Intercultural communication teamwork and leadership/Negative and crisis communications/Public relations
Crisis communication planning can help a firm deal effectively with unexpected disasters, emergencies, or other unusual events that may lead to unfavorable publicity. Effectively responding to any crisis means both controlling the public narrative and ameliorating any harm done, whether tangibly or to a company’s reputation.
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The role of public relations in crisis communication
Public relations ("PR") can take the form of an event, a product placement, or a skillfully crafted message delivered during a crisis. Unlike advertising, it is much less about promoting specific brands and more about promoting and maintaining the image of a brand, company or large corporation. PR can focus on the company and the corporate narrative, the story of how the company came to exist and how it represents certain values and ideals. PR is about promoting good relationships with your consumers, your employees and the communities where your products are made. It is about earning “free” news and social media coverage, but perhaps most importantly it is about managing crises so that people are not given a reason not to buy your products.
| Example: Environmental disaster |
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| When British Petroleum (BP) had an oil gusher erupt in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, 11 people died, and more than three million barrels of oil leaked into the gulf. It took almost three months to cap the oil gusher. The CEO of BP, Anthony Bryan “Tony” Hayward, lost his job because he made a major PR blunder when he said he just wanted his “life back.” Eleven people were dead. The fishing and tourism industries of Louisiana, Mississippi and parts of Texas, ravaged by hurricanes just years before, were being threatened again. This time, though, Mother Nature was not to blame. It was BP, a multinational corporation that up to that point had been working to create a more environmentally friendly image. It took BP years to come back from that disaster, and it was made worse because of poor crisis communications. |
Crisis communication
The best way to build good PR is to carefully maintain a good reputation over time and to avoid behaviours as an individual, company or corporation that might harm others. The best prevention against bad PR is to follow your industry’s and your own ethical codes at all times, whatever they are. Even if you do this, you might face a PR crisis. For example, a politician might decide to target your brand regardless of whether your business practices are ethical. All the more reason to maintain good longstanding relationships with your consumers.
The first rule of crisis communications is to plan ahead by anticipating the kinds of problems your company might have. Chemical companies should prepare for chemical spills. Sports teams will probably not prepare for environmental disasters, but they may have to prepare for the social media scandals that players sometimes land themselves in.
If there is a disaster, the advice is to be truthful and transparent, to not say too much and to correct any exaggerations that emerge in the news media and on social media, within reason. Engaging in social media arguments is almost never productive for a brand. A major goal of PR efforts during a crisis is to try to make people forget there ever was a crisis.
Journalists often have the opposite interest, because reporting on conflict is interesting. Helping people to survive is one of the primary functions of journalism. This explains why negative news gets so much more attention than positive news. No one dies when people do their jobs salting the roads and drivers manoeuvre safely in snowstorms. When people crash, that, sadly, is news. Journalists know that people care about safety perhaps more than any other issue, so they focus on safety concerns during times of crisis. At these times, PR and journalism can be at odds, but truth and transparency are still advisable to the PR professional. You do not legally have to tell journalists everything that has happened (depending on the circumstances and whether your institution is funded by taxpayers), but if journalists discover a negative impact that you failed to disclose, they will wonder what else you are hiding, and they may give your critics and detractors extra consideration and attention. PR professionals often work with journalists to cover negative stories with clarity and honesty rather than trying to hide the facts about a crisis.
Finally, in PR there is the need to learn from mistakes and to analyze a company or corporation’s crisis responses. As difficult as it might be to go back and discuss where communication failed, it is essential. Reflection is a critical step in learning and corporations are like any other social institution. They need to learn to survive and to thrive. Handling Unfavorable Publicity
Key points
- Being prepared for harmful situations is imperative. It is important to map out potential negative scenarios and have a PR plan for each one. It is important to have a crisis management team who can handle these situations.
- Protecting the integrity and reputation of an organization is important, but putting public interest ahead of the organization’s interest is key to gaining consumer trust and loyalty.
- A media reaction plan should include a company media representative as part of the crisis management team. Firms need to show that they are working toward positive resolutions to deflect the negative publicity.
| Example: Medication crisis |
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| In 1982, Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol medication commanded 35% of the US over-the-counter analgesic market and represented 15% of the company’s profits. Unfortunately, one individual succeeded in lacing the drug with cyanide. Seven people died as a result, so a panic ensued about how widespread the contamination might be. By the end of the episode, everyone knew that Tylenol was associated with the scare. The company’s market value fell by $1 billion as a result.
When the same situation happened again in 1986, the company had learned its lesson. It quickly ordered that Tylenol be recalled from every outlet, not just those in the state where it had been tampered with. The company also decided that the product would not be re-established on the shelves until something had been done to provide better product protection. As a result, Johnson & Johnson developed the tamperproof packaging that would make it much more difficult for a similar incident to occur in the future. |
Acknowledgements
The content on this page was adapted from Chapter 3 - Public relations basics in The Evolving World of Public Relations : Beyond the Press Release by Rosemary Martinelli, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, in which some material is remixed from Public relations provided by Boundless.com under a Creative Commmons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
