In this episode, Bob Dietzel, co-founder of KMRD Partners, joins host Jason Mudd to discuss corporate crisis insurance. In this episode you’ll learn what crisis insurance is and what it covers, who can tell you more about your crisis plan, how the insurance works, and why it's important to have.
Tune in to learn more!
Watch the episode here
5 things you’ll learn during the full episode:
- What corporate crisis insurance does
- How to know if insurance covers your crisis management
- Which in-house employee to speak to in order to learn more about the crisis insurance plan
- Who to speak to at the insurance company to understand your insurance plan
- Why it's important to have crisis insurance
Resources
- Listen to more episodes of the On Top of PR podcast
- Find out more about Axia Public Relations
- Connect and learn more about Bob Dietzel on LinkedIn
- Visit KMRD Partners for more information.
Additional Resources:
Additional Resources from Axia Public Relations:
Highlights
[00:54] How to use corporate insurance to cover crisis communications
- You must use insurance before or during the crisis, not after.
- Insurance companies use the terms “crisis management endorsement,” “emergency response expenses endorsement,” and “public relations endorsement.”
[03:03] Who do you turn to in-house to get crisis insurance?
- Typically the CFO, general council, risk management department, or owner will understand the coverage they have.
[04:16] Why it's not a well-known provision of insurance
- If you don’t ask for the endorsement, then you won’t get it.
- You may be able to ask for it and get the endorsement for no additional cost depending on how much you’re paying and what scope the insurance you’re paying for has.
[07:19] How it works financially
- Send in an outline of your crisis management plan to show the expenses you’ll incur.
- Reimbursement pays for some of the endorsements at a later date.
Jason: “Research shows that for every dollar you spend on crisis planning, you'll save $7 during a crisis.”
[09:20] How does a brand understand what their crisis endorsement covers?
- Many different policies protect companies from different kinds of risks.
- Bring the policy plan directly to the PR agencies to help with confusion, as they are very specific and only reimburse for certain things.
- 90% of the time, the insurance company directly reimburses the PR agency.
[13:37] How the reimbursement process works
- There’s always a fear that the reimbursement might not go through, which is why you should read the policy carefully
- Many endorsements don’t just cover PR crisis expenses but travel, hospital fees, etc., which can limit your budget for PR crisis management
- Each endorsement has a “conditions” section that outlines the timeline in which you must notify the insurance company to help with crisis management.
- Most insurance companies have a “claims advocacy” division to read the policies for the insured to make sure they have insurance for what they need.
- It's a great idea to contact the claims advocate to understand what is covered or not.
[18:23] Tips for getting a good PR agency and crisis insurance
- Vet PR agencies
- Network with different PR agencies
- Work with PR agencies after buying crisis insurance and creating a crisis management plan.
- You should have five local PR agencies for your different branches or main points of transportation of your company so they can help you with local laws and media.
- Task your main PR agency or crisis insurance company to find local PR companies for you.
[26:32] Why it’s important to have crisis insurance
- Reputation is not insured, but crisis management and PR and law firms are.
- Most national carriers have these endorsements.
- Fewer smaller carriers have them, and if you ask you can probably get it.
About Bob Dietzel
Bob co-founded KMRD Partners in 2005. KMRD is a risk and human capital solutions firm where he serves as his clients’ outsourced risk manager and insurance broker. Bob has his Master in Business as well as associate in risk management and certified insurance counselor designations.
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Transcript
- [Narrator] Welcome to On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer.
- Hello, and welcome to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd with Axia Public Relations. I'm joined today by Bob Dietzel. Bob is here to talk to us about insurance. It sounds boring, but I'm going to make it interesting for us today because together we're going to talk about how you might use your corporate insurance policy to leverage the ability to hire a PR agency during the event of a crisis situation. Bob, welcome to the show. Glad you're here.
