Firestorm® Announces Cutting-Edge Project with Newest Firestorm Expert Council Members & Hootsuite

ATLANTA - July 15, 2014 - PRLog -- Firestorm® is pleased to welcome two outstanding communications and research professionals to its Expert Council. Firestorm supports Dr. Karen Freberg's and Major Kristin Saling's joint research into establishing factual metrics related to audience crisis communication preferences. Historically, crisis communications have been selected on gut feel instead of hard data. This research will empower organizations to be able focus communications in a crisis directly with message themes stakeholders need/want or to avoid communications that don’t align. This ground-breaking research will provide specific metrics to target communications in a crisis with certainty.

As an introduction to this project, Firestorm will host a webinar series with our newest Expert Council members and Shawn Bouchard of Hootsuite's Crisis Training and Simulation practice group. In this introductory webinar, we will introduce the project concept and discuss how organizations need a mechanism based on hard factual data for identifying what crisis communication methods, policies, and practices will be most effective during, after, and following-up a crisis event.

The topic for our first session on July 30, 2014 at 2 p.m. Eastern will be:

Speaking and Listening in a Crisis – Real Metrics, Real Messaging, Real Meaning. Register early (https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/717765386)- this one will fill up, and you may have the opportunity to participate in one of the most innovative research projects of the year!

About Karen Freberg

Karen Freberg is an assistant professor in Strategic Communications at the University of Louisville and also is an Adjunct Faculty member for West Virginia University in the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Graduate Online program. In addition to this teaching experience, Freberg has presented at several U.S. and international research conferences, including ones in the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Greece, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Turkey and China.

Freberg’s research has been published in several book chapters and in academic journals such as Public Relations Review, Teaching Public Relations, Journal of Contingencies & Crisis Management, Journal of Strategic Security, Media Psychology Review and Health Communication. She also serves on the editorial board for Psychology for Popular Media Culture and Case Studies in Strategic Communication (CSSC). Freberg also worked for Total Media in Cape Town, South Africa during the summer of 2007 with clients in the fashion and consumer industry.

About Major Kristin Saling

Kristin Saling is a strategic analyst in the Strategic Assessment Division, Resources and Assessment Directorate, U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM). She is responsible for providing detailed analysis and environmental assessments relating to regional campaign level effects in the USPACOM area of responsibility.

Prior to her service at USPACOM, she served as an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Engineering at the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, where she spent two years teaching and researching stochastic processes, deterministic models, system dynamics and quantitative value modeling. In addition to her teaching experience, MAJ Saling has presented at over 20 U.S. and international research conferences, and has published her work in varied academic journals such as Systems Engineering, the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, the Journal of Strategic Security and Public Relations Review.

Read Kristin's and Karen's Co-Authored Paper for Firestorm: Situational Q-sort - Quantifying Subjective Impressions http://www.firestorm.com/Blog/situational-q-sort-quantify...

Register for our joint session with Hootsuite

(https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/717765386)

About Firestorm

Firestorm transforms crisis into value. The FIRESTORM PREDICT.PLAN.PERFORM.® methodology combines C-Suite level consulting, dynamic software solutions and proven crisis management expertise to empower clients to create resilient organizations. Firestorm is a nationally recognized leader in Crisis Management, Continuity Planning, Critical Decision Support, Crisis Response, Crisis Communications, Crisis Public Relations and Consequence Management.

Firestorm has been called in to respond to some of the nation’s greatest school tragedies including Virginia Tech, Littleton, Columbine, Arapahoe and Platte Canyon.