The overarching goals for the public relations professional are the often the same regardless of the crisis—craft the perfect response that will be honest, transparent, effective, and if possible, make the crisis “go away” as quickly as possible. The quicker the general public moves on, the quicker the organization can get back to fulfilling its primary mission—right?
Today, responding to crisis requires public relations professionals to think and act more quickly as a result of social media. Often, we must respond without a full grasp of the implications of our response. Often, we must respond without all of the details. Often, the result is that we fall into a trap of thinking and reacting moment by moment. I know because I’ve made that mistake.
Call me a fool, an irrational optimist, or something else altogether, but I’ve learned there is at least one important positive to a crisis—you are exposed to journalists and mass media outlets that you usually unsuccessfully beg for attention. You may be at the beginning of a long and good relationship—if you handle the situation well. That means being accommodating (a difficult task), being unafraid to answer tough questions (an even more difficult task), and above all else, keeping good contact information for future use.
My case in point is a situation two weeks after the “pep band incident” of 2012 at Southern Miss. I received a call from a national writer who wanted to follow up on the incident and “see what we learned.” You can imagine our initial reluctance. The crisis had largely passed, and even though we received some positive response for the University’s handling of the incident, media coverage for a week or so had been overwhelmingly critical of the young men and women involved. We relented though, and the result was a fair story that reminded people of the incident, but was also complimentary of the University’s response.
But I take particular pride in the work done in the months following that article. We kept in touch with the writer and continued to successfully pitch story ideas—the result to date has been two additional national stories that remind readers of great athletes at Southern Miss. We had not made the original story worse by our participation, and the subsequent stories would not have occurred had we resisted the initial inquiry, failed to keep contact with the writer, or not been thinking long-term.
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