Crisis Communications

Today's exercise of dealing with a crisis management was a good practice for what to expect when working in PR. It was more difficult than I expected, to make sure you say the right thing, to sound sincere and concise in releasing a statement. For the exercise we were given I learned that you have to be careful of what you say to the media because any wrong word or sentence will make your company look bad. For example, when the School of Education group told the parents that their school was safe and would remain open, everyone attacked them. It was argued that the school should be shut down and that the School of Education group shouldn’t say any information they didn’t know was accurate. I learned that you really have to think about what you are going to say to the public and the media without being attacked and yet trying to keep everyone calm.

In reading Corporate Communication by Paul Argenti, he provides a chapter about handling crisis. Argenti states that when panic sets in and there is a media frenzy some companies can add to the crisis by not coordinating all their information and making wrong statements due to pressure. Argenti states that lack of preparation by companies about how to handle a crisis can also make a crisis even more severe when it finally does occur. However, it is difficult to prepare for a crisis. With a crisis there is an element of surprise so I don’t think a company can be fully prepared for what might happen. For example, the September 11 attack took everyone by surprise there was no way to prepare United Airlines for something like that. I think the only thing companies can really do is handle each crisis case by case. However it is important for companies to organize the different roles people would play when a crisis does occur, like who would handle the media and who would handle communicating to the CEO, etc. I think that’s all the preparation a company can really have.