that you're telling.
And so the actions
turn into the stories that you're telling your audience. And then
(30:21):
afterward you continue to tell the story of,
you know, a year has passed. Reflect on what you've learned,
reflect on the impact
show. Demonstrate a year later, two years later, that you're
still keeping your word about the things that you said. Those
are the stories that you want to start telling
(30:43):
very early on and continue to tell in your business,
service, organization, etc.
Got you. And can you share a specific story about a challenging crisis
you managed and how you successfully navigated that?
I have a few. I'm
trying to think, I would say
(31:07):
part of me is I'm also grateful that I haven't been a part of
a crisis that was like, so, you know, an international
incident or anything like that. I'd like to think that the
organizations and the businesses that I've worked with have been really good about
putting practices and procedures in place to avoid those types of things. But
I will share one story that I think was kind of interesting. In my experience
(31:29):
in Sierra Leone around this conference, we had someone,
you know, I was mentioning that we had these international visas that needed to be
established as a landing visa so that number one, they would be emailed
ahead of time to the attendees and there would be a
visa available for them, the actual visa available for them at the airport.
I had somebody coming in from China that
(31:52):
I guess the email was sent to them en route to Nigeria,
their connecting flight, and they never
couldn't access their emails or didn't have Internet connection. And now they're in a
connecting flight in Nigeria and the Nigerian airport wasn't going to let them leave. So
I start getting calls at 3 o' clock in the morning like, hi, I'm coming
from here. I need to get into this. You know, this is someone who we,
(32:13):
we needed to have at this conference. And
I quickly knew that this was going to be a problem. And almost like, how
do I sought, Like I'M not an intern. Like, I'm not a, you
know, visa person. I'm not part of this government at all.
Like, it's wild that they're calling me. But I guess because I, you know,
as part of this invitation process, they were calling me at three o' clock in
(32:35):
the morning. I remember speaking to Nigerian authorities
about that. In fact, we had sent this visa to this person that they're not
staying there. They're trying to get in transit. Talk about
interacting with someone of a different culture, of a powerful position.
And I'm not a person of government authority of any kind,
(32:55):
but I'm trying to work out with this person. They were a little bit panicked,
a little bit. If you can imagine, you're traveling this long way. And
then once again, I was able to
somehow talk to them. They were able to get on the flight, and when they
landed in Sierra Leone, their visa wasn't there. So now it was
more phone calls. And I'm just sitting here thinking,
(33:16):
this is bad. How do we get this person in? And I can't solve
this. I need to call some people. I didn't really know what to do, and
I was feeling a little bit panicked. But I realized that
we did have these. Even though the documentation wasn't there, I knew that we
could produce this documentation eventually. I
just took a deep breath, I calmed myself, and I thought, okay,
(33:41):
let me start calling some people that can make these
decisions to let someone into a country that's not me. It was
just interesting that they were calling me
again. It was very early in the morning at this time, and I spoke to
a lot of authorities and I also
said that, well, the Minister of Energy will vouch for
(34:04):
this, you know, because I had a good relationship with the Minister of
Energy Wild,
and it worked out. But I realized I was. It did all work
out in the end, but I realized it was a very. I felt like it
was a situation where I could have overstep boundaries or
the immigration officer did get mad at me.
(34:28):
I'm like, this is not, you know,
so of course you don't want to.
You want to keep a clear head and you want to
ensure that you are bringing people into. If you can't solve
a problem, you need to bring the people into the fold that can solve the
problem. And if they're not available to solve the problem, then you
(34:51):
need to refer them to other people that can't solve the problem.
And I think it was like, if you couldn't get in, they were going to
send him back. It was this whole traumatic, dramatic thing. In
the end it was like, look, I know that the Minister of Energy would be
okay with this person coming in. And
in the end it worked out. But it was a little bit
(35:13):
nerve wracking for me. This is international officials
and I'm just someone working
there, you know, it could have been a
crisis, I think, but it turned out not to be. And I think I
like to think that I took the right steps in de. Escalating in talking
to people, in leveraging relationships, in talking, you
(35:36):
know, just pulling from resources that I can in order to
make it so that this person can indeed attend this
conference. And they were really upset, which is
kind of added extra intensity
to the situation. But it worked out. It was a crisis averted
story, I would say. And how do you
(35:59):
advise organizations to shift public narratives during polarizing
and emotionally charged situations? Oh,
that is. We're seeing that play out
right now in real time. And
I very much admire the
organizations that are sticking with
(36:22):
their mission and sticking with their
initial approach to things
and are not wavering in their
commitment to, to what they said they were going to set out to do.
I truly. Because that's the hard thing to do.
It's easy to say okay and change course with the wind.
(36:44):
It's much harder to say no,
we will always represent these people and we're going to continue
to represent these people no matter who says we need to not
represent these people. That is sticking with your values.
Sticking with your values is
not easy. And you know
(37:07):
the strength of your values when they're tested. Right? When
you get, when you get tested, that's when you really
know the strength of your values and your conviction to your mission as an
organization. And so
if you, if you've established a business
with a certain mission and a certain value system
(37:31):
and it's worked for you, you are a thriving business. The business people love
and you stick with it during hard times. That says something about
the character of that business. And it's the same thing about that person. If somebody
is really
passionate and authentic and true about their intentions,
(37:53):
good intentions, and they're tested and they
stick with it despite pressures, outside pressures,
that's extremely hard to do. And I
admire organizations that say,
we're sticking with our value system, we're sticking with our mission. We're not
changing course because it doesn't work with
(38:16):
some external factor. Got you. And then what advice would you give
an organization aiming to integrate proactive crisis communication
planning into their overall marketing strategy? Yes,
everyone should have one. Everyone should have one. No matter what size of
your organization, you know, whether something. Do a SWOT analysis,
right? Old school SWOT analysis. We always hear about SWOT
(38:38):
analysis forever and ever in college and ever and ever do the SWOT
analysis. Because in that SWOT analysis you have what, your
threats, right? And so the old school
SWOT analysis I think is
underrated. Look into that, right?
What are the threats that are
(38:59):
facing your business? And just get your team together
and say, gosh, what are all the things that could go wrong?
