How To Get Ahead Of A Crisis When You’re Already Behind, with Mountain View Police Department

Invincible Brand with Melissa Agnes

In April 2018, shortly after the shooting that took place at YouTube’s headquarters by 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam in San Bruno, California, the media learned from Aghdam’s father that she had been confronted by Mountain View Police Department officers prior to the shooting taking place.

Before MVPD had time to make this connection themselves and gather the necessary information, news of this fact quickly went viral with the media, local communities, and the general public demanding answers and speculating on what the answers to those unanswered questions might be.

In this episode of The Invincible Brand Podcast, Melissa Agnes sits down with Captain Chris Hsiung of MVPD and Katie Nelson, Social Media and Public Relations Coordinator for MVPD, to discuss the behind the scenes of what happened, how it happened, and the crisis ready strategies that MVPD quickly put into place in order to regain control of the narrative of the incident and mitigate the risk of losing trust and credibility with their community and the general public.

Learning of a serious issue or crisis once it has already gone viral against your brand is a business risk that applies to any type of organization in this day and age, and the tips, strategies, and insights that Captain Hsiung and Katie share in this episode are relevant to all businesses whether you’re a brand of one, a mega corporation, or whether you’re in the public or private sectors.

This episode explores:

• How a Crisis Ready organizational mindset prepared MVPD for this moment before it happened
• The Ultimate FOMO moment when Captain Hsiung was “off the grid” on a cruise for the initial 18hrs of the event
• Behind the scenes decisions and discussions
• The strategy of communication: how MVPD rolled out the video footage of the event – and the importance of providing context to what viewers would see in the footage

Links discussed in this episode

• The first response statement published by MVPD before they could release the video footage of the incident
• The official response published by MVPD with the video of the incident

Follow and connect with MVPD on social:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram