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Who
Stepped In It
Reputation Management: When blind fury gets in the way of solid thinking, bad things can happen. For instance, according to a USA Today story on Monday, independent truckers planned this week to clog highways and call in sick to protest diesel fuel costs and shrinking profits. By mid-week, the story was big news in all the major media. This public relations strategy is earning truckers the publicity they sought, but unfortunately, it's negative publicity. The backfire they hear isn't their engines, it's an angry public reacting to their careless public relations plan.
When everyone is in the same boat, it's not a good idea to raise your head high and claim you're special. That's a quick way to hurt your reputation for a long time.
The trucker's beef is with their elected officials. They should let their lobbyists, political contributions, and voting power handle it. Stomping on hard-working people who are trying to get to work or needing to buy items to take care of their families is a poor public relations strategy.
Here are some PR tips to consider on a campaign like this:
- Identify your target audience. Who has the ability to help you accomplish your objectives? Focus your campaign on them.
- Develop and communicate a message that resonates. Don’t pull a stunt that seems to have no relation to your desired endgame.
- Opportunities for PR exposure are limited; don’t waste your opportunity without a well developed message and concrete objectives.
- Think through your strategy and make sure there are no unintended consequences.
- Discuss it with people outside your industry bubble.
- Use a PR tactic that makes the public take your side, not side against you.
- Just because you can generate a story doesn't mean you should.
- Don't give bloggers a reason to make you the meal of the day. You don't need the blogoshere on fire with negative comments painting your industry black. Stories live forever on the Internet.
- Don't give your competition an easy "remember when …"
- Don't blatantly give people who regulate your industry a reason to dislike you.
- Build allies not enemies with your public relations plans. Allies will come in handy the next time someone tries to move in on your territory or unnecessarily alter your livelihood.
- It takes tons of time, effort and money to rebuild an image damaged by a PR tactic gone awry. Strive to enhance your organization's reputation with PR tactics that endear fans and appeal to new audiences.
- Reputation management is a day-by-day, methodical process to continually gain and retain inches. Businesses that maintain their ground do so because they avoid reckless public relations plans.
Can you name a strategy that would have made the independent trucker's voices heard, and benefited the public?
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