Crisis in the Financial World

The crisis atmosphere roiling the financial markets over the past several weeks has been as much about rumors as liquidity, a point I made this week in an interview with Stuart Varney on Fox Business News (click here to view).

Part of the problem lies in the companies' crisis response -- in my view, most companies are still working from a crisis communications playbook written in the days before the Internet and email, before blogs and message boards, before 24-hour cable news. In an era of instant information, rumors and gossip become market-moving media events long before they reach the pages of The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. Response needs to be proactive, aggressive and void of the kind of vacuous banalities that have dominated corporate communications for decades. Rather than thinking "How little can I say to get this crisis behind me...," companies and their counselors ought to be asking: "What can I do to win?"