The Role of Crisis Management by the Public Relations Specialist - Essay Example

Public Relations Public relations have been defined by the website Knowthis.com as, “the cultivation of favourable relations for organizations and products with its key publics through the use of a variety of communications channels and tools.” The role of public relations is not just communication but much more. The public relations department build awareness and a favourable image for the company and the client. It monitors the news and events so that they are up to date with information about their clients and companies. Public relations department play a vital role during crisis management and help in building goodwill about the company to the target market and community through special programs and philanthropic work. In this paper we will specifically talk about the role of crisis management by the public relations specialist. Crisis management is a new field in public relations management. The activities for crisis management should be proactive so that potential forecasts can be recognised and corrective measures can be taken. The basic pattern that is followed is to identify the crisis situation, minimize the effect and recover from the crisis. James E. Lukaszewski, has given seven dimensions to of crisis communication management. These are: Operations; Victims; Trust/credibility; Behaviour; Professional expectations; Ethics; and Lessons learned. The operations dimension includes responses such as: candour, explanation, declaration, contrition, consultation, commitment and restitution. The victim management dimension has cycles and all victims move through these cycles as they resolve the situation. These cycles are: recognition of impact, seeking retribution, and severely distorted recollection. The third dimension is based on trust and credibility. Some behaviour such as explaining problems and the willingness to talk openly, with respecting the victims all illustrate the credibility of the organisation. The behaviour dimension shows us the negative behaviour demonstrated by the companies work against them in crisis situations. These negative behaviours include: inconsistency, little preparation, arrogance, minimizing the needs of the victims and not responding to them. The professional expectation dimension includes the standards involved in the industry. For the food industry there would be standards such as Public Relations Society of Americas (PRSA) Code of Professional Standards and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators. In the ethical dimension there are some questions which need to be answered. These questions could be, what did they know and when did they know it? What alternative actions are available? What ethical principles or standards of conduct are involved or at issue? Is it really the companys problem? How could this have been avoided? There are many more questions; these are just a few examples. The last dimension is the lesson learned dimension. In this the company should learn from experience and take the necessary action to avoid such future problems. We will compare the crisis situation of two companies and the necessary actions taken by them to resolve the situation. The two companies that we have considered in this paper are McDonalds-America and McDonalds-Australia with Johnson and Johnson’s Tylenol. The crisis faced by these two companies has been very famous around the world. Both companies handled the situation in very different ways and we will discuss the impact of their public relations on the whole company. The Tylenol Crisis According to Tamara Kaplan, The Pennsylvania State University, the Tylenol crisis started in 1982 when seven people who had taken an extra strength Tylenol capsule died. These deaths took place in Chicago. The capsule was laced with cyanide. The capsules contained 65 milligrams of cyanide while the required amount to kill a person is only seven micrograms. The conclusion was that somebody had tampered with the capsules. Food and Drug Administrators advised people not to take Tylenol. It was discovered that the tampering had been done once the drug had reached Illinois. These capsules were from four different manufacturing lots and the person responsible had put a lot of effort in lacing some capsules with cyanide before putting them on the shelf. This situation caused panic in the country. This incident led to more product tampering and many people were admitted into hospitals on just the suspicion of poisoning. The company was in a dilemma, Tylenol was their most profitable and famous drug. They had to take corrective action, marketing experts were under the opinion that the company was doomed and that no drug could ever be sold under the brand name. Everybody’s hopes were low and nobody knew what the company would do. Johnson and Johnson handled the situation so well and their public relations handling for this situation is considered as the best resolution in history. They solved the problem in two phases. The first phase involved correcting the situation and the second phase involved the public relations. The second phase was thoroughly planned, the planning for this phase started from the implementation of the first phase. The company took immediate action that is as soon as they found out that the deaths were caused by their capsules. For the company the victims came first as well as the consumers. They immediately asked everybody not to consume these tablets and continue with this until it was not determined about the tampering of the products. The company recalled all the bottles from the market, 31 million bottles were recalled with a value of 100 million dollars. These corrective actions were appreciated by the media and the consumers. Along with the above mentioned corrective actions the company took part in locating the person who had tampered with the drug. Through this they established good relations with the police, the FBI and the Food and Drug Administration. A journalist for the Washington Post, Jerry Knight said, “Johnson & Johnson has effectively demonstrated how a major business ought to handle a disaster,” also in his article he said that, “This is no Three Mile Island accident in which the companys response did more damage than the original incident.” A newspaper article from the Kansas City Times by Rick Atkinson consisted of interviews with the CEO’s of the company who talked about the situation openly with the journalist and through him the public. The Chairman of the board of corporation, James, E. Burke that the decision to recall the bottles and warn the consumers were not given much thought but were an immediate response to the situation. When three of the victims died, the executives of the company wept. The last stage of action in the first phase was to exchange all Tylenol capsules for Tylenol tablets. This cost the company millions of dollars but they took this decision to save their company image and reputation. According to the website Mallenbaker.net, the same type of situation happened in 1986 and the company was prepared as it had learnt its lesson from past experience. They recalled all bottles from around the country. This was the first phase; the corrective action now came the second phase which involved the comeback of the drug Tylenol. A huge promotional campaign was launched to bring Tylenol back to its number position as an over the counter drug and get back its 37 per cent market share prior to the crisis. When Tylenol was