Crisis public relations is a part of public relations, it became more and more important because of the fierce rivalry amongst every walk of life. The key point of crisis public relations is to combine prevention with control rather than solve problem after happens. There are a number of examples of crisis public relations.
Haier is famous of it’s after sale service, it focused on offering best-of-breed service solutions to its customers. Once there is an emergence issue, Haier will try their best to solve it immediately. It may cost, but it reduces the negative effect of its public reputation. Here is the example of “Haier”
On 22th may 2006, a customer bought a fridge from Haier, because kinds of quality problem, Haier changed exchanged another fridge after three days. This customer felt angry, and then wrote his un-satisfaction in blog. As soon as Haier heared the case, they sent two employees had a face-to-face communication about why supplied the bridge after three days. In addition, Haier sent two watermelons as gift. Finally, the customer came out with another blog said,” I was really moved by Haier, it made me feel that I was fully respected”.
From this case, we can see Hair has a quickly respond about its publics, and familiar with manipulation of relationship. They have done very good at crisis public relations.
Another example of crisis public relations is Sanlu Company. When I mentioned Sanlu, I think most people still remember effect of the posionous milk powder, which added melamine in order to increase weight and protein content. Obviously, this was a disaster of dairy Industry. Twenty-two corporate were involved in melamine positioning, they were all have a glory history, and however, they suffered from melamine at last. During the Sanlu incident was explored overwhelming, Baidu also plunged into a crisis of confidence. People suspect that Baidu have deleted and reduced negative information about melamine positioning of Sanlu.(here is the image that the prem minister look after the victim)
We have learnt a lot, some company tries their best to improve service quality in order to build their goodwill and maintain reputation, which is the aim of public relations. However, some company tries to do everything include telling lies, hidden truth, whatever happened, they makes full uses of public relations to achieve own profit, but the result probably not like what they want. They make the issues even worse.
This case indicates that crisis public relations became to an extremely important issue.
From my own opinion, there are several points we should obey:
*Avoiding a Public Relations Disaster Before It Happens
*Keep good relationship with publics, makes the customer first
*Improve product quality, public relations cannot do everything for organization
*Improve transparency, hidden truth will makes things worse(see the example of Taco Bell, which would be more persuasive)
*Form a emergence expert group who responsible for public and media
There should be more suggestion of crisis public relations, so how do you think?
The crisis management have a system, and PR can join in any part. The system has the following 4 parts.
ReplyDeleteImportant and emergence
Important but not emergence
Not important and not emergence
Not important but emergence
To solve the problem before it happened is deal the problem important but not emergence. And it is a part of Crisis management. It
I do believe that interactive with customs is the most important part for PR. Some companies do a very good job on it, such as Haier company in your blog.
Block information will never be a good idea because it cost a lot. By the way, baidu sucks.
Somehow, I believed the question in your blog is about should PR lie, because your essay is telling 2 different behaviors of 2 companies. Haier, explain everything. Sanlu, lies from start, and block information. My answer will is A PR should never lie, because we can’t make friends by lie.