Crisis management in PR

1. Types of crises

Crisis is an extraordinary event or some events which have negative influence on production, company’s reputation, finance stability; health or welfare of staff, community, public.

Crises in business may be of different types:

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Any of these crises can damage company in commerce, finance, property, image, reputation. The first reaction to crisis is panic, then perplexity. Information at the beginning is not full, or absent. Rumors spread very fast. The main task of PR is to make a huge volume of work and produce a lot of information for a short period of time.

Crises are very often expected: only 14% of crises in business are unexpected, the rest 86 % are quite expected. Bad management is the reason of 78% of crises. (Example: before crisis in Dow- Corning concern silicon gel breast implants came under fire from both the medical community and thousands of women who claimed that they were harmed by the product. When a crisis hit, the company treated the media as an enemy). But sometimes crises are unexpected:

Johnson & Johnson’s case of Tylenol when capsules laced with cyanide(начиненные цианистым калием) killed seven people in Chicago.

2. Crisis management

Company and PR- department must develop a plan of actions for crisis and means of communication with mass media. Although the crisis communication plan may not be utilized, it is better to act before a crisis may occur.

Two considerations can be emphasized in the crisis management plan:

* Demonstrate your commitment to good corporate citizenship by taking prompt and decisive actions to control problems in your operation

* Communicate swiftly and constantly to all appropriate audience in clear, straightforward, nontechnical language

Main steps for crisis communication planning:

1) Identify the type of crisis that may occur. Successful management includes thinking worst- case scenarios and preparing for them.

2)

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4)

Time is a major factor, especially if crisis occurs at night.

The most knowledgeable and appropriate people must accompany the spokesperson when providing information. A speaker should not obscure facts.

Never say “ No comment ”

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Provide a constant flow of information, even the situation in unchanged or negative.

Make media list. Be accessible for mass media by providing phone numbers.

Keep a log of media calls, return calls as soon as possible.

Train.

Crises situations may be even used for company’s popularity.

Case study: You are the owner of pyrotechnical factory, situated on the bank of a river. Local 200 men are engaged in production. Market is saturated with pyrotechnical products. You store 200 barrels of this chemical.

What type of crisis can you meet?

How can you prepare for crisis?

Glossary

To come under fire- вызвать град нападок

Perplexity- растерянность

Obscure- скрывать

Stonewall- отмалчиваться

Updated- обновленная

Log- журнал записей

Task for office hours –Develop a crisis management for given case study

Task for IWS- Types of crisis and their main characteristics

References

Mandatory

Aги У. Все о PR, Питер, 2008, глава «PR в бизнесе»

Recommended

Ф. Хенслоу, Практическое руководство по Паблик Рилейшнз, СПб, 2009

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