Good biscuits plated up on arrival and participants hovering at the door ahead of schedule. Throw in a tailored crisis simulation – part challenge, part playing to individual strengths – and all the positive omens are there for a good training day.
This time last year, Mangold Consultancy ran a crisis comms simulation in the canal-side offices of a household media brand. Their comms team was preparing for a 20,000+ festival abroad. They wanted to roleplay crisis comms handling – responding to cancelled artists and disappointed fans, through to a health and safety emergency, leaving disorientated music lovers unable to return home. In designing the simulation, we confronted the practical set up of managing a crisis abroad and the belt and braces of communicating at speed with multiple stakeholders ranging from global sponsors, to musicians, their entourage and anxious families at home. The training room chemistry that day was good. What they asked of us and how they worked as a team showed that dedicated time to walk through crisis comms together was building their collective confidence.
This session was followed by a run of media and presentation training and corporate communications projects, addressing female leadership, global shipping and climate change, plastics in beauty brands and setting the UK media landscape for leaders who cut their corporate teeth abroad. It was an engrossing client spread, encapsulating the ‘media meets communications’ tagline which defines our crisis and corporate comms services offer.
Today it is different. Face to face training, in person is on hold. Likewise, workshops in central London offices and sessions using bespoke broadcast studios for multiple interviews formats. Today it is all about virtual training, remote learning, up close while on screen. This mirrors the media appetite for expert living room interviews, while businesses run corporate presentations, online, live to hundreds. Our crisis and corporate communications clients are asking more of themselves – so we ask the same of ourselves.
Mangold Consultancy’s virtual training offer has grown from a swift professional pivot, to become a finely tuned format where with less time, and optimal focus, new spokespeople and hardened media performers, test proactive campaigns and reactive messages. The agenda is evolving, while making the most of the virtual tech and our experienced broadcast camera operators. We have thrown the good biscuits up in the air (for now), and discovered that in the face of significant change ‘media meets communications’ continues to define our client offer.
Please get in touch to learn more about how we can help you with virtual training.
Featured Images by American Heritage Chocolate, Susanne Duke & Izabelle Acheson.