- I'm pleased to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
- We're glad to have you too. So Bob, I'm seeing this more and more year over year, so I thought it'd be important that we do an episode about it, and, you know, you seem like the right guy to involve in this conversation. So let me paint a picture for you. I'm sure you've seen it many times, but I don't know that our audience has. So you've got a scenario where your company has come under crisis and you're looking for outside counsel from a PR agency. And many of our clients are, and they're often new to us when they're experiencing crisis. They call us and it's almost like they pick up the red phone like Batman and they're calling in under a duress, if you will, and they say, “Hey, we're in the middle of a crisis. Can you help us out?” And we're like, “Sure, of course, we can.” You know, we're learning more information about it. And I've learned to ask a very smart question, which is, have you checked with your insurance carrier, your insurance agency? You may have coverage for something like this to be able to hire a PR firm. Bob, that's my layman's description and I'm leaning on you very heavily for this episode. So you might tell us how does this happen and what do companies need to be thinking about before, during, and after a crisis situation?
- Well, that's an excellent way to pose the question to your clients. However, if it's after a crisis, it may be too late. The question that you want, you really want to pose to your clients before the crisis happens is whether or not one of their policies or many of their policies are endorsed to include endorsements that add coverages that, insurance companies obviously have a selfish interest in this issue because they want the post-crisis to go well if they're ensuring the peril that is part of that crisis. So the insurance community uses those terms. They use “crisis management endorsements,” “emergency response expenses endorsement,” and obviously, “public relations endorsement.”
- OK, good, that's very helpful. So how does it, let's say you're the chief marketing officer or a marketing director at a, you know, national brand. Bob, who would they turn to in house, internally? Who would they go to ask them to start having conversations about, do we have this coverage, and maybe even lobbying or advocating to get it?
- Typically, in most privately held companies, the insurance procurement process is through the CFO or the general counsel or all the way up to the owner. So the, you know, it's not, none of those folks in a general-middle-market to upper-middle-market company may be experts on what is in every detail of those policies, because this endorsement is generally overlooked but is part of the policy. So, you know, asking your marketing department to inquire with the CFO or general counsel whether that there's coverage available is the best first step.
- And if they're at a bigger publicly traded company, there's typically a chief risk officer, correct?
- Absolutely, a risk management department, they should be well prepared to answer that question.
- OK, and as we're thinking about this, you said that, I don't want to misquote you, but it's not always a well known provision or even requested provision. Is that what you were saying?
- Yes, I mean, our firm utilizes a database approach to analyzing coverages and benchmarking them the competitiveness of coverage for commercial companies in the industry. And what this database does is identifies what carriers endorsements are available. So for example, an umbrella liability policy, so a severe crisis is going to pierce your initial million-dollar limit in the general liability and go into the umbrella. Many umbrellas, not all of them, because if you don't ask for the endorsement, you're not going to get it.
- [Jason] Right.
- But if you do ask for it, you often will get it for no additional cost, depending on how much you're paying for that umbrella policy. So they're generally, so each and every policy has the ability to endorse this policy, directors and officers liability, products recall, remember the Tylenol scare?
- [Jason] Sure.
- You know, the general liability or product liability policy throws you into the umbrella. Remember the Ford Pinto. Errors and emissions liability, law firms make getting involved in large cases are being alleged to have not handled the case well. Employment practices liability, sexual harassment, direct and also kidnapping ransom policies have this endorsement, pollution legal liability policies. If there's a pollution incident that's pretty severe, may have a communications endorsement, and even property or major fires that may involve neighbors and injuries to neighbors. These are all the types of policies that can be endorsed to include this coverage.
- So before we move on, the, I guess at the end of the day, you know, to our audience who's either listening or watching this podcast or videocast, we've identified who in their organization they can go to and raise the question, you know? Hey, are we covered by insurance if we have a crisis situation that we might be able to go and retain a PR firm at that time? And so then that marketing corporate communications leader might then start looking either to their incumbent PR firm or start building a relationship or a database or a network or pre-screening potential crisis communications firm. So when and if there is a crisis and they want to, you know, take advantage of that endorsement, they can go out and engage that PR firm with the confidence that they've got this coverage.
