Crisis Communications

Just a day after we reported on weekend efforts by Susan G. Komen for the Cure to move away from last weekend’s uproar over its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, an SGK exec that many say was behind the decision has resigned.

Karen Handel (left) has stepped down from her post as VP for public policy. According to Handel’s resignation letter (obtained by the Associated Press), the organization was on board with the decision at first. She calls the backlash a “gross mischaracterization of the strategy… and her involvement in it” and says that SGK saw the need to distance itself from a controversial association with Planned Parenthood.

Many had called for Handel to leave her post. Recommendations from comms experts and others have also called on SGK to speak with one clear and unified voice. Unfortunately, this news doesn’t achieve that.

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Susan G. Komen for the Cure (SGK) founder and CEO Nancy Brinker and the organization’s president Elizabeth Thompson held a conference call on Saturday with affiliates to work on a path out of the PR mess the group got into last week when it announced it would cut funding to Planned Parenthood. After lots of mixed messages and backlash, the organization has backed off of its plans, but the job of rebuilding the trust and goodwill of supporters is just beginning.

Ogilvy PR VP Brendan Daly confirmed with The Washington Post that he was brought in last week to help. Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer is also lending his crisis comms expertise where necessary. Still, the WaPo article brings up issues that the organization could have with corporate partners and others going forward.

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Once again, we have an example where social media and public backlash have reversed an organization’s decision.

For the past three days, Susan G. Komen for the Cure (SGK) has been battered by criticism from the public and members of government who objected to the group’s decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. The money had been used for breast exams. This morning, SGK announced that it was going to take a closer look at the policy that led to the cuts and apologized for its earlier decision. Planned Parenthood can apply for grants once again.

“Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process,” the statement says. “It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women.” We tried to read the statement on the SGK website, but got a big error message that says simply “Server is too busy.”

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Not the story you thought you’d ever read about Susan G. Komen for the Cure, one of the most noted and respected nonprofits out there. But the other day, it was announced that the organization is cutting funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, which could leave many women without access to breast exams. Last year, Susan G. Komen (SGK) provided $680,000 in grants to Planned Parenthood groups.

Coverage of issue indicates that SGK made the policy change under pressure from anti-abortion groups and members of Congress. Yesterday, the organization’s founder and CEO, Nancy G. Brinker made the video above to explain why the money has been cut.

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Smells like bacon? Oh, that’s just the aroma of corporate leaders getting burned by bad press, crisis situations, and business downturns. It’s not anything new necessarily, but three’s a trend so why not take a closer look at three recent cases, shall we?

First we have the case of the quiet CEO — Mickey Arison, CEO of Carnival, which owns the Costa Concordia, the ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy on January 13 killing, at last count, 13 people. Pier Luigi Foschi, CEO of Costa Crociere SpA, Carnival’s Italian arm, has been speaking publicly, mostly to blame the captain, Francesco Schettino, who, with his ability to trip and fall to safety, is the luckiest mariner in the history of sea travel.

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Weber Shandwick has teamed up with Liberty Mutual Insurance to become the go-to firm for crisis comms for that company’s customers, part of the insurer’s “commercial lead umbrella policy.”

With this new relationship in place, policyholders will have 72 hours to file a claim for $50,000 worth of crisis management services from the firm. Policyholders also have the option of purchasing additional coverage that would get them $250,000 worth of crisis management. That’s a mighty big crisis! We’ve asked the firm what exactly in included at the $50,000 level of service and we’ll come back with those details once we have them.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this sort of partnership. Back in October, an AIG subsidiary, Chartis, announced a partnership with Burson-Marsteller and Porter Novelli to provide a “ReputationGuard” service. In that case, an annual premium of $10,000 would guarantee policyholders some crisis management service.

Along with everyone else associated with the doomed Costa Concordia, the captain has got a crisis communications situation on his hands. Media outlets in Italy and around the world have painted a picture of Francesco Schettino as a coward who jumped ship and refused to return even as passengers and his crew members struggled and, in some cases, perished after the vessel ran aground off the Tuscan coast.

Today, Captain Schettino is reported saying that, rather than fleeing the ship in a lifeboat, he actually tripped and landed in one during the chaos. Umm…

“I was trying to get people to get into the boats in an orderly fashion. Suddenly, since the ship was at a 60 to 70 degree angle, I tripped and I ended up in one of the boats. That’s how I found myself there,” he told the newspaper La Repubblica.

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The latest Gulf tourism ad, sponsored by BP.

In a kind of follow up to our “Lemons to Lemonade” year-end post, BP’s CEO Robert Dudley spoke on Friday, reaffirming the company’s commitment to the Gulf clean up. The Deepwater Horizon explosion happened in 2010, making this a nearly two-year-long crisis response.

“Every crisis is different, virtually every one. In this case, what we have done is learned and are putting in place new lessons around safety,” Dudley said.

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The saga of the Costa Concordia cruise ship that ran aground off the Italian coast continues to unfold, step by step, on a worldwide stage. Media reports, photos, passenger videos, and an audio of the captain have all documented what went wrong from a safety standpoint.

The company’s initial crisis communications response has been mainly reactive. (You can view video and gather info about the company’s response on its website.) Company leadership in Italy have held two press conferences to respond to the tragedy. The cruise line is owned by Carnival, and its CEO has spoken about the accident as well, although from here in the U.S.

“Whenever there are fatalities and serious injuries, it’s important for the most senior leadership to be visible,” Bloomberg quotes Ogilvy PR‘s Peter Hirsch, who spoke with them about the issue.

The cruise line is also facing other issues. And while this is a unique tragedy, the issue of crisis communications, even in the most dire of situations, has been discussed by the PR industry in the past.

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The University of Missouri has come out with a study showing that when companies’ bad news is framed from a sad point of view, consumers are more forgiving of said company.

Someone should have told BP this news before National Public Radio declared its Gulf oil spill “a textbook example of how not to handle PR.”

Glen Cameron, the Maxine Wilson Gregory Chair in Journalism Research and professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and Hyo Kim of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore conducted the research. The University of Missouri’s news release said that in the study, one group read an “anger-frame” story blaming a company for the crisis. A second group read a “sadness-frame” story, that focused on the victims and how they were hurt by the crisis.

Certainly, this isn’t earth-shattering news, especially to those whose profession is public relations.

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