339: 5 Steps to Address a Crisis with Itay Ben Horin

Itay Ben Horin, CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, one of Israel’s leading strategic media consultancies, is on a mission to help people and organizations achieve their goals through strategic communication. As the author of Crisis Management, Itay draws on decades of experience helping businesses, public figures, and institutions navigate high-stakes situations where leadership and communication determine the outcome. In this conversation, Itay introduces The Crisis Management Framework: Stay Prepared, Pull Your Team Together, Work Fast and Slow, Pick Your Entry Point, Decide Strategy, and Select Who Speaks, Where, and When. He explains why preparation is the greatest advantage in any crisis, why leaders must balance urgency with thoughtful decision-making, and how identifying the right audience and communication strategy can turn a defining moment into an opportunity. He also shares how AI is reshaping strategic communications, the growing threat of deepfakes, and why books and long-form conversations remain indispensable in an age of AI-generated content. — 5 Steps to Address a Crisis with Itay Ben Horin  Good day. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast, and my guest today is Itay Ben Horin, the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel, and also the author of Crisis Management, which just came out in the U.S. Itay, welcome to the show.  Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.  Yeah, it’s exciting to talk to you. I mean, you’re in Israel. You’re growing your business there, and I look forward to your differentiated perspective on things on this show. But before we launch in, my favorite question: What is your personal “Why,” and how are you manifesting it through Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz? Okay. So our vision in the company is to help people fulfill their goals through the media. We're trying to empower people and organizations to achieve their objectives.Share on X And we do it through the media, through communication, and through social networks. This is our expertise: communication, strategic consulting, public relations, and spokesperson services. My specialty is crisis management, but our company provides all kinds of media consulting. And our “Why” is to help people fulfill their dreams. Our way of helping them is through the media. But there are other goals as well.  Yeah. That is interesting. So how does media help people fulfill their dreams? When a person or an organization is talking to one person or two people in a store, or in any other aspect of communication, it has limited power. But when they communicate through the media to thousands or even millions of people—through television, radio, podcasts, or whatever channel exists in modern life—they have the ability to influence more people. So the media helps them. In a good way, and also in crisis management. When something goes wrong, you can use the media to move from a bad situation to a better place.  When I talk to people, I tell them that even in biblical times, people had communication and written communication. And it’s the same stories: Love. Hate. Power. Politics. Everything is the same. The only thing that has changed is the technology we use to communicate with people. Once, people shouted from rooftops and used other traditional methods. Today, they can talk from their homes to millions of people. Yeah. And then social media is a big amplifier of messaging. It’s changing politics as well. So, for sure. Now, you’re running a large strategic communications firm, but you wrote this book about crisis management. So what’s different about communication during a crisis compared to business as usual, when you just want to get your message out? I’m a basketball fan, and today is like the NBA playoffs. So I’m saying—  The Spurs won.  Yeah, the Spurs won. And it’s very interesting to watch a seven-game series. So what I’m saying is that regular communication is like the regular season. You win. You lose. It’s important, but it’s not that important. A crisis is like the playoffs. You can win or lose. If you manage the crisis well, you can be a winner.Share on X You can win the season even if it began with a crisis. But if you lose, you’re out. So a crisis is a moment that can change your destiny—for better or for worse—depending on how you manage it. And I think that’s the difference between crisis management and regular communication. As I said, regular communication is like a very long regular season.  Yeah, I love that analogy. So it’s the yin and yang, right? It’s the crisis and the opportunity. How do you turn a crisis into an opportunity? There’s a saying: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” right? Something like that.  Yes. I’m not advising people to get into a crisis. That’s not my advice. But if you have a crisis—and in my book, Crisis Management, I write about many case studies, both good and bad examples of crisis management—in some cases, the way people like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama managed their crises helped make them winners because they handled them well. I also write about companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks, as well as crisis management cases in Israel.  If you manage a crisis badly, you can lose your position or even your business. So I’m not advising anyone to seek out a crisis. But when I walk into a room where there is a crisis—and I do that a lot, it’s my day job—I meet a CEO or a manager who is dealing with a crisis, and I tell them: “Please try to look at this moment from another perspective.” “Because these are the moments that define your leadership.” “And if we do well, and if we do our best, you may be remembered as the leader who successfully navigated this challenge.” It’s hard to see that in the moment. But afterward, people often come back to me and say: “I remember what you told me during those moments.”  Yeah. That’s when character really shows up, right? In moments of crisis. It’s when everything gets amplified. Yes. So this podcast is called Management Blueprint. We talk about frameworks all the time. So give me a good crisis management framework. Three to five elements. I’m sure you cover them in your book. If someone is in a crisis, what do they need to think about? What steps should they take? Do you have a framework like that?  Yeah. So the book is like 20 chapters. Sixteen of them are crisis-management cases from around the world and Israel, including some that I managed. And there are also four chapters about this framework and how to manage a crisis. So the first thing that I will tell you is that the best way to manage a crisis is to be prepared for a crisis. