Running Afowl: Chicken Sandwich Sparks Controversy
By now, we’ve all heard about the Chick-fil-A crisis and the resulting fall-out from CEO Dan Cathy’s comments about same-sex marriage. It sparked a big furor and an intense reaction across the country.
Before that, it was the Ralph Lauren U.S. Olympic team uniform controversy. ABC News had reported that the uniforms were made in China and lawmakers and media observers lashed out.
Then, at the midnight showing of the latest Warner Brothers Batman movie, a young man opened fire in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, killing 12 and wounding many others.
All three of these incidents were crises that no one could have anticipated. All three, though wide ranging in their severity, had consequences that had to be dealt with by the corporate entities involved.
- Chick-fil-A corporate seemingly did not get into the fray of what happened, which took on a life of its own, especially with social media. This was a situation where the company almost let outside factors move it to the next phase because it was such a politically charged issue. The company did have a press release on its site, but to my knowledge, it wasn’t cited in media outlets.
- Ralph Lauren corporate seemed to scramble for a response to the uniform flap, vowing to make the 2016 Olympic uniforms in the USA and issuing a statement: “Ralph Lauren promises to lead the conversation within our industry and our government to address the issue to increase manufacturing in the United States.”
- In the case of Warner Bros, the company acted quickly following the shooting: publicity for the movie was stopped, a Paris premiere was canceled, and a trailer for a future Warner film, “Gangster Squad,” was pulled from theaters. The company also issued a statement expressing its sadness over what had happened. It was later reported that the company worked with the governor of Colorado to set up a fund for the victims, which showed compassion and sensitivity.
Often, you can’t anticipate a crisis. But if you are a company selling products or services, you need to consider that at some point, something could go awry. For this reason, it is good to have a crisis communications plan. If you have a good communications plan in place, you can at least have your ducks in a row for certain aspects, so you can be proactive instead of reactive when dealing with the crisis.
It is also helpful to make sure your public relations firm is involved with marketing, strategic planning and important decisions that affect the public, whether it be customers, employees or internal audiences such as a board of directors, donors, members of an affiliated group or referral sources.
Instead of reinventing the wheel on crisis management tips, I would like to share a colleague’s recent blog post that outlined great tips in a comprehensive and informative way. Here are three:
1) We have identified potential crisis situations within our organization, and we have developed a communications strategy for responding to each.
2) In the event of a crisis, we are prepared to quickly communicate with all our target audiences, including but not limited to, staff, volunteers, consumers, constituents, donors, shareholders, elected officials, media and the general public.
3) We have established a crisis team and a formal notification plan to key audiences.
For the rest of the tips, click here.
Has a company you represented ever been faced with a crisis? How did you handle it? How did it play out in the media? Do you have any additional tips to share?