You know, play devil's advocate. What are all the things that could go wrong? What
if someone says this? What if we put out this message and they start wanting
to cancel us? What if we decide that we want to put out this
product and it turns out to be a bad product that malfunctions?
(39:22):
We need to do a recall. It's a fun
exercise, you know, do the whole swap. Because it's nice to see your opportunities and
it's nice to see, you know, your strengths and what are your
weaknesses and what are your threats. And
that is a great way, old school way
to really get into the
(39:45):
things that could potentially hinder your business or
hurt your reputation, right? From a PR
side, what does that look like? Do you have messaging
points? Are your people media trained?
Your employees are your best, best, best, like
cheerleaders, right? Or not?
(40:08):
Right. So what is your culture?
Is there some stuff going on that if it's, you know,
if it made the news or someone, you know, did a tick tock about
it, or if somebody did something,
can that hurt you? You know, is there what's shady? And so when
you look at these, when you look at these weaknesses and threats in your
(40:31):
business, I think that gives you a really good foundation as to,
okay, here are really the things that can hurt us if it goes wrong
and goes in violation of our values and our
culture. Let's put in a process in place.
Once you have that process, delegate, delegate.
(40:51):
Who's going to be in charge of
putting. You have your messaging points, but then who's going to be in charge
of the specific messaging points of the situation? Who's going to take this
point and put it on social? Who's going to get in front of the camera,
do a press conference? Hopefully the CEO or the business or the leader of the
organization, or you or whoever. You know, you want to have
(41:14):
a plan. And your plan starts with understanding your vulnerabilities
as a business. Vulnerabilities in your culture,
vulnerabilities in your, in your operations, vulnerability in
Your business practices, all of these areas
can be potential sparks
for crisis. And you also want to think about,
(41:37):
well, what if a crisis falls in our lap? Has nothing to do
with us. You know, we are just minding our own business. But somebody,
somebody packaged something in a bad packaging
and you happen to use a similar type of packaging, but it's different.
And now you get dragged through the mud because of whatever.
(42:00):
It's good to think about these things too and have
a game plan, you know, acknowledge,
investigate, take corrective action if it's
necessary, issue an apology if it's necessary, accountability,
and then the steps to make things better.
That's going to look a little bit different for every organization, especially large
(42:23):
organizations. You really want to have
your team, your
crisis team that you activate
in the event that you need to do it so that there's not pandemonium and
craziness going around and panicking. Right. So, yeah,
that's. That would be my advice. Gotcha. And then what future trends
(42:45):
do you foresee in global communications and crisis management that
businesses should start preparing for now?
Absolutely. I think AI is.
AI is like the best thing ever and the worst thing ever. Right.
In many ways, I think I could be your best, best friend or it
could be just. I mean, I think about
(43:08):
the people that are just getting these deep fake things made of
them. People that are creating entire. There was a
journalist. Here's, here's a crazy thing. And you can look this up because it's happening.
Journalists that are interviewing fake people, they don't know that they're
fake. There was an NPR story about a summer
reading list of books that didn't exist. And authors were like,
(43:31):
I didn't write that. Right.
So these are all crises that you have that you
were just minding your own business. And now someone fake
wrote an AI book and put your name on it or something. And now it's
ranking in npr and you're like, what? I didn't, I didn't
write this. I didn't put this out there. So we're definitely getting
(43:53):
in. In an era where crises can just
come knocking at your door for no apparent reason and you're just minding your own
business via whether it's like deep fakes or scams.
There was the, the author of Diary of the CEO,
Steve Bartlett, he put out a message
(44:13):
not to give people money because people are setting up fake entire
websites with his personality and ask and like
defrauding people out of so much money. And he was like,
no, that is not me. I'm not doing that.
He's just someone, you know, he's this person building this business, building this empire. And
now you have someone over here taking advantage of that, creating these crises
(44:36):
that you have nothing to do with. So it's
crazy time. It's a crazy, crazy time, I think, for
crisis communications because you can get dragged into something you had absolutely nothing to
do with. So just like
Steve did, in response to that, I would say
you need to put this into
(44:59):
your future plans and know that there are people out there
who might want to ruin your image, ruin your reputation, steal your
ideas, do your ideas.
I mean, think about like, this hermes bag, Chinese
TikTok video, and the. The fallout
of, like, oh, my gosh, you know, what are bags really worth? And,
(45:22):
you know, I think those luxury brands were kind of like,
some of them are doubling down. Like, no, no, no. We really do make our
things in Italy. Here's video proof, you know, like, let's discount that.
Another example of how crises can just develop around you. So I think it's really,
really important, number one, to,
again, if you get caught up in one of these crises, you do not
(45:45):
want to spend a second of hesitation to get out there
and correct the record. Nope, that's not
me. Nope, that's not us. Nope, this is not us. This is
who we are. And use every platform
you have to debunk
(46:05):
any thing that's being said about you. And even
then, it could still be. It could still have a tarnish
on your reputation, right? And that's when storytelling becomes
more powerful than ever, because
eventually that will fade. The next crisis
(46:25):
will erupt. That will fade into the background, given
time. And now you need to be out
there doubling down on your vision, your mission, your
statements, who you are, and produce
lots and lots of content across as many
platforms as you can in order to
(46:47):
continue to debunk, even if it's been years
to continue to double down on who you are as a business organization.
But, you know, it's very interesting times. And I'm.
I'm constantly seeing crises pop up that have nothing to do with the person
involved, like the person they're mentioning. No fault of their own. It's
just someone decided to do a deep fake. Somebody set up a fake webpage and
(47:10):
took millions of dollars from people. It's really
unfortunate. But storytelling
and establishing your reputation and your brand about who
you are, right? Because brand is not just the logo, the brand is who you
are fundamentally. And
really strengthening that over and over again, right? Through
(47:32):
marketing practices, through public relations, communications,
is going to be the best way
to avoid
or, and, or survive any type of a crisis of
this nature. Got you. And then people are listening to this podcast and they're wondering
where can they find you online to learn more. Yeah, so my LinkedIn,
(47:56):
which is I think just Angela Bancorp one I think is my like LinkedIn thing.
Angel Betancourt. You'll see my picture. I have a, my, my LinkedIn banner
is scuba diving. So you can, you can find me there. That's a
really great place. From there you can get to my business website. It's
groupbettencourt.com There's a contact me for form there.
