"PR loves crisis"

Everywhere you look there is a crisis. It can be on a political plan or for a corporate. Who can solve the reputation and maintain trust, well Public Relation practitioners. They are the key of success or failure. I was wondering what you have to do in order to defence your client when he is in trouble,how should you communicate with the media so they won't ruine a company. I did some research and i found some techniques that helped me to understand better who PR shpuld face a crisis.

WHAT IS A CRISIS

Every organisation at a certain point faces a crisis and the outcome often depends on how they react. A crisis is “A significant business disruption which stimulates extensive news media coverage. The resulting public scrutiny will affect the organisation's normal operations and also could have a political, legal, financial and governmental impact on its business." ICM (2009) A crisis can damage the companies financial standard, business performance, reputation and major stake

What PR practitioners should do when they have to face a crisis?


According to an article(http://www.slideshare.net/) that i found while i was reading about PR and Crisis Management, crisis can cause an uproar of concern, negative WOM (word of mouth), upset customers, and negative media coverage. All of the above could be classified as negative PR, and there are a few ways that you could avoid it:
• Do not avoid responsibility. In the midst of a crisis is not the time to put the blame on someone else. Until you know the facts, do not assume that the fault is not yours.
• Do your research. Once you’ve established and understand the facts, you can respond appropriately. Do your homework, investigate the claims, and figure out your next steps from there.
• Respond in a timely manner. After reviewing the facts you can know whether or not you need to act, and how quickly. It also depends on your company, the sort of claims that are being made, and the repercussions they may entail.
• Take the appropriate actions. This can include recalls, refunds, medical assistance, litigation, and the appropriate notifications that need to come with each of these actions.
• A very important thing is that when media needs information about what happened, PR practitioners must give some answers. If there is no information from the PR the company or organization might face big problems because without no information the media can write whatever they like.

An example of crisis management can be seen by Pepsi who took the time to research and evaluate the next steps. They were accused of allowing syringes to be canned in some of their soda. Instead of first allowing the recall to take place, but while still not avoiding responsibility, they were able to ensure that syringes being canned did not take place in their factories. After time, the claims came out to be rumors, and Pepsi was saved millions of dollars a recall would have cost.

References

www.wikipedia.org

http://www.slideshare.net/