Crisis Management - Preparing for Marketing’s Dark Day with Søren Friis Larsen

In episode 100, host Eric Dickmann interviews Søren Friis Larsen. Søren is an executive advisor, crisis management expert, and Founder and CEO of MindCream. His company offers high-value professional networking and business development opportunities for CxOs, BoDs, and senior professionals across a broad range of industries.

 As an executive advisor specializing in communication and crisis management, Søren has been called upon countless times to offer advice on managing crises from global product recalls, cyber-attacks, regulatory entanglements, fraud, layoffs, medical malpractice, or false rumors in the press.

​Today we discuss crisis management and how marketing can help organizations build credibility when a crisis strikes to build a reputational moat around their brand, PR, and marketing efforts.

For more information and access to the resources mentioned in this episode, visit:
https://fiveechelon.com/crisis-management-preparing-marketing-dark-day-s6ep19/

A fractional CMO can help build out a comprehensive marketing strategy and execute targeted campaigns designed to increase awareness and generate demand for your business...without the expense of a full-time hire.

The Five Echelon Group - Fractional CMO and strategic marketing advisory services designed for SMBs looking to grow. Learn more at: 

https://fiveechelon.com

Transcript

Eric Dickmann: 0:31

Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business. Søren, welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Søren Friis Larsen: 0:52

Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time.

Eric Dickmann: 0:56

Yeah, same here. You know, we cover a lot of topics on this show and one of the things that always gets me really pumped up when I have a guest on the show is being able to cover something that we really haven't talked about in detail on the show. And that's what we're going to get a chance to do today. So I'm excited to have your expertise on the show to talk about crisis marketing. You know, all you need to do is open up the front page of the paper to see that there are crises going on all over the place. You know, we just got through the COVID pandemic. We've had Elon Musk and Tesla cars burning up in people's garages, we've got recalls on sunscreen, and we've got politicians that seem to be constantly in the hot seat. When you open up the pages you see crises happening everywhere that really need marketing help.

Søren Friis Larsen: 1:46

Absolutely. I think it's an important topic for obvious reasons. And I think a lot of marketeers, they have a mindset that's inherently positive and optimistic. You know it's all about telling all of the good things about your company, your product. It's about your brand and promoting your amazing services and products. And you know, it kinda sucks that you then have to dealwith things going wrong, right? But it really can throw such a huge wrench into the best laid plans. You know, marketing to me, it's really about the long haul, about carefully putting out the right message that can persuade consumers and building brand, establishing trust, not just of the company, but also of your executives and your spokesperson. And overnight that can have a really, really bad day. And then you're tasked with responding with cleaning up and, and maybe, you know, that expensive budget of yours has almost been void because it's been ruined overnightSo I'm really, really focused on how can you be best prepared for that day for marketing? Like what can you actually do to be a little bit more prepared, a little bit more resilient. Because not necessarily if that's going to happen,

Eric Dickmann: 3:09

But

Søren Friis Larsen: 3:10

to happen?And it can really sneak up on you as your examples show.

Eric Dickmann: 3:15

Well, it's interesting because the way you frame that, because when I think about marketing, marketing by and large is a positive exercise, right? We don't use a lot of negatives in marketing, we're trying to solve pains, we're trying to present our products and services in the best light. But especially in an era of social media, in an era where news journalists tend to write a lot of clickbait stories where they're trying to get you to look at something, the spin seems to be just the opposite, it seems to be very negative. So what are some of the things that you can do to start preparing for that day when goes wrong?

Søren Friis Larsen: 3:53

Well, there are a lot of things you can do. And I think it starts with having a little bit of that mindset and saying it's not just about dealing with all the positives. We also have to consider what can we do and what happens if something goes wrong? And I think actually, the companies or the organizations that respond well to crisis, they also get some positives out of that. Because typically if you handle a negative situation, well you can almost come out with a stronger brand, right? Because that's when we look to companies to do the right thing. It's when they're tested, right? If something goes wrong and you respond well, you can almost boost your brand. But it takes being prepared and there is not one silver bullet that can prepare you there. There are many things to consider. It's really a matter of getting a lot of things right at the same time. preparation is key as in many other areas of life, of course. And it starts with the mindset of thinking, not just in best case outcomes, but also what happens if this goes wrong.