- Correct, and if a company has the time to put out together a crisis communication plan, we always recommend that they outline those sources or potential sources of funds on each and every policy so they can be ready to engage the carrier and get approval for the expenses. Now, often, these, you know, crisis communication is very quick. You have to spend the money quickly to get the work done. So some of these policies are reimbursement policy. So you spend the money for crisis communication, the policy reimburses you the expenses for that crisis communication later.
- Right, yeah, exactly. So I, first, I gotta say that research shows that for every dollar you spend on crisis planning, you'll save $7 during a crisis. So that's pretty good ROI, you know, to be thinking about crisis planning and you know, almost always a company that's not a client that contacts of suddenly, they have no crisis plan. They don't know what they're doing. They also don't have time to negotiate with us or figure out, you know, what our proposal looks like. And that's why we just kind of created a landing page, axiapr.com/crisis, where we've got various packages and we can often advise them into, well, it sounds like you need this package or that package, but then they can always add on to it later just so things can get started, because I know, you mean, you know, if you're in the middle of a crisis, you don't have time to wait on us to prepare a proposal and we don't have time to wait on you to sign it. But at the end of the day, we don't want to start work till we feel like we've got some form of authenticity in the relationship. So, Bob, this is I think, the first step and this is a big action step I think people should take at their companies to see, do I even have this? If you got it, start building a relationship with somebody you like, know, and trust that can get familiar with your company. Maybe even gauge them to do a plan like we discussed. If you don't have this policy, contact maybe your firm or whoever their current agent is, or maybe they're, you know, working directly with a carrier or something and get that going. And so those seem really clear action steps to get started. But Bob, what happens next? Like, how does the brand or the company confirm that this is a crisis matter that's covered under their, you know, policy that's triggered under the endorsement kind of thing?
- Well, that's a great question. As I mentioned before, there are, it's, it can be endorsed to many different policies that are designed to protect companies from many different types of risk. For example, if you had a ransomware event or cyber liability event that may have released information, confidential information of your clients, that is a problem, right? And there are cyber insurance policies. If you have a crisis management endorsement, the policy will say, and by the way, the limits negotiated on these things are 20, usually $25,000 at the low end for no cost in premium up to like $300,000 we've seen in the marketplace for reimbursement for these type of expenses. And if you need or want higher amounts you know, for multinational large companies, that could be negotiated and available for probably likely an additional cost. But anyway, the way the policy reads is that the company will reimburse the crisis expenses by third parties. And when they define crisis protection loss and crisis expansion, crisis expenses inside the policy, there's no standard definition. So it's very important that the risk management department or the agent of the client inform the customer of how that reads, and maybe bring that information or that language to the PR firm to make sure that that definition fits what the crisis plan calls for.
- Mm-hmm, yeah. And Bob, is it very common that the insured corporation pays, like you described earlier, pays the P outside PR agency or maybe even in some cases, the outside law firm, of course, and then they're reimbursed? Is that like 99% of the time, that's how that works?
- I would say you're right. It's probably 90% of the time you can negotiate potentially having what they call pay-on-behalf coverage, which would, you know, advance the funds directly to the PR firm or the law firm as you mentioned. But most of these endorsements are on a reimbursement basis. So that even better to understand what exactly it's covered prior to, you know, triggering the services that you're looking for.
- Right, right. All right, well, with that Bob, we're going to take a quick break, come back on the other side. I've got more questions for you about this. And I think the deeper we go, the more interesting it's going to get. So stay with us and we'll be back on the other side and help you stay on top of PR.
- [Narrator] You're listening to On Top of PR with your host, Jason Muud. Jason is a trusted adviser to some of America's most admired and fastest growing brands. He is the managing partner at Axia Public Relations, a PR agency that guides news, social, and web strategies for national companies. And now, back to the show.
