Over the years, New Heights has developed an extensive practice in crisis communications, dating back to our years on the presidential campaign trail and working for organizations constantly under fire from right-wing attack. We’re well-versed in countering specious narratives from our long-time enemies, as well as managing internal crises. We do this both with internal and external audiences, so that everyone can get back to the important business of doing the actual work.
Crisis Communications
Services include:
- Crisis response planning, counsel and threat mitigation
- Rapid response and monitoring
- Messaging
- Managing press inquiries and temporary spokesperson duties
- Staff briefing and training
Case Study: Managing a James O’Keefe-style infiltration of a national progressive network
To ward against a James O’Keefe-style infiltration (and other attacks) of its network, a national organization that fights for multi-racial political power contracted with New Heights to put together a comprehensive crisis communications program for its staff, network and partner groups. We updated the organization’s crisis communications handbook and delivered a series of crisis communications webinar trainings for the network and allies.
Within days of finishing the last training in the series, we were alerted to an attempted infiltration of the exact type we’d been training the network on— happening in one of the organization’s target states.
New Heights sprung into action, counseling the groups who were targeted on a tight plan to turn this massive potential vulnerability into a powerful media story that put the attackers back on their heels—and stopped the infiltration in its tracks. Working with groups on the ground, New Heights assessed the situation and gathered the facts: The attacker had ties to an out-of-state GOP political consultant who worked for many right-wing candidates and causes, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14).
We would let our legal strategy inform our communications strategy, we counseled, but as voting had already begun in the state, we would move swiftly to make public the story of good government and voting rights groups exposing the bad faith deception. We helped target appropriate reporters, crafted talking points and a narrative, and saw the operation through from start to finish.
In the end, multiple exposes in state media outlets showcased a bumbling attempt to undermine democracy in the state—with the good guys prevailing.