That's easy to get to me there too.
(48:18):
The bet in Court group on Instagram is a great way to
reach me there too. Yeah. But I see
LinkedIn because I'm very active on there. So that's a really good place to just
send me a DM and I'll see it.
Yeah, that, that's, you can email me too. You can
email me@Angela Group.com can email me there too. That's
(48:40):
fine. I, I, I try to read as many emails as possible.
Sometimes they go to spam. So just bear with me. If I don't respond, hit
me up on LinkedIn because then I'll see that that's fair. That's fair.
Anyways, any final thoughts for listeners? I think this has been great
interview. I really appreciate that you are having these
conversations because it's really important.
(49:01):
Everything is changing so fast with technology. I think it's really
important that you, I'm definitely of the embrace
technology for your business.
I also, my also advice is no matter what industry you're in,
experiment with some of these AI tools that are out there. I know
for Bancorp Group we're always looking for really innovative ways to tell
(49:25):
stories. And I've been working on just in off
hours on a day when things are quiet around the house. I'm just on my
computer. I've been working on creating interactive
games on educational ones about my
industry on some of these platforms. And it's
fascinating what you can create and it's wonderful. So
(49:46):
when it comes to storytelling, think about all the different tools that are available
that you can leverage to tell stories in innovative and
fun and creative ways. That's something I'm practicing, but I'm
preaching it to you because I think it's going to really help empower you and
your team for the continuation of
much more advancements and changes and things in
(50:10):
technology. All right, thank you, Angela. For joining Digital Coffee Marketing
brand sharing your knowledge on global communication and crisis management.
Oh thank you. Thank you so much. No, this has been great. I'm so happy
you had me on. I really appreciate you. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you
for listening. As always. Please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting
apps. We'll leave a few five star video really does help with the rankings. Let
(50:31):
me know how I'm doing and join me next week as I talk about what's
going on in the PR marketing industry. All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding
what you need to make better crisis plan and for your global
communication and see you next week later.
I think every business, large or small should
say, okay, if something hits the fan,
what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand
is not it. You want to address it quickly.
(00:29):
And welcome to a new episode of
Digital Coffee Marketing Brew. And I'm your host, Brett
Deister. And if you can please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting.
Absolutely. A five star review really does help with rankings. Let me know
how I am doing. But this week I have Angela with me
and she is a global communication professional with over 20 years of
(00:51):
experience. She has worked on projects across five
continents, including two years in Sierra Leone
during the Ebola virus crisis. She is the founder and CEO of
Benacourt Group, a strategic communication marketing
firm dedicated to amplifying individuals, businesses and organizations
driving positive environmental and social
(01:14):
impact. But welcome to the show, Angela. Thank you so
much. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes. The first question
I asked all my guests is, are you a coffee or tea drinker? I am
a coffee drinker. I love tea, so no hate on the tea, but I'm a
coffee drinker for sure. Anything specific or
is it just Starbucks or whatever else is in the Keurig? I
(01:36):
brew my own coffee at home. I have my little like percolator,
cafeteria thing that I use and I make myself very, very
strong, strong, strong cups of coffee in the morning. And then I have my own
little, my little favorite creamer that I put into it. But if I'm
out and about and need a bit of coffee.
Yeah, I try to go to coffee places that are unique
(01:57):
to the destination and if all else fails, can't go wrong with
a grande coffee from Starbucks. Yeah, it's
easier to find. But I get you about finding the little independent
shops that usually have the better cups of coffee. Exactly.
So I gave a brief summary of your expertise. Can you give our listeners a
little bit more about what you do? Yeah. So as you, as you
(02:18):
mentioned, I've been working in PR marketing industry for over
20 years and my career trajectory has been
extremely nonlinear. I've worked in so many different industries. Started off in
hospitality and worked my way through several PR
agencies in New York and agencies with offices in
San Francisco and just, you know, the really big cities. And I worked
(02:40):
in house for some very large brands. And then the
last couple of years I've been working,
my work has been focused on environmental and social impact. And what does that
mean? Essentially, I love working with businesses,
organizations, individuals that are trying to do good
things for the planet. Whether that is a
(03:02):
ocean advocacy nonprofit, whether
it's a film that talks about
climate change in a really great storytelling way,
or a business that is creating products
out of recycled materials, these are the types
of businesses and organizations and individuals that I love
(03:25):
working with because they're doing such interesting, cool
things. And I just want to be there to help them amplify and
elevate these stories and their projects so that more people are
aware of what they are doing. Got you. So how do you adapt
messaging to resonate with diverse markets and cultures across
different continents? Absolutely. So it really comes
(03:48):
down to your audience. It comes down to
the people you're serving, who is the product for,
who is this nonprofit for, who are the
people that you are trying to help?
And once you have identified these
elements, then you create messaging
(04:10):
that helps you best deliver
your message, your story, what you're trying to achieve
to this audience. And so it doesn't matter
if I'm in, you know, working in Sierra Leone or
working on a client project in Kenya
or on a project in London, I
(04:34):
always think about, who are we in service
for? Who is this for? What are we trying to achieve?
And why does this product or service or film
or whatever, it might be important to the. To your
audience and how it's going to make their lives or their community
(04:54):
or the planet more generally
better? And so
that's true of the audience, it's true of the culture that you're in.
It's really about having your
audiences come first in your messaging and how
it benefits them. And once you know the context,
(05:16):
then you can adapt your message to
that context in a way that will resonate. And then what's of
the marketers, like, never been to that country, but they have to talk to it.
Like, how's the best way of figuring that out? Because I think most of the
problem is that if you've never been to a place, don't know the culture of
the place, don't know how they speak slang or whatever,
(05:37):
it's harder to make a message for something you have no idea about.
Yeah. And I think, luckily for technology, there are so many ways to
access culture these days. And so to
anyone who's trying to break into a new market or wants to
introduce a product to an entirely different culture, the first thing
is, I would say, is if you don't know anything about that culture, find someone
(05:59):
who does. You know, connect with them on social media,
reach out to them on, you know, on LinkedIn, on Instagram,
and schedule a call on WhatsApp on Zoom and talk
to them, talk, talk to them about their community,
about who they are, about what matters to this community
about. Because it has to be people first. It has
(06:22):
to be person first and humanity forward.