- Welcome back to On Top of PR. I'm your host, Jason Mudd. Bob and I are talking about insurance and specifically, what you and your company can do in a crisis situation so that you suddenly have funds that you may not have budgeted for before to engage with a crisis PR agency using your insurance policy. Bob, thank you for sharing all of these insights. It's been very helpful to me to understand so I can be a better adviser to my clients and hopefully, that the people who are listening here can also start thinking very similarly about their business and their organization. So we were talking before about what exactly is covered and how do you know when you're having a crisis situation. And then I asked you about, you know, getting reimbursed kind of thing. Should there be some, is there some reasonable fear that, Bob, I'm going to go hire a PR agency to help us communicate through this crisis, but then our claim is denied and we don't get reimbursed?
- That's always a fear when buying insurance. That's why it's so important to read the policy carefully and understand what is contemplated by the coverage. And what everyone should be aware of and understand that everything is negotiable. And there may be four or five, maybe six versions of the same coverage inside of an insurance company in the form of endorsements.
- [Jason] Mm-hmm.
- So understanding exactly what is covered is important. And what's also important is many of these endorsements don't just cover public relations expenses. They cover other related medical expenses, funeral expenses, psychological counseling for your employees, travel expenses during a crisis event. You know, there's, so when you're purchasing a limit of insurance is, you know, you have to understand that there may be other expenses that would erode the limit and eliminate your access to PR if you need it.
- So Bob, I'm learning a lot as we're talking, and that's why I wanted to have you on the show because I sense that our audience is potentially unaware of these endorsements and how to leverage them. We've talked about that a little bit, but I do have another question, which is, I’ve got to imagine there's some sort of time limit, right? I mean, you need to bring the crisis attention scenario to your insurance agent, your insurance broker, your insurance adviser in a timely manner. You can't work through the crisis, and then months later, go, you know what? Maybe we should get reimbursed for that expense.
- Yes, timing is key. And many of these endorsements have a section in it called conditions. And those conditions outline the duties of the insured to the insurance company in the, when the sample I'm looking at on this my screen right now requires a 24-hour notice of a crisis event.
- [Jason] OK.
- So it's very important to you know, get the insurance company involved early so they can help you respond in a responsible way in order to trigger the coverage.
- And I’ve got to imagine, Bob, someone like yourself is going to be an advocate to kind of help make sure that they're, you know, submitting and positioning it in the right way so that it does clear those, what would that be? Underwriting or endorsement-type hurdles, right?
- Absolutely, and most agencies, or most credible agencies, have a claims advocacy division. That division will read the policies for the insured. That division will create emergency claim response plans at before, you know, before the coverage is enforced, they will alert the carrier, the customer, what to do in the event of a claim. So they can help triage the event for the customer without putting their coverage at risk at the same time.
- So maybe then, the corporate communications professional listening to this call, the head of marketing listening to this call, would they be some, would they say, hey, to the internal person, you know, the CFO, or the chief risk officer or the risk management department, could they say, you know, “Hey, would you put me in touch with the claims advocate so we could talk through some scenarios that might may, you know, may not be covered?” Is that a good idea?
- That's an excellent idea. As a matter of fact, we, about 10 or 11 years ago, we had an event of one of our customers. There was a major fire, it was a school for adjudicated boys. There were three helicopters, news vans all over the place. And we got through it, they got through it. We did not use a professional PR firm. They kind of winged it through our advice and research on you know, what to do an event like that when microphones are in everyone's face.
- [Jason] Right.
- But after that, we came to the realization that we should be aligned with a PR firm or multiple PR firms that we can recommend to our clients-
- [Jason] Mm-hmm.
- before the event occurs or even after the event occurs to vet firms that are experts in this area and collaborate with them and network with them. So that turned into a emergency claims reporting procedures document with a panel of PR firms that we recommend to our clients.
