This week we have heard a new catch phrase…
With the economy is disarray due to dramatic overspending, company’s releasing employees faster than the dollar is dropping in value and national sports heroes’ soul searching and using the media as a confessional we now have a wonderful new term…
With the economy is disarray due to dramatic overspending, company’s releasing employees faster than the dollar is dropping in value and national sports heroes’ soul searching and using the media as a confessional we now have a wonderful new term…
PR Nightmare
Tonight’s news showcased the latest PR Nightmare for the new president’s admin
istration, the resignation of the second nomination for Commerce Secretary. This merry go round of recommendations and IRS plagued nominations has created a media catastrophe for the Obama camp. Yet they are not alone… Hawaii is a blissful state with perfect weather, beautiful beaches and a legislature who just voted themselves a 36% pay increase. Is it me or are you wondering what they were thinking? The article printed in the All Hawaii News begins with
out latest catch phrase “Hawaii legislators face a PR nightmare this year” yes even in paradise there are nightmares.Another PR Nightmare, no not A-Rod that would take up the entire blog to talk about the mess of that situation, is Google. Yes that’s right, the giant web browser was caught
with their hands on the keyboard! Imagine everyone’s surprise when they Googled the U.S. Government, WebMD or Joel Olsten and got the message “this site may harm your computer.” A single keystroke caused one hour’s worth of error messages that affected the entire world. This media booboo was reported by PC World and has officially been dubbed “Google Goof”Did anyone say Pizz
a? That’s right even my favorite Friday night dinner suffers from PRN syndrome. Topics for conversation with the pizza companies’ are to get ready for a food fight! They need to be prepared for their own possible PR Nightmare. PMQ, the pizza industry magazine, talks about the battle between Papa Johns and Pizza Hut a “hand tossed” PR Nightmare that took place and should be a lesson to other pizzerias.No person, industry or government agency can hide from this latest phrase only to hope that they hire the right PR professionals to dream away the nightmare and wake up to a sunny happy day.
Very interesting how a common term in used in many of my communication courses is hitting the media world … again. It makes perfect sense that it would with the economy in its current state. When consumers are struggling financially, we want others to be accountable for their finances. If they indulge, we don’t like it. If they lay-off workers or cut things we want, we don’t like that either. We’re hard to please. What we do want is for others to suffer with us. If they don’t, we feel cheated and alone and no one wants to feel alone.
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting blog. While doing my internship at the radio station this week we had a few hiccups that could have been classified as minor PR nightmares (incidentally, one of them was caused by Google). This just goes to prove that no operation is perfect and even though everything is advancing technologically nothing will be 100% accurate. I had not heard of the Pizza Hut vs. Papa John's fight. You're right with your last line, it's amazing what a good PR department can do for a company.
ReplyDeleteI felt this was a very good blog. With the way the economy is right now, it seems the slightest hiccup can cause a PR Nightmare. I did find it surprising that Hawaii would give themselves a 36% pay increase with the economy like this. Most everybody is making pay cuts and laying people off and Hawaii decides to increase their pay, just seems a little odd. The Google scare probably caused many people to stop searching on the website, at least for a short period of time like a few days or something, but I don’t think Google will have a problem losing any of its popularity.
ReplyDeletePR Nightmares indeed.
ReplyDeleteA simple forward slash.. And as I read, they don't have any fail-safe systems in place to avoid that. Well, embarrassing as it may be, at least it wasn't something they couldn't fix. I'll still use Google. ^_^
I hadn't heard about that Papa John's and Pizza Hut court thing til I just read your blog. Wow. . . what some companies will do to shut down the competition.
Good Post!