And so once you, you know, you can find someone
who's your, essentially your, your, your translator,
your introduction to a culture,
that local person is going to know that culture and so
rely on them, talk to them as a way to
(06:46):
understand what you're trying to achieve. Right.
If you, if you determine that your product or your service is
going to perform, is going to do good in this community,
all you have to do is get into this community. Then
starting with the people there, the local people there. You can't go wrong.
(07:06):
All right? And I mean even for like a preliminary like
research, is AI okay for that? Like just to do your topical research
and then talk to somebody? Because sometimes you don't even know where to start.
Absolutely. I think it's really great to educate yourself
about a market ahead of time. And I think,
you know, 40 years ago that would have been an encyclopedia or whatever
(07:28):
50 years ago. And then later on it would have been, you
know, you would just go, you know, you'd go on Google and look. So if
you tell AI or OpenAI or any of these Gemini or any of these other
platforms, hey, I need a brief history about this country. I need,
I need to understand, I need a little bit of understanding of
this story of this country and this AI platform gives you
(07:51):
the answer. I think that's great. I think it's really great. I think it's, it
shows your effort in wanting to understand a culture before, ahead of
speaking to someone there. And you can say, you know, I,
here's what I discovered online, right? That this, you know, X country,
X city, X whatever is such and such and such
and such and such. And historically xyz. And
(08:14):
now that I have that information, I want to hear it from you. What's your
lived experience there? What's your actual day to day?
What is, what is of the time right now? Right.
So 100% sure, use, use whatever
knowledge source you can to educate
yourself. Obviously you want to make sure everything's factual and that you're getting information
(08:35):
from credible places. And yeah, I think it's respectful
to educate yourself ahead of a conversation with a person.
But I don't think that Google research
and, or any artificial intelligence is a replacement
for a conversation with an actual person in this destination.
(08:56):
I think it's complimentary and I think it's a, it's a setting,
the foundation for a conversation. So basically, Gen
Z making chatgpt their, like, lifeguide is probably the
worst thing you can do right now. I think asking
ChatGPT a bunch to make a bunch of assumptions about people and a certain
culture, and then you just walk into that culture with all these
(09:18):
assumptions that whatever the platform gave you, I
don't recommend, I don't recommend. I
don't think anyone would want that to be their own experience. I don't
necessarily know if I want someone to just go onto, you know, an
AI platform, pull up a bunch of stuff about my city and then be like,
so this is what I know about your city and this is what I've assumed
(09:40):
about all of you, you know, everyone here, when that's
just. I don't recommend. I do think it's great for research.
I do think it's great to empower yourself with knowledge ahead of a conversation.
But this is, this is one of those areas where at the end of the
day, a Zoom call, a WhatsApp call
is still extremely necessary when you're talking about
(10:04):
bringing something to a market. And I think
some great people will tell you if you're developing a product, to test it out
in the market as quickly as possible. Right. Don't wait for it to be perfect
and you want to put it out there and get real human,
human feedback about the
product. So, yeah, AI does not replace a
(10:26):
conversation. And can you share example of a global
communication campaign you led that had a significant impact and
what factors contributed to its success? Yeah. So one
example that I'll share that I felt really, really felt international to
me. The two years that I was in Sierra Leone, there were a
lot of different things going on in this program, a lot of incredible things that
(10:49):
the people on this team were able to do that was just
brilliant and in the big scheme of things, had great impact in
society. But one of the things that I was tasked to lead, to help lead,
at least from the communications and marketing side, was the
country's first ever renewable energy conference.
And we had a very short window of time to pull this off,
(11:11):
and it required participation and
collaboration with the Minister of Energy and his team. At that
time of administration, it required a lot of input,
it required a lot of funding, it required a lot of different things. And
we invited several hundred people from around the world
to attend this conference. So the majority of attendees were Sierra
(11:33):
Leonean, but we had people come in from Nigeria, we had people come in from
China, we had people come in from Europe. The United States. I was part
of the team helping to literally send out those invitations and coordinate their
visas upon arrival. And then
this conference was part of a bigger story. Sierra Leone was one of
the first countries to sign a, an agreement or a compact
(11:57):
with the Energy Africa Campaign, which was at the time a
British led initiative to help bring renewable
energy power to a region of the world that
was so energy poor. And Sierra Leone was one of the first countries,
or I believe the first country to sign this compact. And so
we're talking like ministers from other countries. It was a big deal.
(12:19):
And this conference was born out of the sign signing of
this compact that was like, okay, well we're going to have these ministers come in
and sign this document. We might as well build a bear conversation around
it. And several things happened. One, it was
wildly successful conference, very, very proud of that.
And so many pieces went into it. And it was
(12:42):
really about informing and letting the world know, especially
European markets, that Ebola was in the
past. The country was now looking forward to
the next step to recovery, to thriving, to bouncing back.
And the renewable energy market was ripe and ready for
investment. And so this, my part was
(13:04):
to get out press releases, help set up press conferences to let the
world know that Sierra Leone gets six months
of sunshine a year opposite of the rainy season, which is like another
six months. And that's a whole other thing. This country with so much
sunshine and so much opportunity was ready for
renewable energy sources from all over the world.
(13:27):
And long story, it's already a long story. But longer story short,
the campaign resulted in over two
dozen international media coverage. So from
Europe, from around the greater
African region, from London, which is a
really, really big deal. And so I would say that was
(13:51):
very successful campaign to let the world know that
Sierra Leone is ready for investment, ready for renewable
energy. Business got you. And
was there any pitfalls you had to overcome? And how did you overcome those pitfalls
with so many? One, it was, we were
a small team. I'm very, till this day,
(14:13):
I'm just in awe of what this team was able to accomplish
literally in like a three month period to pull something of this
magnitude off. The other worry is
that this whole conference was about
bringing renewable energy to a country that is energy
poor, that does not have a power
(14:36):
grid, that can be at the time
power and bring energy to everyone. One of
our worries that would have been super ironic, but
possibly also proving a point is
what if the power goes off during the conference?
