Does your company have a crisis plan with a public relations component? If not, check out this parable.
Say the President, who continued the previous Administration’s generous bailout program for your industry, asks you to visit the White House to discuss industry progress (regress?) in 2009, and what steps you – the industry player – will be taking in 2010.
The meeting is in the morning. If you don’t live/breathe/work in DC, you would probably get to the city the night before to make sure you attend the meeting. In fact, the timing is all the more convenient as the meeting is on a Monday, so presumably you have all day Sunday without any work-related distractions to travel to DC. This is the President, after all.
When the President of the United States invites you to visit, and your industry’s bottom-line is the sole topic of discussion, you… DO. NOT. STAND. HIM. UP.
Yet, that’s precisely what three of the top six biggest U.S. bank CEOs did this past Monday. While they were graciously patched in via conference call, such public relations crisis blunders are inexcusable. The impression conveyed by the absence is ignorant aloofness at best, and sheer contempt and arrogance at worst. It doesn’t matter if a missing CEO has been supportive of the Administration’s efforts and openly sympathetic to Americans affected by the economic crisis. When you skip such an important meeting, what do you think the press will seize on – your caring words, or your empty chair at Obama’s table? All of a sudden, you’ve switched from thought leadership to public relations crisis management mode.
The episode is reminiscent of the auto industry executives who flew on private jets to demand bailout money from Congress. An expert in crisis public relations would never let a client’s corporate image go to waste over such mistakes.
When creating a crisis PR plan, don’t just focus on getting past the big hurdles – make sure you think about the small details. After all, such mistakes provide great fodder to the ever-hungry political media.
