What clickbait can teach us about crafting better crisis comms
“[Incident] Status Update or Statement From Our [Senior Exec Title]” is the standard for most crisis comms headlines. However, this stiff, detached prose isn’t doing the comms department any favours, explains The Drill’s Gerry McCusker.
UK football writers can teach us a lot about crisis communications.
More accurately, the sub-editors who pen their clickbait-style stories (speculative and informative) can.
As an avid football fan, I’ve noticed a new editorial convention assert itself as a staple of online sports reports. You’ve surely seen the kind of thing: “3 things we learned…”, “5 fast facts from…” and “7 surprises surrounding…”.
Essentially, what these new editorial conventions are acknowledging is the short attention span of online information consumers, as well as the role of clickbait titles in instantly drawing eyeballs and clicks to pages. It’s about competing for story relevance.