- Yeah, and you know, I would think, Bob, that it doesn't cost anything to start building a relationship other than your time, right? And start kind of vetting and getting to know these people, you know, and do I like them, do I trust them? Have they done it for others? Do I think they can do it for me? Just kind of these logical questions that you should be consciously or subconsciously thinking through. I think you have to be careful if you're suddenly asking them to write a plan, you've got to expect there to be some, you know, consideration exchange, … you know, some funds, but you know, you could certainly interview PR firms you know, about their experience and capabilities and, you know, how do they charge for crisis services so you kind of have that awareness, and also so when you call them, they've heard of you before, and you're not some complete stranger who, you know, everything is, you know, kind of going outta control. So it's kind of like, you know, if you're pregnant, you should probably meet the doctor that's going to deliver the baby once or twice before you just show up, right? So, you know, something like that, I think, could be, you know, an example of, you know, just getting to know them. And certainly then if you vet a couple of firms and you like, know, and trust them and you see they've done this before and you feel like they're competent in it, that's when you could probably engage them to put together a crisis communications plan. And if they did a nice job on that plan, then you probably want to keep them on your short list or on speed dial or something like that. But, you know, at the end of the day, if maybe the plan just doesn't seem that competent or you've lost some trust in that organization, then you can go find another firm to help you kind of write that plan out and just kind of have that. That's what I would do if I was in their seat, so.
- Absolutely, and if I was in your shoes, I would be reaching out to the major insurance companies in the area or insurance agencies in the area that help customers manage through this process-
- [Jason] Yeah.
- that we don't like to refer PR firms after the loss. We like to introduce them to our customers before the loss so they can help, you know, for a fee, build a crisis management plan for before the claim happens. And then the customer will have that as part of their disaster recovery plan, your name will be on the speed dial, and they'll know that, trust that you'll do a good job for them.
- Well and you know, you triggered something I meant to say earlier, and thank you for that. And that is that, you know, I think you need to think the person, the audience we're talking to today should really also be thinking about geography and industry and several other factors. So, you know, I can tell you there's been many times where we've been hired by a company, not even our market who has a, you know, facility in our local market, or perhaps, you know, they've had an accident occur with one of their trucks or vehicles in our market. So if you start thinking about your service footprint, where you have employees, where you have physical offices, factories, warehouses, where you have delivery vehicles, you know, happening or whatever it might be, where you have customers, you know, et cetera, you probably want to start thinking about, and I know the bigger the company, candidly, the more unreasonable this becomes, but, you know, if you've got five geographic markets where you have a strong presence, you may need five local PR agencies, at least on your speed dial, at least in your crisis plan that you've kind of prevetted or maybe the local general manager has gotten to know them or something like that. So we've had scenarios, you know, we've got people, we've got 22 colleagues across north America. They're in different locations, satellite offices, home offices, you know, our own branches kind of thing. And so we've got new crisis work because somebody's like, Hey, you know, one of our truck drivers just ran over a school bus in Orlando. I see you've got an Orlando office. Can you take care of this for us? We've had other scenarios where a company said, I see you do a lot of work in X industry. We're in that industry and we're experiencing some issues or challenges with regulatory bodies or something like that. So this is starting to sound a little bit, If I'm being candid, like a little bit of a headache, like, you actually have to prepare for these things, right, Bob? And so I think it's more than just having a local firm or if you're headquartered in one city having that firm, but you really want to make sure you're working with a firm that is going to know the local marketplace and understand the stakeholders, and the influencers, and the media, and things like that. So I think you need somebody who can help you in your own industry, maybe even in the verticals that you're doing business in, as well as those that can probably help you geographically and otherwise. And if it were me, I might even task my incumbent PR firm to do some of this due diligence for us, right? Because at the end of the day, you're going to lean heavily on your incumbent PR firm and maybe task them with the responsibility of finding competent, you know, on boots on the ground, kind of representation in the event that the incumbent PR agency doesn't have people on the ground, or maybe you task your people on the ground with finding some local resources.
- That's a great point. I never really thought of it that way in terms of your local knowledge of the media and the community and the values of the communities that our customers have locations in. A lot of big manufacturers as you know operate all over the country and they have hard assets in a lot of different states, in those states and communities that they operate in are drastically different from a cultural standpoint. So, yeah, leaning on the incumbent PR firm is a great idea. You, know, we provide risk management consulting as well. We wrap that with our agent brokerage services, insurance brokerage services. So, you know, we could do the legwork for our customers to find local firms for them, at least local firms to interview, you know, vet to interview like finalist. We've done that in the past, but you're right. I think the local representation for major operations in different towns can be very important.