Eric Dickmann: 5:02

It seems like with companies, you know, we see it all the time with product recalls, maybe there's contamination of food, and so somebody has to recall a bunch of meat or there's a product contamination. And it seems like there are companies that sort of go overboard. They over-correct because they want to maintain their reputation. And then we see coverups, and we see companies that are trying to hide that. The Diesel Scandal comes to mind with Volkswagen and some of the other manufacturers where they had a known problem and they tried to hide it. They paid a big price, right? Not only in terms of their reputation, but in terms of the money that they actually had to pay out at the end of it.

Søren Friis Larsen: 5:45

Yeah. And that sort of balance is also difficult to strike, right? With the benefit of hindsight, you can always say, oh, they should have been, you know, maybe they went overboard. Maybe they were too cautious in some cases, but I think the golden adviice to air a little bit on the side of caution. Because a lot of these companies, especially if you're in a business where faith and trust in your product is right? Like pharmaceuticals and car safety, and so on, like that. It really is important too to recognize that, Okay. the trust forward in our company. That is what is most important for us. So maybe it's going to be costly in the short-term, but the long-term cost of destroying our reputation or diminishing trust in us as a company and our products, that is more But yeah, it's a balance and it's not easy to strike.

Eric Dickmann: 6:45

So I'm curious, you've been in the hot seat, a number of places where they've had to go into crisis management mode. So what happens? You know, the CEO gets a call one day and finds out that there's some terrible defect in one of their products, and they're all over the news that morning. They've probably haven't prepared for it because as you said, many people don't really prepare for this dark day. So what are some of the early steps that companies take and need to take as they begin to sort of deal with a sudden unexpected crisis?

Søren Friis Larsen: 7:18

Well, in companies' defense more and more have plans in place, more and more do things to prepare. So it's rare that they are completely unprepared, but yeah, there is a certain element of case, and I think some of the first steps you want to do is you want to make sure that you have the right people and the right resources around the table, having the right people in the bus before you start driving anywhere. That's key. And then I think a lot of organizations have a tendency to go straight into actionable, right? They make a lot of decisions, they feel they have to act, and be very, very swift and decide. Which is true to some extent, but I think a lot of people go into action mode straight away, and sometimes it really can be important just to take that very brief pause and say, okay, do we have the full picture of this? Have we considered work in this goal? Is this a worst case scenario? Where do we want to take this? What's actually the best possible outcome?And then sort of once you have that overview, once you have that slight strategic pause, then your actions will be that much more at the right solutions. There is no one size fits all. It all depends on the situation. But having the right people, having the right leadership, and sometimes this sneaks stuff a little bit on companies. I've been in live responses to big sort of cyber attacks that threatened to basically infiltrate their whole IT systems. And they still spend time discussing, should we really mobilize that crisis team? And we were like, yes, I think you should. But if you're not prepared, even the most trivial things can take time and that's the value of preparation. You can skip a lot of steps if you thought ahead.

Eric Dickmann: 9:19

I always think of one of my favorite Naked Gun movies, where Officer Drebin is standing in front of a fireworks factory that's exploding, fireworks going everywhere, and he's telling the crowd nothing to see here, nothing to see here. And of course there was something to see there. And I think sometimes companies try to do that, right? They go into this very defensive posture where they say this isn't anything, no need to worry about it. I'm taking from what you're saying that that's not how you'd advise. You'd advise more of a measured approach where you'd take a step back and really try to analyze what's going on before going into denial.

Søren Friis Larsen: 9:57

Yeah. So there's that one that you could say the naked gun approach, where you try to you know, talk the situation down and basically what you're trying to do is you're trying to enforce sort of a very positive situation view, oh you know, onto an audience who isn't really buying it,

Eric Dickmann: 10:19

right And,

Søren Friis Larsen: 10:20

and, and, you probably, and I think it's a case of you as a messenger,, you know? This is your wishful thinking, and this is the image that you wish would be you know, reality. And you're trying to project that the best you can. And that is not really the best strategy. What I think the strategy we see the most is the oyster approach, right? Where you clam shell and you try to sort of, you know, postpone saying much as long as possible, right? And then you don't get out in front of the issue, right? And it is a difficult choice when and what to say, right? Because you never have enough information. You always have to act on unlimited information and you never really know how things are going to play out. But typically, you know not communicating is also communicating, right? So if you're not out there, if you're not available, that sends a message in itself. So it pays off to have a strong spokesperson who even if he or she can't say much, you know, it'll still be a calm face on the organization. It will still be somebody who is empathetic to the situation, and somebody who can at least reassure that we are working best we can to solve this as quickly as possible. That goes a long way. Everybody has an understanding that you can't necessarily know all the facts right away. But still being out there is important.

