IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Crisis Communication

  • Spring Break Travel, Iceland, and Authentic Advertising

    Spring Break Travel, Iceland, and Authentic Advertising

    March begins the season of spring break for college students and faculty. It’s a necessary period to disconnect, reflect, and have some fun in the midst of midterms and difficult coursework, jobs, or internships.

    But just because we might be escaping our day-to-day lives for a week doesn’t mean we escape the myriad ways that advertising and integrated marketing communication impacts us and our decisions. One huge way IMC impacts us: how do we decide where to go?

    Travel agents, tourism bureaus, hotels, airlines, and other stakeholders create vibrant campaigns. Few have had to deal with a crisis as large as a volcanic eruption.

    Inspired by Iceland

    Eyjafjallajokull-fimmvorduhals-eruption-iceland11
    Eyjafjallajökull erupting. Via adventures.is

    In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull (an Icelandic volcano) erupted and caused historic disruptions, including ash fall that shut down flights across Europe for almost a week.

    Tourism to Iceland fell by 30%. Inspired by Iceland was a campaign that involved the whole country. The president of the country at the time, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, stopped the entire country in its tracks (schools, workplaces and more) to ask for citizens to submit positive stories–which they did.

    The campaign chronicled its success in this video:

    The huge catalogue of positive Iceland experiences included celebrity testimonials. Webcams provided live footage of some of the most tourist-attracting natural wonders. The results of the campaign included more than £137 million in extra tourism revenue and more than 22 million stories shared.

    That last part is pretty amazing, because Iceland’s population is fewer than 350,000 people.

    The Brooklyn Brothers, the campaign’s creators, shared a case study on their website with more details.

    What Other Travel Experiences Can Take from Inspired By Iceland

    The award-winning campaign was effective because the agency running it knew its target audience: socially conscious millennials wary of traditional advertising ploys. The Brooklyn Brothers successfully gathered authenticity and storytelling.

    What would be more likely to get you to travel to a destination: a generic, high-production-value slideshow of landscapes with a peppy but robotic disembodied narrator telling you to Visit XYZ? Or a series of pictures of black sand beaches and a story from Olaf, a real Icelander, telling you about his afternoon on Iceland’s south coast? What is more authentic–a curated video or a live webcam broadcast?

    If you picked the second answer for any of those, you’re part of the target audience for Inspired by Iceland.

    Authenticity in marketing is now more important than ever, Business.com writes. That’s counterintuitive for some brands, which strive to carefully curate a perfect facade. Consumers’ desire for authenticity also makes it difficult for brands that lack a clear contribution to “the greater good”–without that corporate social responsibility, authenticity just means admitting that a brand wants a profit.

    The travel and tourism industry has always been about selling experiences, not goods. The next time you start googling destinations, consider what experiences you’re being sold–and whether they’re true-to-life or inauthentic ones.

    –Nikki Kroushl

  • New Season, New Drama

    For 7.8 million people, winter wasn’t too cold and lonely.  Their break was filled with anticipation and whispers about Juan Pablo Galavis, the new bachelor on ABC’s hit show The Bachelor.  As the first Latino to be featured on the show, his good looks and Spanish accent had women across the country swooning.  Now, almost three weeks later, Juan Pablo is still causing a stir – but for very different reasons.

    In an interview this past week, Juan Pablo gave a very controversial answer to whether he thought The Bachelor should make a gay or bisexual version of the show.

    “I respect [gay people], but I don’t think it is a good example for kids to watch that,” he said.  “There’s this thing about gay people — it seems to be, I don’t know if I’m mistaken or not — I have a lot of friends like that, but they’re more pervert in a sense.”

    Bachelor Nation recoiled at Galavis’ less-than-sexy response.  Some Juan Pablo fans rushed to his defense, but members of the gay community were more outspoken.  One Facebook user accused Galavis of knowing exactly what he was saying, as “pervertido” is the Spanish word for pervert.

    Even Bachelor producers felt the need to do some public relations acrobatics.  Producers tried to shift any blame away from the show and entirely onto Galavis, saying “Juan Pablo’s comments were careless, thoughtless and insensitive, and in no way reflect the views of the network, the show’s producers or studio.”

    juan pablo

    Juan Pablo later apologized through Facebook. He insisted that throughout the interview, he had nothing but respect for gay people and their families.  He did not mean to use the word pervert, but misspoke because of his limited English vocabulary.  He claimed to have only meant that gay people are more affectionate and intense, which might not be viewed positively by some of the TV audience.

    Juan Pablo probably meant to use apologia, a rhetoric in communication that is used in defense for one’s actions or opinions.  However, to many members of the gay community, it was perceived as a non-apology apology – something quite the opposite.  A term that first appeared in the ’70s, a non-apology is when you apologize – but only if you have to.  Many celebrities or companies involved in a scandal will attempt to enact crisis communication by “apologizing” for offending anyone, rather than for their actions.   To the public eye, Juan Pablo’s apology had non-apologetic written all over it.  Pulling the “I-don’t-speak-English-so-good” card as one CNN reporter so delicately put it, is one such red flag.

    Was Juan Pablo sincere in his apology? Or was he just trying to cover up some ill-used “palabras”?

