Crisis Management

The crisis management excersise we performed in class today showed how easy it is to pass on the blame when something malicious occurs in order to save your company's reputation.

It is important for every company press office to be have crisis preparation in place because news travels fast and you need to be on the ball with what the media and people are saying about you and your products.

An example of crisis management is the 1991 "Syringe in a Can" story with Pepsi COLA. A customer claimed to have found a dirty syringe in a pepsi cola can. As soon as the press caught hold of his story there were suddenly dozens more reports of customers finding screws, bolts and more syringes in Pepsi's drink cans. The Pepsi Co. company immediatly denied the stories and claimed them to be fraudulent. Vice President of Product Safety, Jim Stanley, explained that it is important to counter crisis issues as soon as possible:

"Because you don't have a lot of time to gather the facts, you'd better take advantage of the first few hours that you do have. If you waste those early hours in trying to deliberate on what you should do, you're going to miss an opportunity to solve a lot of issues that you could best solve immediately."

The Press Office's job was to "ensure consumer safety and security while protecting its 95-year old trademark and maintaining a positive image amidst a blitz of often negative media attention,"

They countered the crisis by launching new PR and ad campaigns proclaiming their products to be 99.9% Safe which included going on Nightline and doing numerous press interviews. This opened up time for them to investigate the original story. They went through the surveilance tapes from the shop that the original syringe can was bought from, they discovered the customer placing the syringe in the can. They were then able to bring this footage to light and save their company's image. The only drawback is that Pepsi Co. estimate they lost $25million during that one week of bad press. Citations: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3289/is_n3_v163/ai_15312359/pg_2

The perfect Crisis Management equation is quite complex, as Winning With The News Media: Crisis Management Chapter by Clarence Jones explains:

1. Never under-estimate the crisis.

2. If you under-estimate, once they learn the real extent of the problem, reporters will feel like you tried to deceive them

3. If you under-estimate, you can be blamed for your lack of knowledge and skill, once we know how bad it really is

4. If solving the problem becomes a long, difficult task, the news media expected it to be, and you won’t be faulted

5. If you over-estimate the crisis and then solve it quickly, it appears you have immense power and skill

Thus you need to calmly assess the situation and take the appropriate steps in an orderly fashion. Or as Gerry McCusker states in his book Talespin: PR
Disasters published by Kogan Page, January 2005:

"....should you find your client - or yourself - involved in a PR disaster always manage the situation ethically, with good grace, humility or humour - at least that's a good foundation on which to rebuild any damage done by a PR disaster."