What if that happens? It didn't. We prepared
(15:00):
adequately for that. Moment to avoid
that moment from happening. But that was something we had to overcome. We had to
come up with a plan. Another point to overcome
was the coordinating international visas
and the access of logistical
access from the airport of Sierra Leone to the mainland part
(15:23):
of Sierra Leone, which required a boat ride. So there was
a lot of questions around, how do we get people
that are coming in smoothly transitioned from the airport,
which required, you know, a bus ride, a boat ride, a bus ride,
and get them to this conference, especially people that have never been
to the country before. We wanted
(15:46):
to make sure everyone was. There was food at this conference
and so finding
partners that would cater
to this amount of people. So there were several challenges
that we had to overcome. One of the most interesting ones was
Sierra Leone has what they call Paramount Chiefs,
(16:09):
which is kind of a governor, if
you will. They have 149 paramount chiefs, which kind of represent these
different states within Sierra Leone. And they're kind of like governors would be in the
United States. Most of these
chiefs do not have Internet connection.
So to invite them it required old school
(16:31):
texting and keeping track of
this long list. Right. It was like, how do we
email? We can't email them, we can't
send them an invite and we can't mail them an invite. How do we
invite these Paramount Chiefs to come
to this event?
(16:56):
There was no other way than to just sit there one evening
with my colleague and just start texting on a flip phone.
It was sometimes you just have to get back to basics to
overcome challenges. When technology cannot
help you, you have to just go back to the basics. And I, and I
(17:16):
find that to be an interesting life lesson in many
ways. Yes. Sometimes old tech is the best. Tech.
Exactly. Or no tech is the best.
Yeah. So it was, it was interesting. You know, you really have to just be
resourceful and really creative. And so I really like
to think about those opportunities as they're not so much challenges. But,
(17:40):
you know, if you've ever wanted to try to think outside the box, here you
go. Here's the opportunity to get really creative and to literally think
outside of the parameters that you're accustomed to.
And then how can small businesses with limited budgets adopt a global.
And then how can small businesses with limited budgets. Absolutely.
And that's a great question because again, I think that probably now
(18:02):
more than ever, it's so easy to connect with people
around the world and, and really leverage the
technologies that are currently available. And it doesn't
have to cost a lot of money. I think the key, though, is strategy.
Where do you want to go? Why do you want to go there and what
benefit can you provide to the people there?
(18:26):
And so that is the main thing. I love
seeing small jewelry brands and other
businesses that have very small operations in the States,
but they're eager to bring their products, product and
ship to people. And so it's, it's, the question is if you really
believe in your product doing well there and it makes sense for what you're
(18:47):
trying to achieve and you can identify your target audience in these
markets, then there, it's, there's
never been a better time to set yourself up logistically
to support that. Right. It's easy now to
ship products worldwide, easier than it's ever been.
And so you think about what does that look like logistically for you?
(19:11):
Right. And I think that really just having a
plan of action, of execution that makes sense for your
operations is the key. And thinking about
things like pricing, what about
shipping fees? What about maybe any import fees? Are
these things that you want to absorb? Are you going to work them into
(19:34):
your international pricing for your customers to cover those
costs? And so when you start thinking about the
customer first and their experience, that will
guide, I think that would really guide you as to the best
way to bring your product to a new country. Does the
infrastructure there support this? Do you want
(19:55):
to set up? There's a brand that I really love, she
does like home interior and she's just always been
British based. And she not too long ago she posted on her
Instagram that she opened up this huge warehouse in the United
States and she's high volume, high, you know, very
recognized brand in Europe and she posted this huge
(20:17):
warehouse in the United States and her thing was, okay,
US Folks, now it's going to be easiest as it's ever been for you to
order these products because she's thinking about people first.
And you know, in an age where you can
have same day or next day delivery and sometimes overnight
delivery, what does that look like? What does the delivery process
(20:39):
look like for your customer? So once you start thinking about customer first,
I think that is your North Star in how you enter any
new market, but especially an international market. And have the
tariffs actually played any role in maybe
negatively impacting all that stuff? Because I know at least in the
US we do have uncertainty in that. And so has it
(21:02):
negatively impacted going more global because of it's more
expensive, it's more expensive maybe to ship into the United States or whatever?
Yeah, and that, that's a really great question. I think it depends on the industry
and I also think it depends on your.
And I think it's, I think it's going to be very personal to the business.
So I think some industries are going to be feeling it a lot more than
(21:23):
other industries. I know in the, in the retail industry, I'm
hearing retailers that are again,
European based, that have US audiences, US
customers, some of them are just absorbing the costs.
They're saying we're not increasing prices, we're going to absorb the cost on
our end to keep things smooth for the customer.
(21:46):
And so it's really, I think that
to different degrees the tariffs are going to impact, especially if
you rely on international shipping, you have an international audience already.
I think it's going to perhaps impact your supply chain
and definitely some industries more than others. And so I think if you're
(22:06):
an industry where tariffs are going to impact you, it's rough,
it's a hard time. And I think it really comes down to
the current state of your business and where you're based
and what resources might be available for you as a business owner in
your particular area and, and also your
ability to absorb or not the price
(22:29):
of what it's going to cost your customer. And
we've, you know, I think I've already seen prices go up. I've seen, I've
gotten like notifications that prices are going to go up in some
stores and that really just comes down to
that individual business, some larger than others that are saying,
you know what, you know, it's, it's prices are going
(22:53):
to go up a little bit, we're going to absorb a little bit or we're
absorbing everything and we want to keep things the
same price for you. And that's what I've seen from
retailers that have one or two retailers that I've seen
that I, that I'm a customer of have they have
absorbed the price and just to keep it better for the customer.
(23:14):
So it's, it's, it's a great question, but it's a hard question because I think
it depends on the industry and I think it depends on your supply
chain and I think it depends on the, the
current status of your business. I think if you're hurting,
it might just hurt even more. And if you're in a position where you
can survive it,
(23:38):
I think, you know, that's good for you. I saw
in the news there was farmers, farming community
that said, you know, we can absorb the cost for the next couple of
months but after that we might be in trouble. Right. So I just think it
depends. And what do you believe are the most common mistakes companies
make when facing a PR crisis? And how can they avoid that?
