January Associations Now Case Study: Facing a PR Nightmare
I once worked for someone who told me that, for him, the hardest thing about PR was its unpredictability; you could spend months pitching stories and not get a nibble, but then come in one day and have an urgent call from a major media outlet while you're still drinking your coffee.
That kind of unexpectedness is part of what the characters in the January Associations Now case study are dealing with (although, as the excellent commentators pointed out, perhaps the situation should have been less unexpected than the characters found it to be). In this month's article, a CEO, a PR manager, and a certification manager are working together to face a crisis--an ethical accusation being made against a certificant, and by extension against their organization, in the media.
Thanks are due to the excellent commentators I mentioned above--Joan Knapp of Knapp & Associates International and Melissa Hurley Alves of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Both of them have great ideas and insights into the case study.
What do you think? What could have been done to prevent the situation the characters are facing--and what can they do to resolve it now?
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Comments
Let me preface my comments by saying that I am not an expert in certification, so bear that in mind.
But a few things occurred to me in reading this case study:
1. It seems to me like the very FIRST thing they should've done was to call the association's attorney. Freelancing in situations like this can get you sued.
2. Both the respondents were pretty tough on the association staff for being a step or two behind. But I wonder if a crisis communications plan isn't likely to be similar to a business continuity plan - you only find the holes when you have to activate it and stuff that you didn't anticipate is happening. And any time the media - paid or unpaid (blogosphere) - gets involved, the situation can jump the rails of your neat plan pretty quickly.
3. They're panicking. The inclination, I think, is to think you have to respond in two seconds, put out the fire, move on to the next task. The association staff needs to take a BIG breath, gather all the key players in one room/on one call, and set aside a decent amount of time to game plan - what's the message? who's going to deliver it and in what formats? how do we deal with the media, the accused member, the accuser? what are the legal implications of any decisions? what happens next? and after that? and after that? No one does their best thinking alone and in a hurry.
Posted by: Elizabeth Engel | January 5, 2009 2:04 PM
If this was a PR nightmare, it's only because the association made it so. The association could have controlled the story and limited its involvement.
It sounds like this was a simple he-said, he-said story alleging fraud. The association never should have put itself in the position of being the watchdog. It should have ceded that role to the watchdogs for fraud: law enforcement.
The association might have simply issued a statement to the TV station saying Swanson filed a complaint that very day, the association will fully review the complaint, talk about how it takes all complaints seriously, discuss the complaint review process and timeframes, and stress the rigors of its certification program. Then it would've been a 10-second footnote in the story, if it even GOT mentioned.
The media here was a local television station, not a major national media outlet. This story probably would have aired once, on one newscast, and never resurfaced again. It does not sound like something that other local TV stations or newspapers, much less the national media, would have picked up. The threat to the association's credibility was minimal. It's role and involvement should have been minimal.
There was simply no justification for exposing the CEO to the dangers of a live, in-studio interview, much less a taped interview. Even then, the association could exerted control by determining the timing and location of the interview.
By putting the CEO on camera, the association catapulted itself from a nobody to an accomplice in fraud, a corrupt watchdog with a name, and a face. Now that's a PR nightmare.
Posted by: Mark Forstneger | January 6, 2009 2:46 PM