Crisis Communication Center Sees Tremendous Increase in Crisis Planning Business Since the Attacks of September 11th.

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 2001

Clarke & Company's Crisis Communication Center has seen more than a 200% increase in monthly revenues since the terrorist attacks of September 11. Crisis Communication Center business is up across all industry sectors throughout the United States and Canada with the energy, food and infrastructure sectors being most active.

Brian Delaney, president of Clarke & Company said, "The recent terrorist attacks and the ripple effect that those events are having on a number of industry sectors worldwide has moved crisis planning and crisis drills to much higher priority on the "must do" list for corporate executives. While crisis communication planning has become more important in recent years, the economic and business impact of the events of September 11th has been a wakeup call to business leaders to get comprehensive and usable crisis plans in place."

Jennifer Sheehy, director of the Crisis Communication Center said, "While we have seen an increase in crisis response business, the majority of business is in developing crisis plans and conducting regularly scheduled crisis drills. We are also seeing a very significant increase in requests for crisis planning and training seminars. Prior to September, we were averaging about one call a week. Now, even approaching the holidays, we are fielding two or three calls a day from corporations, business groups and industry associations asking for information or scheduling crisis seminars for their company or industry association."

"We set up our dedicated Crisis Communication Center almost ten years ago in response to both the advances in technology and instant global communication," Delaney said. "We found that given the new speed of communication, companies had to be able to respond to events very quickly. That meant a company had to be totally prepared. This fact moved traditional crisis response to a new higher standard. Companies have to be prepared, practiced and active in their decision making in order to effectively deal with crisis events and the media attention that always follows," Delaney added. "We also learned that responding to crisis events with only traditional public relations staff was not enough. Companies need to enlist specialists such as lawyers, health officials, government and regulatory experts and more recently security experts to effectively deal with most situations."

"With the increased crisis planning business and the dramatic increase in requests for information about crisis products and services, we don't believe the recent attention to crisis planning is a short term phenomenon," Sheehy said.

Clarke & Company's internationally recognized Crisis Communication Center is one of only a few dedicated crisis centers in North America. The Center's dedicated staff includes lawyers, journalists, health specialists, government and regulatory specialists and public affairs experts. The Center's crisis products and services include crisis event response, plan development, audits, crisis drills, crisis media plans and media monitoring, crisis media and presentation training, employee communication, crisis seminars and internet crisis response.

Clarke & Company is New England's largest full-service, independent public relations firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The agency has specialty practice groups including, crisis, energy, technology, public affairs, consumer, healthcare and financial services.