crisis communications Tag

By Dina Ely Pizza and Crisis ManagementOh, DiGiorno. What a week you've had. In the wake of the Ray Rice video and ensuing controversy, the Twitterverse showed some true vulnerability and profound emotion with a trending topic #WhyIStayed. Domestic violence survivors used the hashtag to tweet incredibly honest and visceral stories about their experiences. The hashtag has been used more than 92,000 times, according to The Huffington Post. And then there was DiGiorno. DiGiorno's reputation on Twitter has always been fairly good. They usually have their fingers on the pulse of Twitter trends and frequently play off hashtags and memes with great speed and clever wit. However, they made a massive mistake at the height of the #WhyIStayed trend. Not bothering to read any of the tweets actually associated with the hashtag, they simply tweeted, "#WhyIStayed You had pizza."

Hopefully you haven't had a crisis that made you pull your hair out but chances are, if you stay in business it will come sooner or later. Communicating during crisis is a big topic - but content is scarce on this one so I'm going to write about it in at least a couple posts. For this one I'll define crisis in the PR 2.0 world, give you an example of a couple bad responses to crisis - and a few ideas for devising your own crisis plan. Would love to hear any stories about crisis you've got as well.