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's really important. Every minute that you prepare—I call it a golden minute.Share on X Every minute that you prepare for a crisis will count as 10 minutes during the crisis when it begins.  Because if you are prepared, if you know who is talking, who is on your team, what the messages are, who your crisis-management advisor is, who your lawyer is, who your accountant is, and who will be in the room, as a manager that’s very important. So that’s the preparation. And even if you don’t prepare, the first thing is to get your team together. I don’t believe that crisis management can be managed from far away. You must be in the same room with all the people and talk together with your team. The second thing is that in a crisis, you need to work very fast and very slowly.  Very fast because you need to think fast and react fast because it’s a crisis. You have a lot of phone calls, a lot of WhatsApp messages, and a lot of activity on social networks. A lot of people are talking to you. But you also need to be very sharp, and you need time to think. The most important thing you need to think about is: What is your entry point for the win? Who is your target audience? Is your target audience the general public? The business ecosystem? A regulator? A minister? In most crises, you have a few target audiences.  But you must understand which target audience can take you to a win. If you’re a political leader, it’s the public. If you’re a business, it can be the market or the stock exchange. If you’re a producer or a manufacturer and you have a crisis, it can be the regulator. So you must think about who your target audience is and then decide on the strategy. Because there are crises that you cannot win. Going back to basketball, maybe you cannot win the series. But it’s better to lose four games to two than four to zero. And that’s okay because you’re building for the next stage. So you have the team. You have the target audience.  You have the strategy. Then you need to decide who is talking to the public and how they are talking. Through Facebook or other social networks? Are you talking to the press? Are you having one-on-one meetings? When are you going to talk? Where are you going to talk? And who is going to talk? The manager? The professional manager? Your legal staff? Your communications staff? These are all the things you need to decide when the crisis begins. And from there, every crisis is different. But that’s where you move forward. Yeah. That’s fascinating. So basically, get your team together. That’s step one. Obviously, you have to be prepared so that you have a team. You have to react fast, but also make room for deep thought. Who’s your target audience? How do you enter this crisis, or where do you need to show up? Decide the strategy. And then who’s going to speak, where, and when. So that’s fascinating.  When and where. What is the technology? Are you doing a press conference? Are you doing a press release? Do you go to your LinkedIn page, your Facebook page, or your Instagram page? Every crisis has its own recipe. I’m saying that there are people in my profession who use the same strategy all the time. To talk or not to talk. To be aggressive or not to be aggressive. I think every crisis has its own recipe. There are times when you need to talk. There are times when you need to remain silent. There are times when you need to attack your rivals or your opponents. And there are times when you need to apologize for things that you have done. So every crisis has its own recipe.  Yeah, that makes sense. I love it. So I’d like to switch gears a little bit and learn more about your business. What drives growth in your business, in your strategic communications consulting business?  So I think there are two main engines. The first engine is more clients. We have clients in all aspects of life.Share on X We have Samsung and Qualcomm from the technology sector. We have a large bank and a large investment house. We work with cities and municipalities. We work with academia. So that’s one engine. And the second engine is adding more services. We started with communications. Then we added social media management. Then we added video. Now we work with influencers and content creators as well. So one way to grow is through more clients. The second way is by expanding the scope of our profession. It’s all around communication, but communication is evolving. Yeah. So when you say more aspects, do you mean more channels?  Yes. More channels, more services.  How do you see these channels evolving? What’s the big trend? In the past, people shouted from rooftops. Then there were town hall meetings. Then there were newspapers. Then came the internet and social media. And now people are posting and tweeting. So how has this evolved? What’s the bigger picture? What is communication evolving toward?  So it’s a good question. I think that the first main understanding is that it’s all together. It’s all synchronized. You talk on television, in the newspaper, and on the radio. Nothing has diminished. Everything is together. But you have more channels, as you said. The most evolving channels are influencers and creators. Now, a lot of my clients are not talking to journalists.  They are talking to creators or to social media influencers. And they are the most important when you have a B2C business talking to the customer and the consumer. For businesses that are more B2B, I think the economic press and television are still very important. So it depends on the client-side organization. Who is the organization, and what is the best channel to talk through?  Yeah. That’s interesting. What is something that you’re actively trying to figure out in your business right now? I think, like everyone, we’re thinking now about how AI will affect our job and our profession. The first steps of AI are already here. Everybody is using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. We also use ChatGPT and Claude in every program that we have. But I’m sure that there will be more changes. We can see it through the video aspects and the graphic aspects. It didn’t change communication, but it will change it like every profession. So we are trying to think about what is the best way to use it. And also how we can be faster than our colleagues in the profession in using it correctly.  And what are some of the challenges with AI? What makes it tricky to implement an AI strategy, if anything?  First of all, I think the biggest challenge is that I have 25 years of experience, and my partner also has 25 years of experience. So together, we have 50 years of experience in communications consulting. And we had a big gap between us and all the other competitors. But now, with AI, you can be very young in the profession and still get access to all the knowledge, all the books about the field, and all the crisis case studies. So I think the first challenge is understanding that AI is shortening the gap between those who have experience and those who don’t. I think that’s true in every profession.  