Masters of Disaster

Raising Business Continuity Awareness

In today's world, nothing is exempt from being categorized, labeled, or defined as a brand. But those brands we know best and stay loyal to are the ones that are highly publicized and made very familiar to us. Each year, companies like McDonalds and Pepsi-Cola spend millions of dollars in advertising to ensure that their brands are familiar, and in turn, they can expect brand loyalty from their consumers.

Like everything else in life, business continuity management (BCM) needs to be established and publicized as a brand if people are going to pay attention to it. Most business continuity managers already know that for any business continuity program to work, they need the support of everyone on their team. What might people already think about BCM? If we think of business continuity as a brand, many of us might describe it as uninteresting, ineffective, and perhaps even invisible. And when most people don't understand what business continuity management is about, they aren't going to be committed to the program.

It's time to redefine business continuity. No matter how important it may be, it's useless to talk if no one's listening. Successful campaigns are able to initiate a dialogue with an audience, and they gain visibility by first creating some buzz. This means interacting with an audience in multiple ways including banners, posters, monthly discussion topics, company intranet, events and conferences, and certification. While the immediate goal of an awareness campaign may be to spark discussion, its other objectives may be many: create recognition of a new or revitalized business continuity program, challenge their perception of risk, or encourage them to seek more information.

To meet this challenge, Lootok created a business continuity brand called Masters of Disaster. Masters of Disaster is a brand designed specifically to make business continuity fun and interesting. When the MOD team struts in wearing orange t-shirts with MOD plastered to their chests, people pay attention. They're curious. "What is MOD?" they ask. The MOD team says, "It's business continuity at its best." Using interactive, competitive activities branded with the MOD logo, the MOD team gets people to think about business continuity management in a fresh way.