MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe‘s flagship speciality communications and engagement company MSLGroup has launched a global Crisis Network of 50+ experts, to provide the best advice, guidance and support for clients in troubled times.

Connected to each other by a proprietary real-time platform, the network is devised to help business leaders prepare for a "new normal": today‘s fundamental reset in dynamics between individuals, influencers and institutions around trust, power, risk and crisis.

Alongside 24-7 access to the platform, the crisis experts are also able to leverage the network‘s crisis planning framework and crisis simulation workshop - to help clients plan for and respond to crisis situations effectively.

MSLGroup‘s chief strategy officer Pascal Beucler said, "Today, business leaders must master the three key interplays shaping crisis in the "new normal": the interplay between mainstream media and social media, the interplay between local and global dynamics, and the interplay between crisis planning and response. MSLGroup‘s Crisis Network is a one-stop shop to help guide companies and institutions to do just that."

Marking the Crisis Network launch, the team has also published its first report, an e-book titled "When Every Crisis is Global, Social and Viral".

Section one explores how social media is changing trust, power, risk and crisis. Looking first at the role of social media in societal upheavals in the West (including the terrorist attack in Norway, the riots in London and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US), the authors then move to the East and review how social media is changing the news ecosystem in China, eroding the wasta system of personal influence in the Middle East and uniting the Indian middle class in a grassroots movement against corruption.

The second section outlines how corporations can leverage social media to manage risk and reputation. The team of experts then take a look at how social media can play a role at each stage in the crisis curve, describe the art and science of crisis simulation, recommend engaging third party influencers in crisis planning, share lessons from managing the global Crisis Command Center for BP, provide a playbook for handling a crisis on Facebook and end with tips and tricks on crisis management.