First, a confession. I’m not a PR person. Far from it. I practiced the art, and the operative word is “practiced,” a number of years ago at a couple of small Silicon Valley firms. That experience left me with enormous respect for the men and women who do media relations. The best of them are honest, hard working, persistent, and skillful. And their journalist counterparts are honest, hard working, and hungry for good stories—though not always the most patient of souls.
This post, though, is really about what’s up in the world of crisis PR—think BP, Tiger Woods, and Al Gore—and it summarizes a recent post by Matthew DeBord on Slate’s “The Big Money.” Mr. DeBord’s piece is worth reading for the quality of the writing alone, but if you don’t get around to it, here are the high points:
- Crisis PR, which DeBord refers to as “PR’s evil twin,” has always relied on a meat-eating, aggressive approach that “beat down” the forces of negativity.
- Today, companies that screw up are in big trouble, because the social media can overwhelm “even the most crafted battle crisis plan.”
- According to Ira Kalb, professor of marketing at USC, once a company has lost trust, it’s lost everything, and heaven help it if it’s caught spinning the news.
- Also according to Professor Kalb, crisis PR can still work, but…
So, how can crisis PR resuscitate itself? Well, it appears that counseling clients to propose solutions to a crisis, rather than resorting to the mea culpa approach is a good way to go. The other biggie is to bring the social media into its service by “maintaining numerous online angles of attack on The Big Bad Story.” In my view, that approach is a lot like herding cats, but greater strategic thinkers than I will undoubtedly figure it out.
Leave a Comment