Crisis Management

When you or your client is hit with a crisis, perhaps the most important thing you can do is keep your message focused.

From a PR perspective, NBC seemed to flub things from the get-go, allowing Williams to tell the public that he was punishing himself.

The first 48 hours of a crisis are the most important because they determine whether the situation becomes a manageable problem or an out-of-control disaster.

Nationwide Insurance’s Super Bowl ad featured the ghost of a young boy narrating scenes in a life he didn’t get to live because of an accident, and critics didn’t take kindly to it. Still, if you subscribe to the “no such thing as bad publicity” dictum, the spot was a win for the insurer.

A quartet of communicators chime on how social media is altering crisis management.

PR pros can no longer assume their company or organization is immune to trauma. As a crisis communicator, when something horrible happen are you prepared for an immediate response? Do you have a recovery plan for your brand? A crisis plan that you test, and update annually?

A major complication arose when, on the eve of an important press announcement, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist reported incorrectly that Navy Pier would “sell naming rights” to redevelopment project which had been sponsored by a legacy gift.

No company seeks out a supply-chain problem, but Chipotle managed to turn this into a case study of transparency in action.

We need to get to back to the basics of reputation management because teaching principles of protecting an image should be sacred in PR.

To prove your value to big egos means having elephant skin. Owning a legitimate relationship with the boss is one thing, but picking him up by the lapels to convince him that his actions could have seriously unintended consequences is another.