Performing public relations during a crisis

Underlying assumptions:

Public relations practitioners play a crucial role in crises, the same role they have every day: maintaining and improving their organization’s relationships by effectively communicating with its target audiences.

Public relations practitioners are not normally responsible for resolving the underlying problem(s) that created a crisis situation. They cannot independently determine their organization’s actions. A public relations unit’s goal during a crisis is to get the organization through the situation with as little damage to its reputation, credibility, and key relationships as possible. In some cases, — e.g., Tylenol —effective crisis communication can actually enhance an organization’s reputation. Although crises demand immediate responses, public relations practitioners need to maintain a long-term perspective that aims to enhance long-lasting relationships with important publics. Sometimes this requires unpleasant or painful, short-term actions. http://www.nku.edu/~turney/prclass/tips/crisis_response.pdf