Among the countless PR forums, directories, firm listings and links on the World Wide Web, having a site that stands out, that challenges users and even teaches them a thing or two is something to be admired.
To prepare professionals for crisis communications, several PR firms, including Bain and Associates (B&A) and Brouillard Communications, have created unique areas on their sites that pose hypothetical crisis scenarios.
PR gurus offering up the best solution to the crisis win a small prize for the winning entry. The value of the sites, however, is to encourage the viewer to think about what he/she would do if faced with certain sticky situations.
B&A, Alexandria, Va., has an online contest called Quandary that poses a monthly PR dilemma and gives users an entry form to fill out and send back with a solution - in 200 words or less. The winning entrant gets a B&A T-shirt, his/her answer posted on the site and links to the winning entrant's home page or company (if applicable.)
February's Quandary, located at B&A's home page, http://www.cais.com/bain, asked users to find a creative, effective way to tackle this situation:
Your CEO, a high-profile entrepreneur, e-mails a homemade Valentine's Day card to his wife, complete with some very private information (not fit for the public eye), pictures and all. The CEO misspelled the address, accidentally sending the provocative card to the city newspaper gossip columnist.
The story of the powerful CEO propositioning the wrong woman, photo included, ends up on the front page of the paper the following morning. As PR director, what do you do?
Kevin MacDermott, Webmaster at B&A, who creates and judges the contest every month, said "we look for a combination of ingenuity, wit, and whether it fixes the problem...There's also the desire for us to draw a new perspective. We're trying to broaden our horizons. Even though we have ideal solutions that we'd come up with, it's good to pick up another 40 different perspectives that we may not have thought of."
MacDermott said it "draws people who wouldn't normally hit our page...the more links you have, since there are lots of PR pages, the more you stand out."
Since its launch, the number of entrants has ranged from 15 to 50 per month, but B&A hasn't tracked the number of users coming onto the site. MacDermott said that entrants' names are put on file, but not for marketing purposes; rather, so B & A can contact the winners.
Here's another PR dilemma from Brouillard Communications, New York, at http://www.brouillard.com, to be answered in under 80 words:
Imagine you're a Fortune 500 cereal manufacturer, and one week before the launch of your new product, "Puffies," network news programs attack you for substituting inferior ingredients into your best-selling brand, "Tasties." This happens right before stores are about to receive their first shipment of "Puffies." What do you do?
Entries are still coming in, but the results will be posted next month. The six most creative solutions receive Brouillard umbrellas. (Bain and Associates, 703/549-9592; Brouillard Communications, 212/867-8300)