The Crisis Right: A Glimpse into Real-World Problem Solving
Crisis communications is a cornerstone in the public relations industry. In fast-paced environments, communicators need to have the skills, the tools and the endurance to respond to situations under intense pressure.
What better way to prepare the public relations professionals of tomorrow for this reality than with practice and education?
On Nov. 23, UF PRSSA teamed up with HPRSA, BPRSS and APRSA to host a virtual, interactive and real-time crisis communications competition: The Crisis Right.
Of course, organizations and communicators cannot appropriately respond ethically in crisis situations without taking diversity, equity and inclusion into account when creating their plans. So, in order to choose the two teams that would compete in the competition, participants were separated into breakout rooms to complete a Google Form with questions based on the diversity of the public relations industry.
The two teams who answered the most questions correctly moved into the final competition. The members of team one included Richard Forbes, Xinni Chen, Ingrid Marrero and Omar Howard. The members of team two were Victoria French, Paola Ojeda-Villegas, Paola Chavez and David McKibbin.
Once again separated into breakout rooms, the teams hashed out their responses to the racial profiling crisis scenario of an unnamed company, which was later revealed to be Starbucks.
After about ten minutes of discussion, the teams rejoined the main Zoom room, and Richard Forbes represented team one with a summary of its crisis communications plan; Victoria French represented team two with a summary of its plan. Both teams mentioned the need for an issued apology, unconscious bias training and a plan for future situations like this one that may arise.
Meeting attendees voted, and in the end, team two won. Its main goal of earning back stakeholders’ trust in the brand and a focus on the impacted individuals instead of the employees were integral parts of its crisis communications strategy.
As a reward for a job-well-done, each person on team two was given a $10 Starbucks gift card!
Stay tuned for more fun events like this one #withUFPRSSA, and be sure to register for our Dec. 2 meeting, “Back to the Basics with FPRA: Writing Resumes and Cover Letters” with Alex Lucas Flinchum.
Written by Victoria French