(24:01):
So crises will happen, right? Just like in life,
right? Things happen. And to
avoid is not the approach I think
every business, large or small should say,
okay, if something hits the fan,
what is our game plan? Avoidance. Sticking your head in the sand
(24:24):
is not it. You want to address it quickly. You want to,
you want to research, get to the bottom of
things, and you want to be prepared
to explain what happened. But even more
importantly, accountability account of, someone's got to be
accountable for what happened. If it was an error that your organization
(24:47):
made, and I've seen it happen all the time in smaller levels of
sorry, this shipment just isn't going to get to you on time. We
made a mistake with our XYZ shipping process.
Here's what we're doing to correct it, here's what we're going to do in the
future to let it not happen again. And here's
10% off. Right? Like you never want to avoid.
(25:10):
If you're in a crisis situation and you're still needing to assess,
the first thing that you can do is say, we're in a crisis situation
and I'm still trying to figure out what's going on. We're getting to the bottom
of it, we're investigating, we're looking into it, we are taking action.
That is key. Avoidance. Denying is not
going to work, especially not in this day where things
(25:34):
will go, things will get tweaked, things will just get shared quicker than you can
even say, right? And so the key is
acknowledge, investigate,
understand what's going on, take corrective action.
You know, take accountability, take corrective action. If it was something that's out of
your control, but it's still impacting your business
(25:57):
or it's still kind of brought into a crisis, same thing applies.
You have to recognize what role you played in a crisis.
And if there was no role at all, well, what role are you going to
play in the solution? You want to make sure you're taking action.
You want to make sure you let immediately communicate what you're doing to correct
the problem, what you're doing to avoid it from happening ever
(26:19):
again. And then you want to continue to take those
steps to show that you've made a difference.
Sending out a press release, but not taking any action behind
the scenes is a negative action. You
want to take action and you want to find solutions and you want to put
things into place to avoid these things happening ever again.
(26:41):
And then in your experience, how can storytelling play a role
in rebuilding public trust after a crisis? Because there is that after
the crisis ends, you have to rebuild that trust again. Right? And that's why.
But that's why your response to the crisis is so important for how things are
going to play out. Because by tackling it head
on, not sticking your head in the sand, by tackling it head on and
(27:04):
saying this happened. If apology needs
to be, if there needs to be an apology, then you apologize. And
then you take corrective action and you show transparency. Because
your response is where the trust is begins.
If you're avoidant, if you're in denial, if you push blame
(27:24):
to everyone else except for yourself or your company or whomever or
whatever happened, you are breaking the foundation of
trust. And so from the very beginning,
trust is on the table. How you respond
and what you do every step of the way until it's resolved.
And then what you do after is where
(27:46):
the trust is. If you're
shady, you're not clearing your communications, you're denying,
you're pushing, placing blame everywhere except for where you
need to be. If you're not taking accountability, if you're
screaming at people, yelling at people on
threads, Instagram, whatever it is, you are not
(28:08):
going to be seen as a trustful person. And
now a situation that was already bad is
now 10 times worse, and it's going to be much more difficult to recover
from just because of failure to take those
steps. So if you do those things and tackle it head on
and apologize sincerely if you need to, and take corrective
(28:30):
action and then demonstrate, show people. Don't just
tell people, show people what you are doing. What
does that look like? Maybe it's a tour of your factory.
Maybe it's, you know,
it's a visibility report. It's something.
But you're transparent about what you're doing and you're demonstrating that
(28:53):
you've taken actionable steps, then the next step is
here, here, the outcome of the steps we have taken.
And you're transparent and open. You know, it's a town
hall. It's a. Ask me, you know, ask me anything on,
you know, it's an Instagram live. It's whatever it is.
(29:14):
Now you are saying, gosh, you know, things happen, things
hit the fan, things go wrong, that this person was on top of it, they
stayed ahead of it, they are sincere, they're taking
actions. And that's all part of that storytelling,
right? Talking about who you are. And when a crisis
happens, leaning on those initial values
(29:36):
and tripling down on your stance and your mission is
extremely important. And so your storytelling is happening
in your accountability and the actions that you're taking.
Here's an infographic of the 10 steps we took to correct action.
Here is an IG live with
a non leadership, an employee, whoever, who is our
(29:58):
testimonial to what we're doing. Here's a third party
independent person that came in to
review and here's their outcome. We're putting it all out for you to see.
Here's you know, the story is that narrative that you're telling.
And so the actions
turn into the stories that you're telling your audience. And then
(30:21):
afterward you continue to tell the story of,
you know, a year has passed. Reflect on what you've learned,
reflect on the impact
show. Demonstrate a year later, two years later, that you're
still keeping your word about the things that you said. Those
are the stories that you want to start telling
(30:43):
very early on and continue to tell in your business,
service, organization, etc.
Got you. And can you share a specific story about a challenging crisis
you managed and how you successfully navigated that?
I have a few. I'm
trying to think, I would say
(31:07):
part of me is I'm also grateful that I haven't been a part of
a crisis that was like, so, you know, an international
incident or anything like that. I'd like to think that the
organizations and the businesses that I've worked with have been really good about
putting practices and procedures in place to avoid those types of things. But
I will share one story that I think was kind of interesting. In my experience
(31:29):
in Sierra Leone around this conference, we had someone,
you know, I was mentioning that we had these international visas that needed to be
established as a landing visa so that number one, they would be emailed
ahead of time to the attendees and there would be a
visa available for them, the actual visa available for them at the airport.
I had somebody coming in from China that
(31:52):
I guess the email was sent to them en route to Nigeria,
their connecting flight, and they never
couldn't access their emails or didn't have Internet connection. And now they're in a
connecting flight in Nigeria and the Nigerian airport wasn't going to let them leave. So
I start getting calls at 3 o' clock in the morning like, hi, I'm coming
from here. I need to get into this. You know, this is someone who we,
(32:13):
we needed to have at this conference. And
I quickly knew that this was going to be a problem. And almost like, how
do I sought, Like I'M not an intern. Like, I'm not a, you
know, visa person. I'm not part of this government at all.
Like, it's wild that they're calling me. But I guess because I, you know,
as part of this invitation process, they were calling me at three o' clock in
(32:35):
the morning. I remember speaking to Nigerian authorities
about that. In fact, we had sent this visa to this person that they're not
staying there. They're trying to get in transit. Talk about
interacting with someone of a different culture, of a powerful position.