Eric Dickmann: 11:48

Well, I love the way you frame that because I do agree. Silence is an answer, right? you don't. Anything people can read into that or they fill in with their own narrative.

Søren Friis Larsen: 11:59

Exactly. People will immediately start to fill in the gaps. And that goes outside your organization. But it also goes for inside your organization. A lot of crisis management also, or we need to control the media narrative and so on, but you have a lot of. employees, and they are also an important stakeholder. And you also need to keep them informed, because they're very interested in this situation and I've seen a lot of examples of company decides on the media strategy. And at certain point they say, Okay. we have no further comments. And then the journalist starts calling their employees in different parts of the company, and they weren't ever instructed on how to respond, and they're friendly and service-minded and so on. Vey far in accommodating the curious reporter and that doesn't, that doesn't work. Or maybe they'll, they'll write something on the company's Facebook page and you have a very service minded customer service agent sitting there ready with answers. And maybe they contradict slightly what you say, so your official channels, and then you've got the story, right? And keeping all of that orchestrated. It sounds easy, but it isn't. It's interesting the way you frame that too. Because I think in the old days, which weren't that long ago, but you had a comms person inside an organization, you had your public relations department for a larger company, right? And they were the spokespeople, the journalists would go there. They would get the official answers. They would respect that. Now we've got social media. Everybody is out there talking, expressing their opinions. You can't put a lid on that, you can't control it. There are just too many outlets for information much of it is not official information. Yeah. And you just have to assume that internal communication is your external communication and you have to assume that if the authorities know something, then you know, the media will be able to dig that up because there is no secrecy anywhere. Everything is pretty transparent and journalists are pretty good at what they do. Even if they work for some sleazy tabloid newspaper, assuming that they are actually good at what they do, because typically they are. You know it's interesting you've written about reputation and how reputation really needs to be treated as an asset. How do you view a company's reputation and how they should be viewing it in terms of other traditional assets that they may be more mindful. Yeah, I like that you bring that up. Because I think reputation, in many people's. mindset. And if you do an MBA or whatever, like I've done it. It's sort of an overlooked asset, right? Yes, sure you can have goodwill and you can treat that, and you recognize it, but the people don't really know what to do with it. And it becomes sort of this, we suit your category. But really, if we think about a company's reputation, like any other asset, It's clear how important it becomes, right? If you run a trucking company, you know that you have a huge number of assets in your trucks, and you would never run that business without ensuring that those trucks are insured and you have a plan if it breaks down, then what happens, and you set aside money for maintenance and repairs to keep that asset intact and to protect the integrity of that asset. You need to think the same way about your reputation. You need to set aside money and time, and effort, and planning to safeguard and to maintain that asset. It doesn't happen by itself. And here marketing, I think plays a huge role in building this reputation, but also in creating the moats and the defenses around this asset. And to plan for what happened if this asset is under siege. If there is a flat tire on your reputation asset. And when I say that you need to treat your reputation as any other asset. It's actually maybe a little bit inaccurate because it's a more complicated asset for several reasons. Because this asset interacts with other assets. So if you have, like you mentioned, a product recall, or you need to recall your sunscreen because there is suspicion on some of the ingredients, the chemicals in the sunscreen. Yeah. That's about your product and you know, you can deal with the technical aspects of that. But it impacts your reputation, right? If you take a big financial loss and you're accused of being incompetent, it's not just your pride that's on the line or value of the company. It meshes in with your reputation. So it's hard to sort of isolate and deal with in isolation,

Eric Dickmann: 16:50

Yeah.

