Public Relations

CRISIS MANANGEMENT
DEFINITION: Crisis management is the process
by which an organization deals with a major
unpredictable event that threatens to harm
the organization, its stakeholders, or the
general public.
How Does PR help in Crisis Management?

There have been countless public relations crises

in the past and there are five steps that should
be executed in order to properly manage a
crisis:
• First, the corporation in crisis should be
prompt, addressing the public immediately
following the discovery of the crisis.
• Second, the corporation in question should
maintain honesty because the public is more willing
to forgive an honest mistake than a calculated lie.
• Third, it is important to be informative because the
media as well as the public will create their own
rumours if no information is given to them by the
corporation in crisis. Rumours can cause
significantly more damage to the corporation than
the truth.
• Next, it is important to be concerned and show
the public you care because people will be
more forgiving if it is clear that the corporation
cares about the victims of the crisis.
• Finally, maintain two-way relationships. This is
important because the corporation can learn a
lot about the status of public opinion by
listening.
REDCROSS PR DISASTER
The Red Cross' rogue tweet (2011)
• The crisis: One of the Red Cross' social media
employees accidentally sent the tweet --
which was meant for her private account --
and didn't realize it. It stayed up for about an
hour before the company's social media
director was alerted and took it down.
 The trouble started late Tuesday, when Red Cross social media
specialist Gloria Huang sent the following rogue tweet out on the
organization's Twitter feed:
 How the Red Cross responded:
• Wendy Harman, social media director for the Red
Cross, says the tweet stayed up for about an hour.
Harman says she got calls in the middle of the night
about the incident and took the tweet down. She
followed up with a humorous tweet from the official
Twitter account and acknowledged the mistake.
• It got support from Dogfish Head too, who
embraced the #gettngslizzerd and encouraged its
followers to donate to the Red Cross.
 Huang, who could not be reached for comment "feels
horrible about it," Harman said. In a later tweet on her
personal Twitter feed, Huang blamed the gaffe on her
lack of facility with Hootsuite — the message was meant
for her private account:
 While some blogs picked up the initial
tweet, the Red Cross averted a PR crisis
with the following good-humoured tweet
which acknowledged the mistake:
Meanwhile, the subject of the original rogue tweet, Dogfish Head,
has also acknowledged the incident by asking fans to donate to the
Red Cross.
 The result:
• The tweet generated a bit of buzz among
bloggers and the Twitter verse, but so did the
fun response by the company.   
• Fortunately for the Red Cross, although the
nature of the tweet wasn't professional, it
wasn't too controversial. Nobody was
outraged, and the Red Cross had to deal with
nothing more than a little embarrassment.
• While the Red Cross recovered nicely from the
incident, Harman says that if the original
tweet had been more damaging, then it might
have been a different story. But Huang's
original post was no big deal, she says. “We
are an organization that deals with life-
changing disasters and this wasn't one of
them,” says Harman. “It was just a little
mistake.”
Thank You.