Crisis Management

On Feb. 7, the U.S. will see a first during the pandemic—22,000+ ticket holders attending the Super Bowl, in-person, at the actual venue, Raymond James Stadium, which holds 75,000 people. This of course, brings a whole new set of challenges—maintaining the health and safety of attendees. 

The GameStop/Reddit fiasco offers several lessons for communicators. One is that the savvy PR pro pays attention to all platforms and discussions, including those on private message boards, closed Facebook groups, Reddit and Substack and many more. In addition, prepare your executive to offer more than emotion and staid talking points during TV interviews.

Proving that there’s no time off for some PR pros, we asked those on Twitter Sunday, right after Dr. Deborah Birx’s interview on “Face the Nation,” about how they’d advise her. More than one dozen PR pros gave her a lot of good communication, crisis and reputation advice for free.

PR pros can learn plenty from the NY Mets’ handling of a recent employee sexual misconduct episode. While the team moved quickly to dismiss the employee, it botched the follow-up, failing to own the incident and attempting to pass it off as a failure that couldn’t be avoided.

Consumers have little patience these days for brand screw ups. With red-alert crisis hitting them every which-way in the news cycle, it doesn’t take much for someone to throw their hands up and be finished with a brand. This can be seen in many cases for sports fans. Most modern fans want to cheer on respectable organizations, and can do without outside distraction impacting their team’s possibility for success. 

PRNEWS welcomed Gil Bashe, Managing Partner, Global Health, at Finn Partners, to LinkedIn Live to discuss various messaging campaigns surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine.

Most communicators understood that the online presence of what others regarded as fringe groups needed serious consideration. It was this lack of concern that, in part, led to last week’s violence on Capitol Hill. Going forward, PR pros will need to redouble their obligation to act ethically and responsibly.

There are many lessons from the violence on Capitol Hill January 6. For PR pros, one of the biggest takeaways is the need for prompt and transparent communication during a crisis. DC Police, Capitol Police and federal law enforcement remained relatively silent initially, allowing others to create narratives.

For many Americans, the arrival of a second government stimulus check can’t come soon enough. The payments began arriving in eligible citizens’ bank accounts this week, but not all are available for immediate access, and that has some people very upset. On Jan. 4, many H&R Block customers took to social media to complain about delays in getting their stimulus check.

If you are a crisis consultant, 2020 was your banner year. When we look back at the year, clearly there were societal changes that contributed to a proliferation of attacks on brand reputation.