Søren Friis Larsen: 16:50

You can't just decide, I want to upgrade my reputation or if a truck breaks down, you buy a new one, and you take the loss and your balance sheet, but you can't do that with your reputation right? It's not something that's quick to fix because it's mixed up with all of your other operations. And then it's sticky, right? It's sticky in the sense that if you take one hit to your reputation, all right, yeah, they missed the mark on that one. if you do it again, then, okay, am I starting to see a pattern here? And then it becomes a self perpetuating thing. So you know, the bad stories, the impact you take to your reputation, they stick, right? If a truck breaks down and you repair it, you move on and it can break down again or it can go on, but it's not really impacted necessarily by that. The reputation, it's a sticky asset in that sense. But yes, you should invest in it and you should treat it like any other asset class on your list of priorities and in your budget.

Eric Dickmann: 17:55

Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast. But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level? If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO consulting service may be a great fit for you. We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step. We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads. How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers. How to strategically package and position your products and services. How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business. To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services. Now back to the podcast. One thing that I see happening. So often you know, many listeners to this podcast are small and medium-sized businesses. They may never have to face a nationwide recall of a product or service, something that levels or gets up to the level of being on the front page of the paper. But they still have reputations that they have to manage. And I see it happening over and over again, where you go to a review site, like a Yelp or a Google My Business, and you can see people leaving reviews for a company, and you will see bad review after bad review, but no response. And while that may be for a smaller business and not to the scale of a true crisis, it is a crisis for that small business, because now that reputation is being slowly eroded away. And if there are enough negative reviews there, eventually people are going to get the feeling that this isn't the kind of business that they want to do business with. And so, I'm curious to get your thoughts on that, you know, for some of these smaller businesses.

Søren Friis Larsen: 19:45

Yeah. And you have a good point, right? Because crisis, you know what defines a crisis? We all see the big catastrophe where everything blows up or somebody puts a ransomware into your systems and you can't access your computer. Everybody can see that that's a big, hairy crisis, right? But what about the slow drop of the eroding reputation that you're talking about? That surmounts to a crisis when it gets so severe that you start losing new customers, and that'll happen quite quickly because yeah, people do read those reviews. so part of investing in your reputation or the reputation management costs, or their main maintenance costs is you know, having your tentacles out there and listening into what are people actually saying on the company. And luckily many companies do that, but it takes resources and it takes a continuous effort to pick up on the essence of these complaints, respond to those as you feel you can respond meaningfully to, and, and it's a lot of work, but it's sort of important even if it's sort of a slow drip of reputational scratches in the surface of your company, it will amount to a significant debt once it gathers momentum. And it's a good example of the stickiness, right? Because if you go in and you want to write a review, you see everybody else and you say, oh yeah. actually I agree with that. I didn't like that aspect. I'm going to put that in my review as well. And it spills over, so yeah.

Eric Dickmann: 21:20

Well, I love the analogy of a slow drip, you know? Just like a water leak in your house or something like that. You might not really notice it right away, but over time it does a tremendous amount of damage. So I think that's really a great analogy.

Søren Friis Larsen: 21:31

Yeah. The longer you wait, the more expensive the repair is going to be and the longer time it's going to take, and the more you're going to have to enjoy cold showers in that dingy basement bathroom that you have as a backup, right? So nobody wants that. But again, you know, you need to identify the problem and you need to address it. And that's not always easy.

Eric Dickmann: 21:53

I'm curious from your own personal experience about crises that you've been pulled into or things that you've seen in the news recently or from the past, examples that you can cite that you said this was really a poor response to our crisis? That there were some obvious things that could have been done much better, and then ones that you think have been handled very well. Does anything come to mind?

