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CRISIS PR: MOST ARE
UNPREPARED
By Alan Caruba September
1994/Occupational Hazards
"When written in Chinese, the
word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the
other represents opportunity."
This quote, attributed to John F.
Kennedy, is the perfect description of a crisis event when it hits any kind of
organization large or small.
As a veteran public relations
counselor, I’ve learned over the years that few organizations are prepared for
a crisis event. By mid-year of 1994, the news media had reported that vitamin
supplements are useless; movie house popcorn could kill you; a gas pipeline in
Edison, N.J., had blown up; Amtrak had yet another derailed train; and U.S. jets
had shot down their own helicopters in Iraq.
Not all crisis events are spectacular
or national in scope, but they can have a devastating effect on a company’s
reputation, whether it’s large or small. For example, in a small, New Jersey
shore town, the borough engineer and elected officials spent seven months
fending off verbal attacks by a citizens’ group which was convinced they were
poisoning everyone by introducing cancer-causing agents into the water.
Their crime was that they had
sponsored the rehabilitation of a small section of the water treatment plant’s
pipe system with an innovative process that had won a top award the previous
year in Great Britain. Never mind the endless documentation supporting the
project, the controversy raged on until I was called in to apply crisis
communication techniques.
Within a month, the largest daily
newspaper serving the shore town assigned two investigative reporters to the
story. Their article, which demolished the false claims of the citizens’
group, favorable court decisions, and other factors effectively put an end to
the turmoil.
In lectures around the nation, I keep
repeating the mantra that the only public relations that works is the truth.
This is not the popular perception of crisis public relations, which is often
seen as twisting the truth in some fashion. However, the truth, in itself, is
not sufficient to avert a crisis in communication.
Here are some basic principles of
crisis communications:
· In an era when any news story
occurring anywhere in the world can become national and international news
within minutes after it breaks, it is essential to develop and maintain a
rapport with those news media organizations local to your interests and national
in terms of their outreach and influence.
- It is essential to anticipate a
crisis event by having basic information about one’s organization available in
the form of a simple, one-page fact sheet. The media will report the data you
provide or find it elsewhere, as often as not, from groups whose goal is to put
you out of business.
- Designate a "crisis team"
of spokespersons. In these times, that generally means the CEO and, in large
organizations, its communications professionals.
- For organizations too small to have a
communications staff, a working relationship with a public relations counselor
or agency is simply part of the cost of doing business these days.
- Immediacy is the key element of any
program to control the impact of a crisis event. The news media which will
report on the event must receive a statement, i.e., news release, on a same-day
basis that responds to the circumstances in an appropriate fashion. The public
wants to know that there is a concern for those affected.
There is, of course, much more
involved in the way crisis communications options are applied, but suffice to
say that lawyers will advise against "going public" in any significant
way. They are wrong. Silence is perceived as guilt.
It is a fact of life that the news
media are largely devoted to the notion that everyone in government or business
is solely motivated by greed or some evil obsession to harm everyone in some
fashion. Their guilt is assumed. Yes, there are bad apples in every barrel, but
my experience has been that most organizations work very hard to avoid the
accidents and events that create problems.
Americans and the media that serve
them seem obsessed with the notion that every single product, process, and
activity be free of any potential harm. Life doesn’t work that way.
The human element, mental fatigue,
natural disasters, and every other thing that can go wrong ensures the need for
a functional crisis communication plan.
Alan Caruba is a public relations
counselor in Maplewood, N.J.
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