33. Crisis Communication in PR

Public relation is the practice of building and enhancing the reputation of an organization or individual. It acts as a liaison between a corporate and its stakeholders. Amongst the responsibilities that fall under public relation, crisis communication is the most crucial, especially keeping in mind today’s digital influenced world.

What is a crisis in PR? A crisis is anything that has the potential of hurting your client’s reputation. Crisis communication is the messaging a PR professional puts out to deal with a crisis on behalf of their client. In scenarios like this, the message needs to be carefully planned and crafted to defuse the situation. Crisis can be briefly classified into three categories:

Strategic Crisis: This is the crisis because of the operation of an organisation. This type of crisis has a direct impact on the working of an organization and affects internal as well as external stakeholders.

Existential Crisis: Existential crisis, as the name suggests is the risks that are already existing. This type of crisis can rarely be prevented. Some industries such as logistics, chemicals, aviation, etc. are more prone to an existential crisis.

Perceived Crisis: Perceived crisis are the risk in the change of the perception towards the organisation. These type of crisis have a direct impact on reputation. It has the potential to change the perception of your stakeholders towards the organisation. 

The risk for crisis has always been there, for some industry, it is more than others. But, that risk is now heightened by manifolds. Today, almost everybody is on the internet. It takes less than a minute for things to blow out of proportion when it comes to customers ranting on social media platforms or sometimes even fake news for that matter. Crisis criteria could change from organisation to organisation, but anything that harms the reputation is to be dealt with properly.

Take the Zomato crisis in August 2019 for example, the crisis started from one tweet and it went viral in minutes with each and everybody commenting on the situation. The food aggregator dealt with the situation amazingly. Their message was very well crafted and had a strong message which spoke volume of the company’s value. That is a good example of crisis communication. Johnson & Johnson Tylenol crisis is another example of effective crisis communication. No matter how prepared you are, a crisis can hit you anytime. To ensure that it doesn’t harm the organisation effective crisis communication is the key.