Søren Friis Larsen: 22:17

Well, I think it's always hard to sort of look in the newspaper and second guess the crisis response. Because sometimes or most often there is a good reason why people don't necessarily come out looking like they're amazing at what they do, right? The media, they do have an interest as you said earlier, right? They love when things go wrong, right?. So there are many, many examples of things that are not handled in the right way, but it's also hard to sort of second guess as an outsider. But yeah, we do see a lot of bad crisis management. And I think oftentimes, it's the lack of preparation, it's the psychology, it can be hard to sort of bite the bullet and admit that you're wrong. I think some of the most difficult crisis are the ones that involve the personal integrity of the executive, right? It's easy to go out and apologize for something that went wrong in a service interaction. But if it's you who is accused as the CEO or the executive of the company for wrongdoings or for sleeping on the job, it's hard. It's just harder to go out and your own personal fears get in the way of you have that sort of clarity of mind saying, okay, we need to address this. You kind of try to push it away. But I mean, if you look in the political realm, they're so used to getting you know, hammered by the press. So sometimes they actually go out and take a swing at it. And I don't necessarily think it always works, but sometimes it is very entertaining. I'm based in New York. So I'm thinking about Governor Como's very current case where he stands accused of sexual harassment and that's of course some awful allegations, and I'm not sure he's going to survive it. But you gotta hand it to the guy that he comes out swinging. Right? His defense seems to be, yeah, but I do that to everybody. I think that's a very aggressive way. And he even had like a PowerPoint presentation of him kissing everybody from Bill Clinton to the guy on the street. And I guess you know, and he's Italian and you know, yeah. Who knows if he gets away with it? I have my doubts. I noticed that President Biden was also out calling for his resignation. When the chips fall like that, it becomes hard, right? And that's actually another point where there's one thing, there's one tactical level about what you say to the press and how this whole thing plays out in the media. But sometimes what goes on behind the scenes is more important and sort of the power balance and brokering your mandate behind the scenes is actually more important. And so I often advise companies to say, you know, what is the real crisis here? You know, okay, you have a problem. Yes. you need to solve that. And you have media attention. That's also you know, something you need to respond to. But then you also have to ensure that you know, your seat is safe. You continue to have the support of your board or your shareholders, or whomever you need to have in your corner, and that's often a separate issue. And once that starts to erode or shift, then it's over, right? So that's actually typically what you need to prioritize, right? You need to make sure that you are safe in the captain seat to solve this. So often it's more important to call up the president and say, Hey, you know, before you read this in the newspaper, hear it from me. This is how things are going. Let's talk this over. I want to bring you on board on this so that you are informed and we can make plans together. And then, okay, you got that/ then you can address the issue and then you can address the media, right? So it would be a mistake to sort of focus on all of them, all of the reporters pulling at you. And that's not necessarily where your chief or your initial focus needs to be. You need to make sure that you know everything behind the scenes still your back, because otherwise, you can be the most charming Italian spokesperson then, and you can have a great PowerPoint show for the journalists, but if somebody is going to pull the carpet away from under you, it's all fun off.

Eric Dickmann: 26:54

Well, you do bring up an interesting point here too. I think that there was a time when if somebody acted improperly in terms of making a business decision, they embezzled some money, they did something within the corporate context, you know they would be shown the door and that would be that. But now we're living in an era of social media, of cancel culture, of a lot of political correctness where something a board member did in high school could now be brought forward or something that one of the executives did. So it's no longer just the crisis of a business decision or something that went wrong inside the company. But now, personalities are in play in a way that I don't think has ever been true before, which just increases the complexity of this so much more.

Søren Friis Larsen: 27:42

Yeah, it adds a whole new level of psychology for sure, and complexity as you say. And it really makes it different. I mean it makes it impossible to hide behind some anonymous corporate statement or a spokesperson idea. There really is this expectation that the top brass is available and has a reaction to this. And if it's serious enough, we want to hear from the top and it's their pardon my French, on the line. Uh, So that adds that whole element to it. But as you say, you know, maybe the threshold has also slipped a little bit for what people feel that they can get away with. And I don't know if it's been inspired or at least had an impact by Trump because he certainly moved the bar for what you could say and do, and still get away with if you were cheeky enough. But, um, Yeah. there, there definitely is a shift there and it all depends on your position, right? If you were the sole owner of the company and you call the shots, and you sit in the majority, yeah, you can get away with more. If you were hired in, if it's a company where your reputation is about being proper and being decent, and doing the right thing, then you don't have as much leeway. So it really depends on the situation and you gotta be able to navigate that and you gotta be able to make that analysis and say, okay, what is actually expected of me and what is my circumstance, and who are the key people that will be thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not this is okay.And people management is really important, the stakeholder management part is really important.

Eric Dickmann: 29:34

You know, one of the things that I know you've given us. The thought too, is that as a professional, if this is your business, if you're a marketer, or you're charged with managing, you know, crisis management inside a company, where do you go to get the support of your peers to even begin to understand how to handle some of this stuff? You know, there are certainly online training courses that people can take or you can go to a conference, but I know this is something you've been thinking about in terms of how to bring people together around specific topic areas and say, this is a forum where you can get the kind of support that you need. Talk to me a little bit about this new venture that you're working.

