Crisis Management

Crisis is a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public and this element of surprise requires short decision time. In some cultures (e.g. Chinese) risk management represents danger and opportunity. The opportunity comes when PR practitioners get to demonstrate their skills. It is essential that PR practitioners know what people are thinking/saying about the organisation from the outside. Furthermore, crisis shows value of PR and the need of them. Crisis raises the profile, status and PR’s role in the company. It is interesting to see different perception of risk in various cultures. Some cultures such as US have risk zero tolerance. There is so much suing happening for various minor incidents. 

It could be argued that perception of risk is important in PR world and the science behind it not as much. For instance, when Toyota faced the braking problem crisis either their PR people did very poor job or were not heard by the people on the top. Engineers claimed that no mistake occurred from their side which made customers the idiots that can’t step on the breaks. Whatever Toyota says now, and however well it acts, there is a sense that it ignored the problem until it was forced to take action. Interesting was that in Japan, the lower you bow the more sorry you are. However, the CEO of Toyota did not bow low enough indicating that he is not sorry which pointed a negative light on Toyota’s image. It’s fascinating how every culture is different and a lot can be read from body language.

The War Spin

Isn’t it interesting how bad story gets turned into a good one so that Bush and Blair can get the ‘right’ story out! Like the one about saving Private Lynch. Pentagon has released a 5 minute video about the mission to save comrade which is just enough to get the picture but nothing more. Nobody gets any details or any prove of this operation. This was a great plan to look good in the eyes of the public. The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves. Doesn’t it come handy that she has no recollection of the whole episode and probably never will?

To send message to the public that US presence in Iraq is essential and that the regime is crumbling, they put on a little theatre where Iraqis came out on the street with white flags. It is all about maximum imaginary and minimum insight. Just like all reporters sitting in the office, sipping on coffee in Doha, far from the danger of battle fields yet still writing stories about the war in Iraq. They would watch Fox news and then write about it to newspapers.  What kind of journalism is that? And is that a quality material they are feeding us because we all know that the real information is away from cameras. This war is all about controlling the message. There are no dialogues or debates, only controlled message that gets to the public. So yes, war has always been and will always be one big spin!

Here is a video of Private Lynch story, make up your own mind!