    – Christine Schulze

  • Dogfish Disaster Averted

    As we have gravitated towards becoming a society submerged in technology, in recent years, outlets of social media have become essential marketing tools for many companies and organizations.Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine are few forms of social media utilized by most. While social media can strongly influence consumer behaviors and increase consumer awareness it can also be detrimental to a company’s image. In some cases social media can be the cause of a PR crisis. Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with this major event that threatens to harm the organization.

    The American Red Cross is a prime example of an organization who exemplifies strong crisis management skills. This honorable humanitarian organization managed to dodge-a-bullet back in 2011 when an intern fired off a personal tweet on the company’s twitter account. The tweet read “Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer…when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzerd”.

    red cross

    This uniquely unorthodox and unprofessional tweet received a lot of negative attention from the general public. In this particular circumstance social media proved to be the cause of the crisis. When responding to the tweet the Red Cross avoided disaster by acknowledging that the tweet went out, deleting it, and explaining with humor that is was a mistake. This is an example of crisis management where the Red Cross turned a potentially harmful tweet in to an opportunity for engagement.

    Thankfully, the Red Cross realized the potential of social media and understood the power that it has to bring down a major organization. Now, other companies can look at this experience and utilize it to learn for themselves. After understanding the Red Cross’s response it is easy to break down their post-crisis steps and keep them in mind for other emergency situations. First, they were able to assess the situation. They realized the crisis was a major problem but they came to the conclusion that they could handle it which brought them to their second step, adapting their message. They considered their stakeholders and created a strong message to appeal to them. Lastly, they were able to analyze and learn from the situation post-crisis. Although this could have led to a horrific downfall for one of the greatest humanitarian organizations, everyone was able to benefit, understand, and learn from this experience.

    red cross 2

    -Parker Farfour, Caitlin Ford, Alex Corrigan, Kaitlin Batson

  • Anna Rexia Makes Another Appearance

    Zombies. Ghosts. Serial killers. These are some popular symbols of Halloween that are frequently seen in movies, haunted houses and decorations. However, what I find more frightening are some of the costumes that I see while trying to find my own “original” costume idea each Halloween. This year, I came across the most frightening costume of them all, not because of a scary mask or fake blood, but because it is poking fun at a serious mental illness that affects millions of people around the world. The “Anna Rexia” costume first caused some serious uproar back in 2011, when retailers like HalloweenStore.com and Ricky’s NYC began carrying the costume, manufactured by Dreamgirls International, but they stopped after a great deal of media backlash and thousands signed a petition on Change.org.

    Now, two years later, this controversial and insensitive costume is apparently back up for sale on the website HalloweenParty13.com, which I discovered from a Facebook posting of a more recent Change.org petition. At first, all I could think about was how disgusting a costume like that is, and how I would judge anyone wearing it, but I want to turn this into a learning opportunity by relating this controversy to public relations. My question is: Did the companies handle the outrage and negative publicity surrounding this costume appropriately?

    As I did my research, I found articles on news sites such as The Huffington Post and other blogs, about the resurrection of “Anna Rexia.”  I saw on Buzzfeed that the retailer HalloweenStore.com posted a status to their Facebook page about one week ago, explaining that people should do research before signing a petition because the retailer hasn’t sold that costume since 2011.  This status was calling out people who angrily emailed the store about their distaste, when they weren’t actually the retailers currently selling the costume.   The wording was harsh, with certain words fully capitalized and many exclamation points, which detracts potential customers and pushes current customers away.  The post has since been deleted.

    enhanced-buzz-32177-1382713416-25
    via BuzzFeed

    During the original controversy in 2011, Dreamgirls International said the costume was a form of “dark humor,” and that people wearing it is a “matter of taste.”  However, the company is now saying that the costume was discontinued in 2007 and the matter is now out of their hands.  At first, Dreamgirls International was using the communication theory of framing, which highlights specific aspects of an issue and “frames” people’s perspective on it.  The company was trying to downgrade the offensive costume as being humorous and describing themselves as a “company run by women for women”; that just wanted to create an “eccentric” way for a woman to express herself on Halloween.  Now, they are denying all responsibility for any current sales of the costume.  This denial is not only inconsistent, but it is the opposite of what any student in an introductory PR class would learn—don’t deny ownership of a problem.

    I believe that neither of these companies handled the “Anna Rexia” backlash well.  If you, the reader, were the spokesperson of either company, how would you handle this situation?

    -Maggie Dowicyan

  • Government Shutdown affects Nonprofits

    On Tuesday October 1st, the United States government shutdown for the first time in 17 years. Who is out of work? With exceptions, most agencies without any funding from outside the federal government are forced to send “non essential” workers home, and “essential ” workers will have delayed pay checks. So what does this mean for the numerous nonprofit organizations who receive government funding? It looks like many nonprofit organizations are just going to have to wait it out. The interesting thing is, a time of a government shutdown leads to high demand for nonprofit organizations to help the community; but how the nonprofit organization is affected as a whole will depend on how long this period lasts.image

    In the Huffington Post, Tim Delaney, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits response to the public states, “While business as usual in Washington focuses on partisan posturing and personal positioning, the business of serving communities doesn’t stop. Indeed, the needs of the people have escalated due to the all-too-steady stream of actual and threatened government slowdowns, shutdowns, and meltdowns. That’s why charitable nonprofits do all they can to keep their doors open to serve local communities across America”.

