Kelsey Boucher – COM-CLASS.WLC.EDU

©2019 Preparedex, LLC, All Rights Reserved

The business you work for just let you know that there has been a financial crisis and they have to let go of 20% of all employees. You have 1 hour before the media holds a press conference and interviews you as a representative of the company. What are you going to do?

Crisis communication is a field of public relations centered on effectively managing inevitable risks and crises within an organization. Emergency situations are a frequent occurrence for established and large businesses and require proper preparation, management and effective communication. PreparedEx is an online resource that publishes articles, podcast episodes and emergency simulations to help companies build crisis resilience through preparedness exercises. Their team is composed of crisis communication experts that have real-life public relations experiences dealing with emergency situations. There are 3 aspects of crisis communication that PreparedEx discusses on their website; crisis preparedness, crisis management, and crisis resilience. First, we will start by briefly explaining 5 of the most common types of business crises as described on PreparedEx.

5 Different Types of Business Crises

Personnel Crisis

A personnel crisis is when the personnel or stakeholders of a company are caught engaging in illegal activities or unethical behavior. An example of this might include using racial slurs or sexual assault.

Technological Crisis

When a company has malfunctioning, compromised or vulnerable software this is called a technological crisis. This includes any cyber attacks on company data.

Financial Crisis

A financial crisis occurs when a business accumulates debt or experiences significant losses. These crises can happen internally and externally through insider-trading, poor finance management or decreased sales.

Natural Crisis

A natural crisis is 100% external and unavoidable and caused by natural disasters. This includes flooding, earthquakes or disease pandemics.

Organizational Misconduct Crisis

An organizational crisis is when company managers make a decision on behalf of the company without considering the negative consequences to stakeholders. This may include withholding information from customers, making false promises about products, or taking bribes.

In preparation for some of these crises, PreparedEx recommends that companies establish crisis teams to divide the tasks that come with emergency situations. Crisis preparedness also involves identifying risk factors to the company. What problems are most likely going to arise? Injuries, natural disasters, fraud? Lastly, PreparedEx has exercises that simulate different crises for businesses to practice their public relations skills.

For crisis management, PreparedEx provides podcasts about the most common challenges about managing emergency situations. They urge business owners to share critical information with their internal and external publics at the proper times using the proper channels. PreparedEx pushes response effectiveness, monitoring the crisis will maximize a company’s power to manage any situation.

Crisis resilience is the process a company goes through to recover their reputation and brand after a crisis. PreparedEx covers crisis resilience that explores operational, community and reputation recovery.

PreparedEx has hundreds of other topics relating to crisis communication. Here are just a few examples of other crisis communication resources they offer public relations professionals!

No matter what generation you are, social media is virtually unavoidable. Social media is essential for organizations to thrive among all generations and can be used to enhance business to public relationships through creativity, content sharing and online engagement. Today, we will be discussing one of the most successful social media campaigns of our generation and dissecting the effectiveness of digital storytelling through the Chipotle Mexican Grill scarecrow case study.

Chipotle is a popular, American, fast food restaurant known for its fresh and organic ingredients. In 2013, the company launched an award-winning ad campaign, short film and mobile app with messages condemning the consumption of processed foods. The company successfully communicated to their followers online the negative environmental and health consequences of eating industrially grown and genetically altered foods.

The campaign, film and game feature a scarecrow that is meant to educate the viewers about the pollution, soil erosion and unsustainability of industrially food production. The scarecrow is shown working in a factory that is controlled by giant, robotic crows and they control all the industrially grown foods. How did this harsh message become a viral sensation? Chipotle used these 3 different public relations techniques to effectively communicate their brand qualities over social media. Chipotle used social media to turn a fast food restaurant into an environmentally conscious brand and advocate for the planet.

Technique #1
We first have to recognize that social media is by nature conversational. Nearly all social media platforms have a method for company-user interaction, this is typically done through comment sections. Successful campaigns will engage their audiences and use the individual conversations online to create a community and build relationships. Chipotle was successful with this campaign because they used all the PARC principles for success.
Participatory: They interacted with their online community and did not intimidate them with sales messages.
Authentic: They held genuine conversations about real issues and did not force attitudes.
Resourceful: They provided their online community with useful, helpful information and used that to earn trust.
Credible: They built a trustworthy reputation on the important environmental issues and acted as a source of knowledge on the matter.
Technique #2
Social media is designed to be a source of entertainment. The Scarecrow film and mobile game were used as entertainment through digital storytelling. Chipotle made their story resourceful, immersive and interesting which is one of the central features of social media.

Technique #3
The ultimate goal of Chipotle’s 2013 social media campaign was to create offline engagement with the company. Offline engagement leads to increased company sales and positive brand associations. The offline interaction led Chipotle to win two Grammy awards, 12 million views on YouTube and lead conversations about the impact of industrialization and the environment.

These techniques require patience, dedication and honest communication. As a business, it is necessary to have a presence on social media. To excel as a public relations representative in this field, however, you need to consider the impact of audience engagement, digital storytelling and offline interaction and act on behalf of your company’s target public on social media.

Interested in learning more? You can read more about this social media case study in Social Media for Public Relations: Lessons from Four Effective Cases by Ilhem Allaguia and Harris Breslow.