Ethics Book Blog: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Crises

By Rebecca Chambers

Public 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.

Social Media in Crisis Communication

Social Media in Crisis Communication

By: Amy Crosby

Twitter is one of the latest social media phenomena to attract the interest of communicators and public affairs professionals. This microblogging tool follows blog, social networking sites, photo and video sharing, and topic discussion sites.

In October when the wildfires raged through Southern California, thousands heard the latest news on evacuations and conditions via Twitter. 

When Hurricane Ike devastated Galveston, Texas, people received a continuous stream of headlines from an on-the-scene reporter via Twitter. When US Airways Flight 1549 splashed into the Hudson River, the first photo the world saw of it came through Twitter. As we can see and have experienced, after a major event, the first news will often come through social media. 

There is no question that social media will continue to alter the landscape of public information. Following the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, universities struggled to determine the best ways to notify students about emergencies. They realized that students often check their Facebook accounts more often than e-mail, and changed their communication plans accordingly to keep up with the latest social media developments.

When I first heard about Twitter, I thought it was kind of creepy that people can always see what your doing and what not. But after I registered and started following people, I soon found out that it is very valuable source in the PR profession and also in general. I have always been a Facebook follower, but now I find myself logging onto to Twitter more than Facebook. And this phenomenon is not just for young people. I saw an interview with Senator John McCain and he said he loves using Twitter and posts his updates himself. After hearing this interview, I quickly found him on Twitter and am now following him. It is a great way to stay connected to anything, anywhere, no matter what your interests are.

Crisis communicators and public affairs professionals, like their PR counterparts, are struggling to incorporate social media into their plans. I read in a PRSA article that perhaps the best was to do this is to incorporate social media into their next crisis drill or major communication exercise. When you plan for things that might go wrong, you also need to plan for the role that social media will play and how its involvement will impact your reputation.

The PRSA article pointed out three key elements that are essential parts of any response: policies, plans, and people. With policy, organizations such as Target formerly had policies that refused to engage bloggers or other social media outlets, however, when a controversy erupted with online complaints, they realized the policy had a serious problem. Crisis communication planning today must incorporate monitoring and active engagement with relevant sites and the use of emerging forms of social media. A drill is an excellent opportunity to evaluate the performance of your responders; but only if those doing the evaluating understand the role and culture of the medium. And in todays current craze with social media, they most likely will.