reintroduced it came with a triple-seal tamper- resistant packaging. To make sure that consumers’ started to reuse the product the packaging company McNeil Consumer products gave a $2.50 off coupon for the purchase of Tylenol. Sales people were to make presentations to doctors and the medical community to promote their support of the drug. All these decisions were vital to the company’s success and their ability to handle the crisis so well. These decisions could be made because the company had just opened their public relations department; also they had a corporate business philosophy. They included all departments during the crisis so that everyone was a part of it and felt the need to fix it at their level. They kept their main mission to be the public interest. The first decision was taken by the public relations department with support from the top management. The company cooperated with the media and never hid anything from the public. They answered all questions honestly, without the coverage from the media the company would not have been able to make a comeback from this crisis situation. The company was willing to bear costs just so that the consumers were safe and this showed the consumers that they mattered to Johnson and Johnson. All in all, this is a good example of public relations and a successful example of crisis management. The company was able to pull back and come on top once again. The McDonald’s Crisis The way the two countries responded to the Super Size Me movie shows us an effective and ineffective strategy. The two countries we are talking about here are Australia and America. The movie Super Size Me is based on a man who decided to eat McDonalds three times a day for a whole month. After a few days of eating these meals, Morgan Spurlock started to complain about depression, sexual dysfunction, chest pains, shortness of breath and more. According to Lawrence Donegan, “Morgan had to follow three rules during this experiment, he had to eat every item on the McDonalds menu at least once; he could only eat what was available over the counter (no special orders); and he had to super size his meal whenever a counter assistant offered him the option.” After the 30 days of eating this food when the doctors checked him he had gained 25lbs and his cholesterol had risen by 65 points. The doctor’s also told him that the food had caused serious liver damage. After all this food it took Spurlock around 14 months to get back to the health condition he was in earlier to the movie. This movie is McDonald’s worst nightmare. It gave the company negative publicity, the management in the US did not know what to do and how to handle this crisis situation. The film released in America in May 2004. McDonald’s America knew about it for four months from the time that it started screening and they still didn’t take any action or start planning their public relations strategy. They can not complain that they did not have enough time because they had plenty of time. The company did not make enough communication effort with the public it actually avoided interviews during the screening and the filming of the movie. “The executives told the media that they had only seen clips,” as mentioned by Christopher Galloway in Public Relations Issues and Crisis Management. The company tried to put the blame on the consumers by saying things such as, it is their choice what they want to eat and that obesity is a complex issue as it depends on what the person wants to eat. The company did not take personal responsibility for the issue. The executives continued with their statements about the movie being a misconception about reality. Instead of facing the problem and acknowledging the public with it and their measures to correct the issues, they completely just avoided them. McDonald’s executives did not even want to admit that there was a problem as such. The actions that the company took such as introducing salads to its menu and eliminating its supersize option, came a little too late. The impact of the documentary by this time was too strong to counter. According to Kim Severson, “the company for the past couple of years has been on a vigorous campaign to remake itself. McDonalds has launched a new line of salads last year and has begun a new "healthy lifestyle initiative" earlier this month that is the largest private-sector anti-obesity effort to date.” The company did not have a public relations strategy to help the franchise owners and could not respond to any questions that were being asked by the public. The company had to bear losses and lost many sales just because they were not able to counter the attack brought about by this issue. This case shows us an unsuccessful example of public relations. None of the seven dimensions which we have discussed earlier were put into effect by McDonalds while many of them were followed by Johnson and Johnson. Planning and being able to respond at the right time helps a lot in crisis management and public relations. A company can incur huge losses just because they were not able or did not want to make a statement to the public regarding the issue. If the public and the victims are communicated with properly just as the crisis hits, the impact can be curtailed. The above two cases show us what to do in a crisis situation and also what not to do. We can easily avoid these situations with a proactive approach through planning and a public relations department. Also if the company comes together and tackles the problem as one team it can help resolve the crisis quicker. Only the top executives will not be able to tackle the problem, employees at all levels need to be involved and commit to bringing the company back to its original position and taking it further. Bibliography 1. Atkinson, Rick. (1982) "The Tylenol Nightmare: How a Corporate Giant Fought Back." The Kansas City Times 2. Sheehan, Mark. 2005. ‘Super Size Me: A comparative analysis of responses to crisis by McDondald’s America and McDonald’s Australia.’ Public Relations Issues and Crisis Management. Eds. Chris Galloway and Kwamena Kwansah- Aidoo. 2nd ed. Southbank, Victoria: Thomson: 67-79.  http://books.google.com.pk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ksS-mYb7kbAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA67&dq=Sheehan,+Mark.+2005.+%E2%80%98Super+Size+Me:+A+comparative+analysis+of+responses+to++&ots=G0uZwg3F8X&sig=nAhL0O9Tbr_lIh5av2sUmiKNhvQ#PPA67,M1 3. Companies in Crisis - What to do when it all goes wrong (2008) Mallenbaker.net http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/CSRfiles/crisis02.html 4. Crisis Management, Free Management Library http://www.managementhelp.org/crisis/crisis.htm 5. James E. Lukaszewski, (1999) Seven Dimensions of Crisis Communication Management: A Strategic Analysis and Planning Model, Published in Ragans Communications Journal, http://www.e911.com/monos/A001.html 6. Kim Severson, (2004) McDonalds Super Size Me, http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2004/McDonalds-Super-Size21apr04.htm 7. Lawrence Donegan (2004) Three burgers a day…, The Observer http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,1233176,00.html 8. Public Relations, Principles of Marketing, http://www.knowthis.com/tutorials/principles-of-marketing/public-relations/1.htm 9. Tamara Kaplan, The Pennsylvania State University (1998) The Tylenol Crisis: How Effective Public Relations Saved Johnson & Johnson. http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/TylenolMurders/crisis.html Read More