Crisis Management and Brand Image

Like the common cold in life, crises come in as many different ways in business. In 1998 Coca – Cola faced a contamination scare in Belgium and finally ended with all products’ recalling and £66 million cost. Despite a 31% drop in profits, other competitors challenged the company’s 49% share of market. Additionally, Coca – Cola had to launch costly, post – crisis advertising and PR campaigns as the majority of media described the company was “struggling to rebuild its reputation”.

Some companies believe their brand power and reputation will protect them from a crisis. Like Coca – Cola, for a long time they could not provide a clear explanation for the cause and only claimed that it was merely a bad odour. So when things went worse they lost both government and public’s trust and had to withdraw all products.
With the help of high technology and the Internet, people are asking for more scrutiny and transparency. It is no doubt now that no company will stay safe from crisis and the possible lasting damage it may cause. And for some big corporation with international awareness, they will lost more in this kind of damage and then spend another years to re-establish their brand images.

Reference:
Regester M. & Larkin J., (2005). Risk Issues and Crisis Management, 3rd Edition. Clays Ltd, St Ives plc, Great Britain.

PR in war spin

In war, whichever side may call it the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. As for PR practitioners, they job is decorating a definitely winner which is the side they belonged to, no matter what the truth is.

As seen in the BBC documentary War Spin, the US government communicators created a whole story about Private Jessica’s rescue. Everything was well designed. Iraqi forces had left the hospital long time before American Special Forces arrived with video crew. It was a review of Hollywood blockbuster Pearl Harbour and the sad point was even moved into reality, this was still an untrue fairy tale. Like Daily Mail commented before - So the Iraq War, which began in spin and lies, will end the same way. What an insult to democracy.

Ironically, Tony Blair's ex-spokesman Alastair Campbell still convinced about what they have done in Iraq. “I was privileged to be there and I'm very very proud of the part that I was able to play." He said. “"I think that Britain, far from beating ourselves up about this, should be really proud of the role that we played in changing Iraq from what it was to what it is now becoming."

For more information click here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/3007953.stm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1193289/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-So-Iraq-War-began-spin-lies-end-way-What-insult-democracy.html

Something about social media and pulic relations

What is social media?
how can we use them in public relations?
Huh, sounds interesting.
And this is a super freshman's understanding about these questiones.

How to manage your own blog

A good blog always comes from attarctive news, objective points and useful information the blogger provided.

There are several kinds of blogs people often write about. Like expert insight about their professionals or things happen around, breaking news which not found anywhere else, sharing ideas about things already being talked about and so on.

Additionally, we can use pictures and videoes to polish our blogs and attarct more people.

All in all, it is not easy to manage a blog well, however, you should keep doing it ever since you started and never give up. And this is the most important point.

More information from Blogging and video workshop:

Blogging and video workshop

View more presentations from Matt holland.