Crisis Management

We hear from Payal Patel, communications director at Chicago’s Navy Pier on her communications philosophy, building a crisis communications war room and PR’s role in the tourism industry’s recovery.

While cleanliness was on most peoples’ radar, the threat of COVID-19 elevated concerns about germs to a more common topic of conversation. Enter the American Cleaning Institute, whose communication team suddenly found itself at the center of a hot topic. Here’s how it handled a bevy of queries from media and the public and spread its message.

Social media is a great way for companies and organizations to engage clients and potential customers. A poorly worded or insensitive post, though, can result in cancellation. While users should always proceed carefully, preparation for a backlash can help you react should an angry online mob target your posts.

It seems like every day there’s another brand—this time a publication—getting called out for short-sighting diversity. Today “The Hockey News” (THN), featured on SI.com thanks to an editorial partnership, tweeted about what could have been… Continued

Nigel Glennie, VP, global communications at Hilton, offers insight into the communication side of the hard-hit travel and tourism industry and a preview of what he’ll be sharing during PRNEWS’ Crisis Management Virtual Event next month.

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.