Søren Friis Larsen: 30:12

Yeah. I mean I've advised them crisis management and risk and business continuity for a long time now, and I really enjoy that. But I also do see the need for bringing great minds together and for comparing notes, because there are many, you know, you asked earlier who does it well? And those are the ones that typically don't end up in the media, right? Because that's part of the success. So can we do something to bring more of these people together and it'd be less about one man or one woman army in this race, because really, it is an arms race. If you look at Cipher risk, there are so many challenges out there. And this is only going to get bigger and bigger. And how do, how do companies respond to this? And a lot of companies are working on this, But I think having more of a joint effort in many areas, not just this, but in many areas could be an improvement. So the company I've started here in New York is called Mind-Cream. That really has as its core of bringing like-minded, senior professionals with a common challenge together and bringing great minds, the cream of the crop, if you will, together to support each other, to network, and also to have an impact on not only their own company, but on the whole industry. I think there is a little bit of a paradigm shift when it comes to crisis and cyber attacks, and so on. It used to be something that was very low key. Companies were not happy talking about being attacked, but it's become so pervasive and it's become so almost commonplace. And it's hard to hide, like because, you know when you go onto their site, it says we're no longer available at the moment, right? So, the stories that are out there, and I think there's also a new willingness to share these experiences and to leapfrog some of that learning curve. And I think that we need some forums for that and I'd like to provide some of that.

Eric Dickmann: 32:25

Yeah, it sounds like a great idea and really a need that's not addressed in today's marketplace because well, we've got great tools like LinkedIn and and training courses and whatnot, it's not really a group of, like you said, bringing the cream of the crop people together around a specific topic area to get the help and support that they need. So I love the concept.

Søren Friis Larsen: 32:45

And even if there is a little bit more openness about this, you still want to share these things in a forum where you trust, where you trust each other, and where you know that this is kept, this is kept confidential, and among the participants. So I think a smaller forum like that can actually help with some of these. Another to help prepare you. And I mean, there's no one silver bullet. But one tool I think is actually the rise and something that can bring a lot of these things together is to conduct prices, simulation exercises. That's something that I've done extensively, and I see more and more companies this as part of their toolbox because it's really a good way to sort of gauge are we today? What is our current maturity? Because often you will have some plans in place, and maybe even a business continuity managers in your organization, and so But you know, can they all work together? Will you actually follow the plan? Will it hold up in a real life like situation and so on?That's quickly revealed by, by simulating a crisis. And that can be a tremendous investment

Eric Dickmann: 34:07

Yeah.

Søren Friis Larsen: 34:08

because it'll ensure that you have understanding of where you stand and what steps you need to take for that dark day when it comes, right?

Eric Dickmann: 34:20

Yeah.

Søren Friis Larsen: 34:20

if it comes, but when it comes.

Eric Dickmann: 34:23

Preparation is absolutely key. You know, this is an interesting discussion Søren, and it's something that I really think people should take a step back and really think about for their own business. If they want to learn more about you, about Mind-Cream, about crisis management, reputation management, business continuity, all those good things, where's the best place for people to reach out and find you?

Søren Friis Larsen: 34:44

Yeah, I would love to hear what's working out there, I would love to hear from who are struggling with these challenges, I would love to help, I would love to have dialogues about that. Feel free to reach out through my LinkedIn on my website, Mind-Cream with a hyphen, mind-cream.com. I would love to have just informal discussions on how this could be improved in your organization, whether it's a big, global industry leading company or a small startup, I think it's equally important because this can happen at any time. So it's really important to be prepared.

Eric Dickmann: 35:28

Well, I like what you said. You know, even things like your online reviews are a form of managing a crisis. If you've got that slow drip of erosion of public trust and confidence in what you're doing. Hey Søren, I really appreciate you being on the podcast today, this was a fascinating discussion. And I will make sure that we have all of those things linked up in the show notes. Thanks so much for being here.

Søren Friis Larsen: 35:48

Thank you for having me, Eric. talk.

Eric Dickmann: 35:53

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Virtual CMO podcast. For more episodes, go to fiveechelon.com/podcast to subscribe through your podcast player of choice. And if you'd like to develop consistent lead flow and a highly effective marketing strategy, visit fiveechelon.com to learn more about our Virtual CMO consulting services.