Challenge

The PR organisation of a government department had identified a specific crisis scenario and prepared an outline media strategy to follow were the crisis to occur. The extraordinary nature of the scenario necessitated the draft strategy be stress tested.

Approach

The project team used an established strategic seminar gaming technique to challenge the client’s thinking. The client team were asked to consider critical phases of the crisis and a number of challenging ‘what-if’ branches of the scenario. In each phase they assessed how well their strategy performed and how it might be improved.

Outputs

Through the game, the client identified major shortcomings in their draft media strategy that could have had serious consequences had the crisis arisen. The game highlighted media themes that should be developed from the beginning of the crisis to allow the government to maintain the widest freedom of action as the situation developed.