Yes.  So I think that’s challenge number one. Challenge number two is that there is a lot of fake news. I’m working with a very prominent businessman in Israel, and now there is a fake AI version of him using his image and talking to the public. It looks like the real person is speaking. And that’s a problem that you need to solve. We are talking to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, asking them not to show the ad because it’s fake. But it’s hard. And it’s something new. It wasn’t there in the past.  That’s scary. That’s very scary when this happens. Yes. Everything is getting more complex. I also see it as an opportunity because we have a lot of experience, so we know how to manage these situations. But these are new situations.  Yeah. I wonder how the world is going to deal with that. One thing we noticed when we created an AI video was that it got a lot fewer likes. Even though it was early on, when there were very few AI videos, and we thought it was a very clever thing, people didn’t really resonate with it. Do you find that this is the case? Or are AI videos now so well done that people don’t realize they’re fake?  I think it’s a challenge for the regulators. And I see that they are already doing some work in this area. For example, an AI video will have something written on it saying, “This is an AI video.” You must do that. So I think that if regulators strengthen these requirements across all the platforms—Google, Facebook, ChatGPT, and everything else—then we’ll reach a point where people can watch any video they want, but they will know whether it’s an AI-generated video or a real one. Yeah. That makes sense. So where do you see the growth opportunities for communications businesses like yours going forward?  I think, as I said, AI will take us to a place where we can work with more clients in a faster way. I'm one of the founders of a startup called Focus AI that is creating synthetic groups and communities.Share on X We can talk to synthetic figures and better understand the best way to approach messaging and make decisions after interacting with these communities. So this is one path for growth in the profession and also in our business. And it’s something that we are already doing.  So that’s one way to move faster. Another thing I’m doing is investing in business books. Because I think people will look for things that are very fast, like AI. But they will also look for things with a lot of depth, like books. And I can see right behind you all the books that you are reading. I believe there are many people who still want a way to go deeply into topics. Because of that, I also wrote my book. And now I’m investing in a business that will bring more and more business books into Israel. That is very interesting. There’s a theory that media consumption is becoming polarized. Very short-form media is becoming more popular, and very long-form media is also becoming more popular. And perhaps books are the long-form media that you’re talking about.  And I think podcasts as well. Podcasts are becoming very successful around the world, and also in Israel. Because people want the opportunity to have a one-hour conversation and really understand things. Not just clips from radio interviews or short interviews. So, as you said, more fast and more slow. More sharp and more depth.  Yeah. That ties in with your framework. In a crisis, you have to be fast, and you have to be slow at the same time. Who do you recommend should buy your book? Who can benefit from Crisis Management?  So I think there are three main target audiences. The first is managers, CEOs, and people who make decisions. They will face crises in their professional lives. I think everyone has a crisis in their life and in their professional life. It’s like back pain. Everybody has it, has had it, or will have it. Nobody lives their life without back pain, and nobody lives their life without a crisis. So the first audience is managers. The second audience is people in my profession: Communications consultants and lawyers who deal with crises. They can benefit from these case studies. And the third target audience is students of communications, business, and law. People who want to gain more knowledge about this subject and this field.  Is this just about communicating during a crisis, or is it also about solving the crisis? Or are those the same thing?  No. It’s about all aspects of a crisis. Every crisis has a communication aspect. But Crisis Management, the book, and crisis management itself are not just about communication. As I said, when I come into an organization that is in crisis, I’m managing the communications side of the crisis. But there is also a lawyer. There is a lobbyist. There is an accountant. And there are the internal managers of the organization. Everybody has their own target audience. So the book is about the entire crisis. My way is through the media.  Yeah. Love it. That’s great. Okay. So if you’re listening to this and you’re running a business, or you’re in a professional-services business, or you’re a politician, or anyone working in a high-stakes environment, I highly recommend Itay Ben Horin’s book, Crisis Management. It just came out. Is it available on Amazon?  Yeah. Amazon, Barnes & Noble. It’s everywhere.  Yeah. So it’s on Amazon and in the major bookstores everywhere. If you want to learn more, check it out. Where can people reach you if they want to talk to you or someone at your firm? What would be the best entry point? Yeah. My email is open. My LinkedIn is open. I’m very available. My profession is to be available 24/7.  So check Itay Ben Horin out on LinkedIn. He’s easy to find there. Yes. And he’s the CEO of Ben Horin & Alexandrovitz, a leading strategic media consultancy in Israel. Do you work outside of Israel as well, or do you focus primarily on the Middle East? Yes. We work outside of Israel. We work with Israeli brands that have communications or business activities around the world. We also work with American and European brands that operate in Israel. So our main focus is Israel, but we work with many clients around the world. We have about 50 international clients.  That’s fantastic. So check Itay out. Read his book. And if you enjoyed this conversation, stay tuned because every week we have another entrepreneur with a unique framework coming on the show. Itay, thanks for coming. And thank you for listening.  Thank you very much. Important Links: Itay’s LinkedIn Crisis Management Book Itay’s Website