4 PR crisis missteps to avoid
Minimizing the damage after an organization faces a firestorm is crucial to repairing a brand’s image. These mistakes can make for a bigger cleanup.
1. Don’t reinforce what everyone is saying.
In 2012, Matt Turner shared a viral Tumblr post, creating a PR disaster for Progressive Insurance. Turner claimed that after his sister’s death in a 2010 car accident, Progressive hired an attorney to defend the at-fault driver just to avoid paying her claim.
After people started firing volleys at Progressive on Facebook and Twitter, the company responded with tweets copied and pasted over and over:
“It’s important to show sensitivity to a victim’s family, not only in a court of law but also in the court of public opinion,” says personal injury attorney Marc Lamber, member of the Lamber Goodnow legal team. Progressive eventually erased its canned tweets, but the nightmare continued.
They tried to tweet about something new, but they couldn’t change the conversation:
The lesson: Identify the negative perception of your business and don’t reinforce it. In this case, Progressive looked uncaring, and their copy-and-paste tweets reinforced the negativity.
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