    Feeding America  addresses that depending on how long the shutdown lasts, programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP- formally known as food stamps) and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) could be in danger as they currently only have enough funding to make it through October. If this persists, people who currently get assistance from these programs will seek alternative non profit solutions. Areawide Aging Agency , in Oklahoma, is one nonprofit organization receiving federal funding that could be affected soon. In an article on NewsOK, Marnie Taylor, executive director of the Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits states, “While in Washington they’re fighting to close doors, here we’re fighting to keep them open”.

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    Other organizations don’t have until the end of October. Meals on Wheels is getting hit by the government shutdown hard. In an article on mlive, Meals on Wheels executive director Alison Foreman states, “We get about $250k from the federal government so it’s more than half of our budget. If they don’t reach an agreement by Friday we won’t be getting any money on Monday to pay for the food.”

    Each of these organizations are now faced with handling this situation in a way that they’re reputation will not be a stake. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory by W. Timothy Coombs states that when an organization is threatened they need to react with a communication media strategy. How they are framed in the media will persuade the views of the organization to their publics. Not communicating possible threats is the worst thing they can do. After all, this is all that nonprofit organizations can do in a crisis like this while they wait for a government decision.

    -Kelsey Raskob

  • Paula Deen Deep Fries Her Empire

    Upon hearing “Paula Deen” your first thought probably used to be of her traditional Southern food, restaurants, cookbooks, and television shows. However, within the past few months that initial thought has probably changed. Over the summer, accusations of Paula Deen making racist slurs flooded the news headlines. Within days of the incident’s reveal, corporations began to discuss dropping their sponsorship with Deen. With numerous household brands supporting her corporation, her empire was at a serious risk and her PR team was swamped.

    After Paula Deen’s racial slurs made national headlines, her initial contact with the media was questionable – she failed to show up for an interview with Matt Lauer and sent out two separate videos apologizing for ditching the interview, claiming she “would never intentionally hurt anyone.” Several days later, during her first interview about the accusations, she turned the events around, focusing on how hard these allegations have been on her and her family making close to no attempt to apologize for her actions. Her initial response was to apologize not only to Matt Lauer and the Today Show crew for ditching them, but to anyone who she may have hurt.  However, she used transcendence, an aspect of apologia that puts the issue at hand in a different context, in the interview when she said “I go into my kitchens and hear what these young people are calling each other. It’s very distressing for me. I think for this problem to be worked on these young people are gonna have to take control and start showing respect for each other.”  She had gone even further to use differentiation, another aspect of apologia, by stating that “The day I used that word was a world ago — I had a gun put to my head.” She is definitely trying to make herself sound like the victim of a much more serious act. What do you think of Paula Deen’s tactics on handling her latest scandal? She initially apologized to everyone for the accusations against her, but days later tried to turn it around to make viewers feel sorry for her.

    Sponsors dropped Deen’s brand and months passed with no word from the Emmy Award-winning T.V. chef – until this past weekend. This past Sunday, the “Queen of Southern Cooking” made her first public appearance in Texas since her controversy over the summer. Deen came back with a bang, receiving a ten-minute standing ovation from fans as she walks on stage, almost as if her fans have completely forgotten about the event over the summer. Some people felt that she did not spend enough time out of the limelight, but others say they’re ready for Deen to make her return. Despite her rocky and scattered PR strategy, an online survey conducted by LA. Times revealed that 92% of people are ready to see Paula Deen back on television. No one knows for sure what lies ahead for Paula Deen and her brand. Do you think it’s too early for Paula to make her return?

    – Tilson Hackley

  • Talk of the town? More like talk of the nation: When Local News Goes National

    As we all know, the phrase “gunman on campus,” is nothing to take lightly.  Since the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, colleges across the country have made it a priority to ensure the safety of their campus.

    UNC Wilmington students were alerted late last night of a gunman on campus, fleeing from the nearby Hardees. The University continued to update students through email, phone calls and text messages in order to ensure all students were aware of the situation and safe.
    It seems as though UNCW took all the proper precautions; what they didn’t take into consideration was how the students were going to react to it. Within a matter of no time, students with Facebook and Twitter accounts were posting: “everyone on campus be safe!” or writing terms of endearment on loved one’s walls. According to Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, the ability of people to share, cooperate, and act together is being improved dramatically by our social tools.With access to these social networking sites, students were able to publicly announce that there was a gunman on campus, which instigated a major concern.  News of the gunman on UNCW’s campus even reached popular media outlets, such as the New York Times and CBS.

    Using these social networking sites has united people all over the country.  Looking again at Shirky’s book, he exclaims, “a story can go from local to global in a heartbeat.” Without today’s social media sites, many news outlets would not have heard about the gunman. From an IMC perspective, we must look at how powerful these sites are and use them with much caution.

    -Stephanie Bakolia, Claire Outlaw, David Glaubach