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Community Outreach
Survey - Take a Minute
| | PRSA-St. Louis is re-evaluating the objectives and goals of
the Community Outreach Committee.
Please click on the link below to complete a short survey -
your valuable input will help the committee chairs plan future
activities. Thank you for your time. Survey
link.
Amy Bradshaw
Community Outreach Chair
| | | About
Our Members
Celebrating
Our Collective Success
In the past several weeks, Commerce Bank (members Molly
Hyland and Jeanne Howard) was featured in a
USA Today article shining the national spotlight on this Missouri-based
bank.
St. Louis Economic Council (members Nancy
Schnoebelen and Corrie Hendrix) was featured
in the NY Times, bringing St. Louis' economic efforts to the national
stage.
PRSA member Claire Goldfarb (Hughes), just
completed a successful run promoting free breakfast events at SUBWAY
restaurants in the Springfield, Champaign and Decatur (Ill.)
markets. She secured multiple TV and radio interviews with spokesperson
Jared Fogle in a one-day media tour.
And PRSA member Barb Pierce (Hughes) and
the Hughes PR team just completed a national PR push for Silver Dollar
City in Branson, celebrating its 50th Anniversary. A few of the
placements included the Chicago Daily Herald, the Huntsville (Ala.)
Times and the Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio Show.
Share your news by e-mailing member success stories to us at
president@prsastlouis.org
for next month's column. We want to share your successes, accolades and
accomplishments.
| | | | | | Missing
a Seat at the Management Table
PR
Prose
(A note from the president as
PRSA-St. Louis begins a new way of sharing news and opinions
between
PRSA membership through our e-newsletter.)
As an accredited PR
practitioner with strong ties to the Gulf Coast, I have been
watching
the disaster unfold in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a lesson
in crisis
management for all of us. Oil is important to the United
States and
accidents can happen anywhere at any time. Yet in this
case, I am
appalled by what appears to be a lack of crisis management
and strategic
communication. Every communicator needs to remember that
being
uncaring or appearing to be uncaring can cost you dearly in
the court of
public opinion.
 At this
point, over 40 days after the tragic explosion on an oil rig
off the
coast of Louisiana, BP CEO Tony Hayward finally took one of
the steps he
should have taken weeks ago. He apologized. Unfortunately,
that
apology fell on deaf ears. It was too little, too late.
Immediately
after he apologized, he added, “I want my life back,”
resulting in an
outpouring of additional criticism. Early on in this
catastrophe, BP
representatives took limited ownership for the situation and
attempted
to downplay the scope and magnitude fixing the problem.
So I ask, where is BP's public relations staff? Did they
have a seat at the management table? Apparently not because
it is
difficult to comprehend that a trained professional
communicator would
be comfortable with the apparent lack of strategic
communication. Any
crisis management textbook will teach practitioners to
respond quickly
with compassion and truthful statements, to show leadership
and share
accurate information as it becomes available. In this case,
the crisis
quickly became larger than life and the company's brand will
suffer
greatly.
I believe that BP has its best engineers working on a
solution. They are working on an extremely difficult
operation 5,000
feet underwater, where only robots can function. They also
have some of
the most powerful lawyers on the case trying their best to
represent
BP's interest. Unfortunately, the perception is that the
public, the
victims’ families and the wildlife around the Gulf have been
left to
fend for themselves.
Initial response to the just-launched television ad campaign
has only increased the brand’s demise. The company recently
hired a PR
firm and former vice president Dick Cheney's press secretary
to handle
the crisis. Like the oil spill itself, the communications
mess is
almost too big to clean up.
So, I say to our members, there is much to learn from this
tragic example of crisis management. I can go on and on
about this
subject, but I will end now and ask what you think. Do you
have a
compelling reason to share your opinion as it relates to
public
relations, media relations, crisis management or any other
PR-related
topic? Feel free to share your thoughts with me through
e-mail or our
chapter's LinkedIn
and Facebook
Pages.
The next issue of e-news may include your thoughts.
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| | |
The St. Louis Chapter of PRSA is pleased to once again offer
live, face-to-face APR prep classes! The class list is now available
on the PRSA
website. Sessions are open to all paid members of the PRSA-St.
Louis Chapter. While not required to attain accreditation, these
classes have been very well-received by past APR candidates.
Tina
Carroll, APR, & Matt Gerke, APR
Accreditation Co-Chairs
accreditation@prsastlouis.org | | |