By Rebecca ChambersPublic relations is often shunned in the media as flacks, spin control, and unethical yes men. This is disgruntling to even the most weathered of professionals in our business, and after reading this book, I have to say I can see why the world may view our profession as a little dubious.
In Steve Adubato’s book, What Were They Thinking?: Crisis Communication: The Good, the Bad, and the Totally Clueless, the author took 22 of the most well-known crises of all time and examined where each one went right, which went wrong, and what lessons we can learn from them. In this blog, I will examine three crises from the book that particularly intrigued me.
The first crisis that interested me happened to be in the first chapter: the Johnson & Johnson Tylenol crisis. Adubato candidly admits that Johnson & Johnson was one of the only corporations to ever “get it right” in reacting to a crisis. Johnson & Johnson owned up to their mistakes and complied with every safety measure the media asked of them. Adubato wrote, “When mistakes or misstatements occur, own up to them…doing so increases your credibility and reputation as a ‘straight shooter’ who can be trusted.” Tylenol remained strong on the pain relief market shortly afterward, so they really did “get it right.”
The next interesting crisis was the infamous Exxon Valdez Oil Tanker Spill, which is in itself a hard lesson that PR students learn early in their classes. Exxon CEO Lawrence G. Rawl tried to bury his head in the sand and hope the crisis would go away, and he was rudely awakened when it did not. Adubato had this lesson to learn from Rawl: public relations fallout can be avoided with a simple, well-timed and sincere response from the head of the company. This may seem like common knowledge to you or me, but this situation just goes to show that even the most competent of people can be led astray – to devastating consequences.
Chapter 15 brought to my attention a crisis that I had never really paid much attention to – the stranding of JetBlue Airways passengers. At one time, JetBlue had NINE planes stranded on the runway for more than six hours – and passengers were given no food, water, or apologies. JetBlue did not issue public apologies until almost a week after the event, which in addition to the poor customer service on the tarmac hurt the airline badly. Their promise “To continue to bring humanity back to air travel” suffered during this time, and Adubato called the whole thing an “absolute disaster.”
All in all, I have always believed things truly got fun in public relations when something goes wrong, but from reading this book, I can see that ethics and a crucial decision-making process on the part of the public relations professional can truly make or break your crisis.
6 comments:
I agree with you when you say that things get fun when things go wrong. I guess fun isn’t quite the right word. Crisis equals opportunity. When things are stirred up, people notice. It can be the best public relations when things go wrong in an organization. Tylenol proved this. Even when I heard the details of the crisis, I had no doubt in their credibility. Crises are a natural thing. They are bound to happen, it is just roulette as to who gets struck. Crisis plans can prepare you for them, but it takes a talented public relations practitioner to deal with something out of the ordinary.
This is the reason that public relations shouldn’t be overlooked in organizations. From the first class I ever took in public relations, they told the class that public relations is often absent in organizations. They believe that it isn’t important enough to waste budget paying the practitioners.
I believed them when they told us, but now I realize that it is a huge mistake. I think that JetBlue might have been one of these organizations that chose not to have this position available. And now, I bet they are kicking themselves for it. I can’t believe that it took them that long to get them off of the plane. I get upset when I sit in the back of the plane and have to wait 5 minutes for people to get their luggage and get off in front of me.
You can learn a lot about a company by how they react during a crisis situation. Reacting to everyday circumstances does not garner much attention, but when something goes array, people are bound to notice. Tylenol is one of the most studied crisis situations, because it was handled well. The recent JetBlue crisis illustrates the pertinent need to address matters first and foremost, rather than ignoring them and hoping the situation will disappear on its own. Like Chelsea mentioned, traveling is stressful enough, there's no need to exacerbate the situation by leaving not one, but nine planes filled with passengers stranded on the tarmac. There's no way, in any circumstance, that this situation could be viewed positively.
We learn, as PR students, that we should look to other companies for ideas and trends, but that we should also look to organizations in planning for crisis situations. Writing a crisis plan is key to planning for a crisis. Failing to plan for crises only makes your company look worse should a situation occur.
I love that your book focused on the "art" of PR. I hate that our profession has a negative reputation for being "spin doctors". This seemed like a very interesting book. I am interested in the practices of crisis management since most of us are going to have to deal with it at some point in our careers. These examples are on a very public and larger scale that we will probably encounter but it is still very relevant to what we should not do as PR professionals. I think books like this shouldbe assigned to the class especially at this stage in our educational and professional career.
I am particularly fascinated by crisis communication so I thought your blog was really interesting. Before I was a PR major, I never thought to look at those three incidents from a PR standpoint. Now, I can clearly see the PR angle and the need for crisis communication in each instance. Neither Exxon nor JetBlue apologized and their business suffered because of it whereas Tylenol handled the situation correctly and their business quickly recovered. I particularly agree with the point that apologies can go a long way in crisis communication, which is something I think we should all remember as some of us begin our careers in PR.
I think that the concept of crisis communication should be viewed in more depth by all majors and fields. The fact that that Steve Adubato chose to evaluate and examine 22 of the most well-known crises of all time is brillant. This is a very interesting topic. As we created our own campaigns' and events for our assigned non-profit organizations, a crises plan was especially needed. As PR practioners you have to expect the unexpected in a sense; consider the "what if this were to happen, how could we have handled this situation in a more strategically planned way," questions. I recall hearing about the Tylenol and Exxon spill crises. A lot of times the CEO's and managers do not want to take the fall when crises occur when they should go on ahead and admit that the situation was not handled in a secure and safe fashion. Proper decision-making is imperative during any situation, good or bad.
I remember learning about both the Exxon and Johnson & Johnson examples in Intro to PR. I too thought they were really fascinating and as you said, although the ‘right’ choice/reaction to crises seems so obvious to us, even very business savvy people get it wrong. I think this is an important lesson to remember before we, ourselves, are the ‘intelligent’ people without the 20/20 hindsight, who can’t see the ethical/best crisis reaction plan under pressure.
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