"The value of Melissa's content was directly geared to our unique environment, and she kept audiences engaged and entertained while helping them learn valuable skills to take back. Anyone who wants to make sure their organization is INVINCIBLE needs to have her present."
-Hilton"I cannot speak highly enough about the quality of the presentation Melissa delivered and about the engagement it generated both on location and on social media. Melissa reminded us that best practices and a deep understanding of current realities can make a crisis work for you rather than against you. Her case studies and practical examples span across industries and got the room thinking and exchanging well beyond our physical location. IABC members in Ottawa, Toronto and Melbourne, Australia followed the event and interacted with us on social media. A must-attend training!"
-IABC/Montreal"Melissa Agnes accepted my invitation to present a webinar for the Public Relations Institute of Australia. Melissa was great: easy to work with; organized; passionate about her material – “Absolutely brilliant webinar, really useful and practical,” commented one attendee; and generous with her time and resources, freely inviting the audience to download her proprietary Issues Management Response Flow Chart. Not only, but the 12:00 noon webinar in Sydney meant that Melissa started her broadcast at 9:00pm in Montreal, with a terrible cough which she worked hard to suppress. A true professional!"
-Public Relations Institute of Australia"We took Melissa’s visit to South Korea as an opportunity to discuss crisis communication with embassies with which we have close contact in Seoul. Crisis communication is of utmost importance in our environment, as tension between South and North Korea fluctuates on a weekly basis. Melissa was able to lead the discussion on various crisis communication strategies where she provided the benefits and the disadvantages of each. She introduced many of the diplomates to various new communication tools and strategies that could be implemented when communicating with our citizens in South Korea. Her command of the subject, as well as her presentation skills were phenomenal, and each embassy representative commented on the high value she brought to the discussion. Her presentation was a catalyst which enabled discussion on the creation and application of common communication strategies in crisis situations, by embassies in Seoul."
-Global Affairs Canada"Melissa proved to be highly effective in helping Domtar modernize its crisis management plan in the age of social media. While the fundamentals of good crisis management remain the same, Melissa helped us internalize how social media accelerates the speed and scope of how information is shared and public impressions are formed. As a result, we are better prepared to leverage the benefits of social media in a crisis situation, while avoiding mistakes and minimizing risks. Melissa accomplished this with a critical review of our procedures and plans, a customized exercise that engaged our entire team, and a thoughtful assessment of areas for continued improvement."
-Corporate Services"We brought together our legal, PR, communications, digital and staff engagement teams for nearly two days. Melissa guided our topics in such an engaging way driving us to tap what we already knew and to discover what was lacking in our current process and guidelines. This training session brought us together in such an effective way that not one person regretted the commitment we made to learn. Thank you, Melissa, for bringing a complex topic to us in a way that encouraged debate, hands-on experience and helped us make decisions."
-YMCA of the USA"Melissa was well prepared, great on her feet, thoughtfully challenging, superbly engaging and displayed a depth of knowledge that gave her high credibility. Additionally, she made the session stimulating and fun. Her thought-provoking presentation style spurred exceptional dialogue between the participants that attended our global crisis communications network meeting. Her insight and knowledge of the digital landscape opened our eyes to alternative communications approaches when dealing with a crisis."
-The Dow Chemical CompanyBuild an Invincible Brand
Bad things happen to good companies. And issues come in all sort of sizes.
The potential risks in modern-day business are greater, more dynamic, and less predictable than ever before. And yet, the greatest exposure does not lie within these risks. Rather, it lies in having a team that is not prepared to anticipate, foresee, or respond to a rising threat, and its impact on your reputation, revenue, and relationships in real-time.
If a negative situation were to strike your organization, how confident do you feel that your entire team would know precisely what to do? Would they know how to immediately and effectively manage the situation in a way that results in increased stakeholder trust and loyalty?
In this program, Melissa Agnes, provides an applicable roadmap for helping you build an invincible brand through effective communication, issue management, and crisis readiness, resulting in increased organizational trust, credibility, and goodwill.
In this session, you will:
Choosing Your Lens: Transforming Issues into Opportunities
Issue management is a part of every business -- whether it’s a customer complaint, an operational mishap, or worse.
The lens through which your team chooses to see a negative event directly impacts the actions they take in response to that event, which also directly impacts the result that that event will have on your brand.
Furthermore, when a negative event strikes your organization, your team has one of two options available to them: Respond ineffectively and chip away at the brand’s trust and credibility over time, or respond effectively and make strong deposits into your brand’s bank of stakeholder goodwill.
What is the lens through which your team currently views less-than-ideal situations?
How is it impacting your brand’s reputation over time?
How does the culture of your business dictate, empower, and reward the mindset of driving those actions?
Can you amplify these efforts in a way that continuously strengthens the trust and credibility associated with your brand?
As a crisis management advisor, Melissa helped to successfully manage several, real-world viral issues. This program will examine those issues and:
How can you empower your team to transform every issue into an opportunity to build trust, credibility, and goodwill in the organization? This seminar will give your participants answers and implementable strategies to ensure the right lens is always chosen – inspiring the right actions to transform any business issue into a powerful brand opportunity.
Author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, Melissa Agnes is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is a coveted speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today's leading organizations faced with the greatest risks.
As a strategic advisor and keynote speaker, Melissa Agnes has worked with NATO, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, financial firms, technology companies, healthcare organizations, cities and municipalities, law enforcement agencies, global non-profits, and many others, helping them understand risk and build invincible brands that can withstand even the most devastating of events.
In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk in Los Angeles where she discussed the secret to successful crisis management in the 21st century.
Agnes sits on the Global Advisory Council for The Institute for Strategic Risk Management (ISRM), an entity established to create a global centre where practitioners, academics and policy makers come together to share information and help progress and promote the underlying understanding and capabilities associated with strategic risk and crisis management.
She is the editor of the Crisis Ready Blog, the host of the Invincible Brand Podcast, a contributor to Forbes, and a go-to source for the press, with recent coverage including the Wall Street Journal, VIBE Magazine, USA Today, and many others.
As a university guest lecturer, Agnes teaches crisis management in university courses around the world, including at NYU and McGill, and her book and Crisis Ready Model continue to be adopted into undergraduate, graduate, and MBA courses around the world.