And I'm not a person of government authority of any kind,
(32:55):
but I'm trying to work out with this person. They were a little bit panicked,
a little bit. If you can imagine, you're traveling this long way. And
then once again, I was able to
somehow talk to them. They were able to get on the flight, and when they
landed in Sierra Leone, their visa wasn't there. So now it was
more phone calls. And I'm just sitting here thinking,
(33:16):
this is bad. How do we get this person in? And I can't solve
this. I need to call some people. I didn't really know what to do, and
I was feeling a little bit panicked. But I realized that
we did have these. Even though the documentation wasn't there, I knew that we
could produce this documentation eventually. I
just took a deep breath, I calmed myself, and I thought, okay,
(33:41):
let me start calling some people that can make these
decisions to let someone into a country that's not me. It was
just interesting that they were calling me
again. It was very early in the morning at this time, and I spoke to
a lot of authorities and I also
said that, well, the Minister of Energy will vouch for
(34:04):
this, you know, because I had a good relationship with the Minister of
Energy Wild,
and it worked out. But I realized I was. It did all work
out in the end, but I realized it was a very. I felt like it
was a situation where I could have overstep boundaries or
the immigration officer did get mad at me.
(34:28):
I'm like, this is not, you know,
so of course you don't want to.
You want to keep a clear head and you want to
ensure that you are bringing people into. If you can't solve
a problem, you need to bring the people into the fold that can solve the
problem. And if they're not available to solve the problem, then you
(34:51):
need to refer them to other people that can't solve the problem.
And I think it was like, if you couldn't get in, they were going to
send him back. It was this whole traumatic, dramatic thing. In
the end it was like, look, I know that the Minister of Energy would be
okay with this person coming in. And
in the end it worked out. But it was a little bit
(35:13):
nerve wracking for me. This is international officials
and I'm just someone working
there, you know, it could have been a
crisis, I think, but it turned out not to be. And I think I
like to think that I took the right steps in de. Escalating in talking
to people, in leveraging relationships, in talking, you
(35:36):
know, just pulling from resources that I can in order to
make it so that this person can indeed attend this
conference. And they were really upset, which is
kind of added extra intensity
to the situation. But it worked out. It was a crisis averted
story, I would say. And how do you
(35:59):
advise organizations to shift public narratives during polarizing
and emotionally charged situations? Oh,
that is. We're seeing that play out
right now in real time. And
I very much admire the
organizations that are sticking with
(36:22):
their mission and sticking with their
initial approach to things
and are not wavering in their
commitment to, to what they said they were going to set out to do.
I truly. Because that's the hard thing to do.
It's easy to say okay and change course with the wind.
(36:44):
It's much harder to say no,
we will always represent these people and we're going to continue
to represent these people no matter who says we need to not
represent these people. That is sticking with your values.
Sticking with your values is
not easy. And you know
(37:07):
the strength of your values when they're tested. Right? When
you get, when you get tested, that's when you really
know the strength of your values and your conviction to your mission as an
organization. And so
if you, if you've established a business
with a certain mission and a certain value system
(37:31):
and it's worked for you, you are a thriving business. The business people love
and you stick with it during hard times. That says something about
the character of that business. And it's the same thing about that person. If somebody
is really
passionate and authentic and true about their intentions,
(37:53):
good intentions, and they're tested and they
stick with it despite pressures, outside pressures,
that's extremely hard to do. And I
admire organizations that say,
we're sticking with our value system, we're sticking with our mission. We're not
changing course because it doesn't work with
(38:16):
some external factor. Got you. And then what advice would you give
an organization aiming to integrate proactive crisis communication
planning into their overall marketing strategy? Yes,
everyone should have one. Everyone should have one. No matter what size of
your organization, you know, whether something. Do a SWOT analysis,
right? Old school SWOT analysis. We always hear about SWOT
(38:38):
analysis forever and ever in college and ever and ever do the SWOT
analysis. Because in that SWOT analysis you have what, your
threats, right? And so the old school
SWOT analysis I think is
underrated. Look into that, right?
What are the threats that are
(38:59):
facing your business? And just get your team together
and say, gosh, what are all the things that could go wrong?
You know, play devil's advocate. What are all the things that could go wrong? What
if someone says this? What if we put out this message and they start wanting
to cancel us? What if we decide that we want to put out this
product and it turns out to be a bad product that malfunctions?
(39:22):
We need to do a recall. It's a fun
exercise, you know, do the whole swap. Because it's nice to see your opportunities and
it's nice to see, you know, your strengths and what are your
weaknesses and what are your threats. And
that is a great way, old school way
to really get into the
(39:45):
things that could potentially hinder your business or
hurt your reputation, right? From a PR
side, what does that look like? Do you have messaging
points? Are your people media trained?
Your employees are your best, best, best, like
cheerleaders, right? Or not?
(40:08):
Right. So what is your culture?
Is there some stuff going on that if it's, you know,
if it made the news or someone, you know, did a tick tock about
it, or if somebody did something,
can that hurt you? You know, is there what's shady? And so when
you look at these, when you look at these weaknesses and threats in your
(40:31):
business, I think that gives you a really good foundation as to,
okay, here are really the things that can hurt us if it goes wrong
and goes in violation of our values and our
culture. Let's put in a process in place.
Once you have that process, delegate, delegate.
(40:51):
Who's going to be in charge of
putting. You have your messaging points, but then who's going to be in charge
of the specific messaging points of the situation? Who's going to take this
point and put it on social? Who's going to get in front of the camera,
do a press conference? Hopefully the CEO or the business or the leader of the
organization, or you or whoever. You know, you want to have
(41:14):
a plan. And your plan starts with understanding your vulnerabilities
as a business. Vulnerabilities in your culture,
vulnerabilities in your, in your operations, vulnerability in
Your business practices, all of these areas
can be potential sparks
for crisis. And you also want to think about,
(41:37):
well, what if a crisis falls in our lap? Has nothing to do
with us. You know, we are just minding our own business. But somebody,
somebody packaged something in a bad packaging
and you happen to use a similar type of packaging, but it's different.
And now you get dragged through the mud because of whatever.
(42:00):
It's good to think about these things too and have
a game plan, you know, acknowledge,
investigate, take corrective action if it's
necessary, issue an apology if it's necessary, accountability,
and then the steps to make things better.
