Ignoring data in your PR campaign? Bad idea; here’s why
These four case studies will illustrate why doing your homework and performing metrics only the first steps. You then must apply your discoveries to your near- and long-term approaches.
The road to organizational destruction is paved with bad PR strategies.
Here are four cautionary tales about what happens when you ignore your data:
1. You lose lots of money and support.
Komen’s strategy was to stay quiet and hope the whole thing blew over. When it didn’t, it made mistake after mistake. As the debate erupted and continue to rage most furiously on Twitter, Komen responded with a YouTube video.
(Note to Komen: Always respond on the same platform where a crisis erupts, and next time make sure your CEO gets good video training on how to look human and not robotic before you chose You Tube to mount a strategic defense.)
Its answer to every protest was, “This was not political,” yet the majority of the Twitterverse insisted that it was. In the end, the organization suffered an almost mortal blow. For more background and details, read my coverage at the time.
2. Your stock price drops a lot.
Intel’s choice to ignore PR data and call a bug in one of its chips a “design flaw” almost destroyed the company. Intel downplayed complaints about chip problems as “only affecting a handful of geeks.”
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