- Well, you know, there's that stereotype and I see it, you know, where, you know, a company will go and hire, you know, a New York city agency because clearly they must be great, they're in New York City, but then when something happens in their backyard and that New York City agency's like, well, we can be on a plane and be there in a couple of days. That's not good when your, you know, train derailed or whatever, or, you know, you've got a, you know, I mean, we've been called in for an active shooter situation on one of our clients’, you know, office locations. We've been called in and said, you know, Hey, there's an FBI raid at one of our offices. So in some of those cases, and by the way, if you're really interested, we actually list some of these scenarios out on our website at axiapr.com/crisis because, you know, they make for great stories over cocktails or at dinner parties or whatever. But at the end of the day, you know, we've helped clients manage crisis when we're not in that market. You don't always need to have boots on the ground, but sure is helpful, you know, if you do. But if you don't, you can still survive it. I'm thinking of scenarios, you know, where, you know, we had one of our offices, one of our client's offices was had an FBI raid in Chicago and, you know, they take everything, right? And they don't care that it's going to put you out of business or cause you harm or whatever it might be. At the end of the day, you really need to kind of think through these things because they happen more often than not. We've done another episode by the way that you know, what do you do, you know, when your company or your leadership is involved in, you know, criminal charges or allegations? And so we talk to an attorney about that and that's kind of what triggered this episode was this idea of having, Bob, somebody like yourself, come on and talk about this. I appreciate what you shared. As we're wrapping up here, I got a couple quick questions. One would just be, what else did we not cover today that you think folks at home need to be aware of?
- From an insurance perspective, it's important to understand that reputation is a broad term and it's not insured. What is insured is crisis management, and that protects helps protect your reputation in the event of a loss. So, you know, it can be critical in the result of a claim from a liability perspective or from a reputation perspective. So when the building is burning down and there are news vans on the scene and helicopters in the sky, or there's an accident and there's an ambulances on the scene and the fire engines are on the scene, they don't wait for you to respond in a professional manner.
- [Jason] Right, that's right.
- Whatever comes out of your mouth next is critical. Not just because, not just to get through the incident, but also get through the law, the following potential lawsuits that come from the incident, and then in front of a jury, that story doesn't sound as well as it should sound.
- [Jason] Yeah.
- So that's the only other thing. Reputation's not covered, all the things that's surrounded to help protect your reputation — attorneys, PR firms — that is covered by insurance.
- That makes a lot of sense. You know, reminding me also of, you know, scenarios where the client’s, “Well, we're not ready to talk. We're not ready to talk.” And then the journalist says to me, “Jason, I'm under orders to get somebody to talk. And so I'm going to start going through LinkedIn and just calling employees, you know, through the list. I'm going to start looking at board members and calling board members. I'm going to start looking at the executive team. I'm going to call, you know, I've got to call my editors making me or my producers making me until somebody's willing to talk, right?” And this particular scenario I'm thinking of was on Christmas Eve, you know? And they're like, “I know you don't want us calling people at home on Christmas Eve to talk about this story.” And so eventually, you know, that was leveraged and we used it to, you know, convince the client. Somebody's got to talk or else you don't know who's going to talk, but eventually, they're going to find somebody to talk. And so I think that's something the crisis plan should work through as well just as a little kind of added nugget here at the end, Bob. Are there certain carriers that you sense are more of crisis management, crisis communication endorsement-friendly?
- I would say most of the national carriers are have this type of endorsement. Maybe some of the local carriers you'll have to ask for it and maybe beg, little bit beg for it or their agent will have to provide sample endorsements from other carriers to help them build something. But pretty much, you know, I wrote down in my notes all of them. We don't not ask for it. You know, you ask until you get in this business, and the carriers copy off each other and they always want to compete from a products and standpoint. So they all have 'em. So don't be afraid to ask for it.
- OK, and so if somebody is tuning in and they're like, man, this is really interesting. I have questions that I wish Jason would've asked or I'd need a policy review or maybe, “Hey, we're not happy with our current insurance guy.” Bob, how do people get ahold of you? How would you like them to reach out to you?
