Melissa Agnes
- Crisis Management Strategist
- President of Agnes + Day Inc
- On the Board of Directors for the Online Reputation
Travels From
Canada
Melissa Agnes Speaker Biography
When you pop a champagne cork, the bubbles of carbon dioxide form at tiny defects in the glass, join together, and explode upward when enough pressure builds. Crises usually start small the same way – and explode when the pressure builds to the breaking point. President and Co-Founder of Agnes + Day Inc., Melissa Agnes has helped dozens of global brands and government agencies deal with crises before that explosion, preventing and managing a wide range of issues before they become catastrophic. Her client list includes financial organizations, technology companies, healthcare organizations, government agencies, cities and municipalities, energy companies, global non-profits, and many others.
An effervescent personality herself, Melissa is a sought-after international crisis management keynote speaker. She travels the world speaking to organizations and audiences including NATO, Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Ministries of Foreign Defense, Ministries of Health, as well as a wide range of private and public companies, universities and non-profit organizations. She has had the honor of sharing the stage with members of the Ukraine government and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
A go-to source for the press, Melissa's recent press coverage includes Forbes, WSJ, VIBE Magazine, USA Today and more. Melissa is also a regular guest on the leading morning radio talk show, CJAD, where she is referred to as "the official crisis manager of the Tommy Schnurmacher show".
Melissa sits on the Board of Directors for the Online Reputation and Brand Protection Coalition, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing businesses with education, solutions, and advocacy to help them protect their reputations and brand online.
She is also the editor of the highly acclaimed crisis intelligence blog, and the host of the internationally recognized #CrisisReady Podcast. Published regularly and followed by government agencies and Fortune companies alike, her blog, videos and podcast provide insights to help organizations manage issues and crises in this modern era.
Build an Invincible Brand
Bad things happen to good companies. And issues come in all sort of sizes.
The potential risks in modern-day business are greater, more dynamic, and less predictable than ever before. And yet, the greatest exposure does not lie within these risks. Rather, it lies in having a team that is not prepared to anticipate, foresee, or respond to a rising threat, and its impact on your reputation, revenue, and relationships in real-time.
If a negative situation were to strike your organization, how confident do you feel that your entire team would know precisely what to do? Would they know how to immediately and effectively manage the situation in a way that results in increased stakeholder trust and loyalty?
In this program, Melissa Agnes, provides an applicable roadmap for helping you build an invincible brand through effective communication, issue management, and crisis readiness, resulting in increased organizational trust, credibility, and goodwill.
In this session, you will:
• Prepare for what you need to expect, deal with, and overcome when things go wrong
• Learn ways to exceed stakeholder expectations when it matters most
• Discover techniques to empower your team to make smart decisions that are focused on stakeholder-experience and relationship-strengthening
• Identify the difference between an issue and a crisis, and respond appropriately in real-time
• Discover the roadmap to brand invincibility
Choosing Your Lens: Transforming Issues into Opportunities
Issue management is a part of every business -- whether it’s a customer complaint, an operational mishap, or worse.
The lens through which your team chooses to see a negative event directly impacts the actions they take in response to that event, which also directly impacts the result that that event will have on your brand.
Furthermore, when a negative event strikes your organization, your team has one of two options available to them: Respond ineffectively and chip away at the brand’s trust and credibility over time, or respond effectively and make strong deposits into your brand’s bank of stakeholder goodwill.
What is the lens through which your team currently views less-than-ideal situations?
How is it impacting your brand’s reputation over time?
How does the culture of your business dictate, empower, and reward the mindset of driving those actions?
Can you amplify these efforts in a way that continuously strengthens the trust and credibility associated with your brand?
As a crisis management advisor, Melissa helped to successfully manage several, real-world viral issues. This program will examine those issues and:
• Discusses the powerful advantages of effective, daily issue management in support of the brand’s longstanding reputation
• Helps participants clearly define the difference between an “issue” and a “crisis”, in order to establish effective strategies for real-time response
• Demonstrates techniques for auditing the organization’s current mindset to identify unique ways to empower and reward the right lens in every situation
• Provides best practices for effectively responding to viral issues in real-time, in a way that increases trust and credibility for the brand
How can you empower your team to transform every issue into an opportunity to build trust, credibility, and goodwill in the organization? This seminar will give your participants answers and implementable strategies to ensure the right lens is always chosen – inspiring the right actions to transform any business issue into a powerful brand opportunity.