That's going to look a little bit different for every organization, especially large
(42:23):
organizations. You really want to have
your team, your
crisis team that you activate
in the event that you need to do it so that there's not pandemonium and
craziness going around and panicking. Right. So, yeah,
that's. That would be my advice. Gotcha. And then what future trends
(42:45):
do you foresee in global communications and crisis management that
businesses should start preparing for now?
Absolutely. I think AI is.
AI is like the best thing ever and the worst thing ever. Right.
In many ways, I think I could be your best, best friend or it
could be just. I mean, I think about
(43:08):
the people that are just getting these deep fake things made of
them. People that are creating entire. There was a
journalist. Here's, here's a crazy thing. And you can look this up because it's happening.
Journalists that are interviewing fake people, they don't know that they're
fake. There was an NPR story about a summer
reading list of books that didn't exist. And authors were like,
(43:31):
I didn't write that. Right.
So these are all crises that you have that you
were just minding your own business. And now someone fake
wrote an AI book and put your name on it or something. And now it's
ranking in npr and you're like, what? I didn't, I didn't
write this. I didn't put this out there. So we're definitely getting
(43:53):
in. In an era where crises can just
come knocking at your door for no apparent reason and you're just minding your own
business via whether it's like deep fakes or scams.
There was the, the author of Diary of the CEO,
Steve Bartlett, he put out a message
(44:13):
not to give people money because people are setting up fake entire
websites with his personality and ask and like
defrauding people out of so much money. And he was like,
no, that is not me. I'm not doing that.
He's just someone, you know, he's this person building this business, building this empire. And
now you have someone over here taking advantage of that, creating these crises
(44:36):
that you have nothing to do with. So it's
crazy time. It's a crazy, crazy time, I think, for
crisis communications because you can get dragged into something you had absolutely nothing to
do with. So just like
Steve did, in response to that, I would say
you need to put this into
(44:59):
your future plans and know that there are people out there
who might want to ruin your image, ruin your reputation, steal your
ideas, do your ideas.
I mean, think about like, this hermes bag, Chinese
TikTok video, and the. The fallout
of, like, oh, my gosh, you know, what are bags really worth? And,
(45:22):
you know, I think those luxury brands were kind of like,
some of them are doubling down. Like, no, no, no. We really do make our
things in Italy. Here's video proof, you know, like, let's discount that.
Another example of how crises can just develop around you. So I think it's really,
really important, number one, to,
again, if you get caught up in one of these crises, you do not
(45:45):
want to spend a second of hesitation to get out there
and correct the record. Nope, that's not
me. Nope, that's not us. Nope, this is not us. This is
who we are. And use every platform
you have to debunk
(46:05):
any thing that's being said about you. And even
then, it could still be. It could still have a tarnish
on your reputation, right? And that's when storytelling becomes
more powerful than ever, because
eventually that will fade. The next crisis
(46:25):
will erupt. That will fade into the background, given
time. And now you need to be out
there doubling down on your vision, your mission, your
statements, who you are, and produce
lots and lots of content across as many
platforms as you can in order to
(46:47):
continue to debunk, even if it's been years
to continue to double down on who you are as a business organization.
But, you know, it's very interesting times. And I'm.
I'm constantly seeing crises pop up that have nothing to do with the person
involved, like the person they're mentioning. No fault of their own. It's
just someone decided to do a deep fake. Somebody set up a fake webpage and
(47:10):
took millions of dollars from people. It's really
unfortunate. But storytelling
and establishing your reputation and your brand about who
you are, right? Because brand is not just the logo, the brand is who you
are fundamentally. And
really strengthening that over and over again, right? Through
(47:32):
marketing practices, through public relations, communications,
is going to be the best way
to avoid
or, and, or survive any type of a crisis of
this nature. Got you. And then people are listening to this podcast and they're wondering
where can they find you online to learn more. Yeah, so my LinkedIn,
(47:56):
which is I think just Angela Bancorp one I think is my like LinkedIn thing.
Angel Betancourt. You'll see my picture. I have a, my, my LinkedIn banner
is scuba diving. So you can, you can find me there. That's a
really great place. From there you can get to my business website. It's
groupbettencourt.com There's a contact me for form there.
That's easy to get to me there too.
(48:18):
The bet in Court group on Instagram is a great way to
reach me there too. Yeah. But I see
LinkedIn because I'm very active on there. So that's a really good place to just
send me a DM and I'll see it.
Yeah, that, that's, you can email me too. You can
email me@Angela Group.com can email me there too. That's
(48:40):
fine. I, I, I try to read as many emails as possible.
Sometimes they go to spam. So just bear with me. If I don't respond, hit
me up on LinkedIn because then I'll see that that's fair. That's fair.
Anyways, any final thoughts for listeners? I think this has been great
interview. I really appreciate that you are having these
conversations because it's really important.
(49:01):
Everything is changing so fast with technology. I think it's really
important that you, I'm definitely of the embrace
technology for your business.
I also, my also advice is no matter what industry you're in,
experiment with some of these AI tools that are out there. I know
for Bancorp Group we're always looking for really innovative ways to tell
(49:25):
stories. And I've been working on just in off
hours on a day when things are quiet around the house. I'm just on my
computer. I've been working on creating interactive
games on educational ones about my
industry on some of these platforms. And it's
fascinating what you can create and it's wonderful. So
(49:46):
when it comes to storytelling, think about all the different tools that are available
that you can leverage to tell stories in innovative and
fun and creative ways. That's something I'm practicing, but I'm
preaching it to you because I think it's going to really help empower you and
your team for the continuation of
much more advancements and changes and things in
(50:10):
technology. All right, thank you, Angela. For joining Digital Coffee Marketing
brand sharing your knowledge on global communication and crisis management.
Oh thank you. Thank you so much. No, this has been great. I'm so happy
you had me on. I really appreciate you. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you
for listening. As always. Please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting
apps. We'll leave a few five star video really does help with the rankings. Let
(50:31):
me know how I'm doing and join me next week as I talk about what's
going on in the PR marketing industry. All right guys, stay safe, get to understanding
what you need to make better crisis plan and for your global
communication and see you next week later.
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