- I'm pretty easy to find on the internet. It's Robert Dietzel work. KMRD partners is our firm, and we would be very happy to do an assessment on anyone's policies. It is a fact-based process here. We analyze your policies against other policies with the same carrier and all the carriers in the marketplace. And we'll give you a really honest evaluation of what you have. And if something comes a fit and you need us, but if you don't, we'll tell you that we'll tell you that your agent's doing a good job and thank them for negotiating great coverage.
- Yeah, I've done that before where I've had, you know, I'm like, I've, you know, as a small business owner, I've had a policy I'm like, I feel like I'm overpaying for this and I have no claims and I have whatever, and they've been like, “Jason, I don't think I can help you.” You've got a pretty good policy here. So that, you know, makes me feel good. I think it's good to get, you know, a second opinion on something like that, especially if it's become routine where you're, you know, paying. You know, the premium's going to go up every year, folks. That's just the reality, right? But like you said, I think you said earlier that, you know, a lot of times people are overinsured or have a little extra coverage than they might need, and they may have coverages and areas that they do need, but they're not covered yet. And so I think it's good to have kind of that advisory role and that trusted advisory in your corner who can ask you some of these questions that, you know, maybe somebody else is working on a volume basis isn't really thinking about.
- Yeah, absolutely. And in most cases, we find that programs are competitively priced because price is the most easy thing to negotiate. However, we find more often than not that they're not getting the coverage they deserve for the price that they pay.
- [Jason] OK, that makes sense.
- And that's just based on knowledge. You negotiate with knowledge, and if you know more than the carriers know, which often we do-
- [Jason] Mm-hmm.
- we know sometimes the underwriters don't even know the endorsements, they are in their toolbox that we've seen before. So we ask for it, we get it, and we go from there.
- Well, Bob, for our audience, I honestly hope they never ever have to deal with any of the things we're talking about today, and that life is just perfect for them. There's never any crisis situations, but we both know from experience, it's a matter of when, not if you deal with something like this. And so you may as well take the steps to prepare so that if it never happens, you're very grateful, but when it does happen, you're even more grateful, and you appear in my opinion, to be even more of an competent leader in your organization who has their stuff together that's working on behalf of abdicating, not only for the company and its best interest in the brand, but also the greater good of the community you work in and the industry, you know, leading the way and the thoughts on that. So that's a big calling and a big endeavor and I completely get it, but, you know, I'll just say if Bob or I can be of help to you on this topic, I hope you'll reach out to us. And with that, I think, Bob, we're done here today. I think we accomplished our mission together. Thank you for your cooperation and support here, and we appreciate you being on the show today. And to our audience tuning in, thank you for helping me help you stay on top of PR. And if you have any questions about crisis communications or insurance policies, I'll be sure to put my contact information and Bob's in the episode notes. Please, reach out. We love hearing from our audience, even if it's just to say that you liked X, Y, or Z in our episode or you wish I would've asked Bob, you know, something else, and we'll be sure to post about that on social media. I'll track down Bob to answer your questions, or you can just reach out to him directly. He'd be glad to hear from you. So if you found this episode helpful, please, share it with a colleague who you think would benefit from it as well. With that, I'm Jason Mudd signing off with Axia Public Relations. We want to thank Bob for his participation in today's episode, be well.
- [Narrator] This has been On Top of PR with Jason Mudd, presented by ReviewMaxer. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and check out past shows out ontofpr.com.
Sponsored by:
- On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
- On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.
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About your host Jason Mudd
On Top of PR host, Jason Mudd, is a trusted adviser and dynamic strategist for some of America’s most admired brands and fastest-growing companies. Since 1994, he’s worked with American Airlines, Budweiser, Dave & Buster’s, H&R Block, Hilton, HP, Miller Lite, New York Life, Pizza Hut, Southern Comfort, and Verizon. He founded Axia Public Relations in July 2002. Forbes named Axia as one of America’s Best PR Agencies.
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Topics: crisis communications, On Top of PR
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