The United PR Crisis No One Is Talking About
Last week the PR industry shouted a collective WTF as we watched the bumbling communications response to Flight 3411. It defies PR logic that any PR professional, especially one choosing to work in an industry prone to crisis communications, would allow that first statement to ever hit the airwaves, let alone the subsequent communications.
It’s basic PR 101 knowledge that the best thing to do in situations like this is apologize. Every pro knows that doing otherwise is asking for exactly the crisis it turned into — and one the PR team now has to clean up.
Article after article has come out touting the “PR nightmare” it is, and how the “PR team needed to do better”, and “have more common sense.” Others wondered where the PR pros were, calling out representatives from the top down for acting like “PR novices”.
EconoTimes cited, “while some commentators say the company’s weak responses reveal “a crisis in public relations management, the truth is social media’s fast pace is putting incredible demands on PR professionals.” True, but that’s not what went wrong here.
There was much discussion and dissection about the CEO’s initial statement and then questioning why it took him so long to issue the second more appropriate one. “The apology by the CEO was, at best, lukewarm or, at worst, trying to dismiss the incident,” quoted an article on CNN.” The Omaha World-Herald got in on the PR commentary, quoting “The CEO made a big mistake by deflecting blame in the first apology.”
Yeah, well no kidding. Super JV PR move. Which is why it makes no sense to folks in PR.
As if, Oscar actually wrote those statements he keeps getting credit for, though to be fair the initial response was likely co-authored with legal. We all know the CEO didn’t pen the appropriate response that was finally released. That verbiage had PR fingerprints all over it.
The real question making the rounds with PR folks, who are familiar with how it works behind the scenes, was WHY and HOW was this allowed to happen? How does a company like United not have PR on speed dial in times like this? How do you botch things this bad when you have serious PR talent on board? Why would you ever let a statement like that out the door — and allowed it to be pinned to the CEO’s twitter?
No way was PR directing this response.
The only answer that makes sense is that PR had either been shut-out, overruled, or not invited to the party until it was time to clean things up and get that stock price right again. This is a failure at the executive level — not PR.
Out of the 30-ish articles I read specifically addressing the PR conundrum, one of the few to make the point of no PR buy-in, was here on The Drum by Francis Ingham, a PR practitioner. She acutely stated, “I’d wager decent money that no PR person got anywhere near it, they would’ve immediately screamed in horror at the catastrophic mistake United was about to make.”
Molly McPherson shared with me via Twitter: “I am convinced PR was not heard here. PR types have a good radar on why and when things hit the fan. Oodles of common sense.”
Tim Sansbury in a Bulldog Reporter post had this to say:
“Re-accommodate.” Really? It’s a made-up word. I pray this isn’t the work of an all-too-clever member of United’s public relations team. I strongly doubt it is. Nothing in the PR playbook says, “During a crisis, find the one word that will make everything worse.” The PR team must have been locked outside the conference room. They should have broken through the door and crawled on their hands and knees to Oscar Munoz, begging him not to characterize this passenger’s treatment as “re-accommodating.” The takeaway from this for CEOs everywhere: You’ve got PR advisors; use them!
Another Facebook commenter suggested maybe this scenario wasn’t in [Comms] playbook but the head of Comms worked previously at Starbucks and US Airways so I don’t buy that. That an experienced crisis PR exec would sanction a you’re-wrong-stuff-it response, let alone the very awkward wording, seems highly improbable.
And yet another Facebook commenter told me, you’d think [they] “should have driven a better response coming from Starbucks and leading a team at US Airways whose work “included managing the response to the 2009 Hudson River emergency water landing of Flight 1549.”
One would think.
Maybe he didn’t know when he took the gig that he’d be overruled in a crisis and then, by-association, become wrapped up in a PR case study for the history books. Ouch.
But therein lies the real PR crisis — PR has no seat at United’s executive table. Not only do they not have a seat, they’re in the kitchen making coffee waiting to be called in. The head of comms reports to HR. Let that one sink in.
They were likely locked out of decision making until that the stock price dropped a billion dollars and executive efforts backfired — and then it became a full-blown crisis for the PR hazmat crew to clean up.
This situation laid bare how little respect and authority PR is given within the organization — especially in a moment when it is needed most! You’d think seasoned industry vets would know the first thing to do in a crisis is “get your PR person or team on the phone or in your office right away” and, per Tim’s quote above, listen to your PR advisors.
One would think.
How much longer will it be until PR/Comms consistently gets a seat at the table and given a voice of authority and respect? How many crises’ will it take?
Yes, there are companies who have wised up but, by and large, we’re still shouting to be recognized as a serious business function. As Chatrine Siswoyo said, it “relates to the fact that the public relations sector needs to do a better job of explaining how it provides value.”
I’ve a theory as to why we PR folks seem to be forever stuck trying to explain what we do and our worth, which I’ll get to in a forthcoming column.
In the meantime, it’s sad that decades later we’re still having this conversation.
