By: Tyler Madsen Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller being caught by FBI wiretaps is one of the latest scandals rocking the college basketball world. Wiretap evidence show’s Miller discussed a payment of $100,000 to secure top recruit, and current player, DeAndre Ayton. The money offer was accepted by Ayton and his family, he then signed with the Wildcats. As we all know college athletes are not to be paid on top of their scholarships, so Sean Miller and the whole Arizona athletic department are facing major sanctions from the NCAA and potential criminal charges from the FBI. Arizona has already lost a key commitment in Shareef O’Neal, son of Shaquille O’Neal, his de-commitment was announced on February 25th. With Miller’s departure ahead within the next few days or weeks, the school has to deal with the assumed death penalty to the program that will be handed to them by the NCAA. The death penalty is when the team is not allowed to compete in the sport for the year and is the harshest penalty a school can receive. Now Arizona’s athletic department must put their crisis management procedures in order to help repair their image. Source: https://www.si.com/college-basketball/2018/02/25/sean-miller-deandre-ayton-arizona-ncaa-fbi-investigation
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By: Hannah Banas Since the school shooting in Florida, there has been a strong movement to change the gun laws in the United States. In the aftermath of this tragedy, companies and their public relations departments have had to make decisions about the businesses’ reactions to it. Major companies such as Delta Airlines, United Airlines, MetLife, and First National Bank of Omaha have cut ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA). These companies have decided that it is better for their business to lose the support of the NRA than to have the bad publicity of being associated with the organization. At a time in which people are demanding a shift in gun control laws, public relations departments and companies have to weigh the options of whether an affiliation with the NRA is going to have a positive or negative effect companies. This is the job of a public relations employee. They have to be the lines of communication between a company and its customers and supporters. They have to listen to what their supporters want and then decide how the company should react. By creating a dialogue between companies and the people they serve, public relations specialists are responsible for the ways their specific companies are associated with the NRA. By: Allison Haworth In weeks past, there have been many occurrences of crisis communications at play. Debatably one of the most demanding sectors of PR, crisis communications is “the effort taken by a company to communicate with the public and stockholders when an unexpected event occurs that could have a negative impact on the company's reputation” (PR News Online). Most large companies outsource a PR agency to take care of all their PR needs. In one incident lately, NBC was in dire need of crisis communications for the host of The Today Show, Matt Lauer. After sexual assault allegations unwrapping this past week, the crisis communications team for NBC was hard at work considering Lauer was fired only 24 hours after the discovery of sexual assault accusations. One may think, how does crisis communications have time to alleviate the situation in 24 hours? A major part of crisis communications entails the reconfiguration of a company's image after a traumatic event has happened. In order to deviate this negative spotlight, crisis communications plans are implemented as soon as possible to recover from the impact. As for NBC, the termination of Lauer was most likely the first step in getting this out of the news. While there are many hidden steps to recover The Today Show’s reputation, one of the steps was to issue a public apology from Matt Lauer himself; To take responsibility for his actions and show that NBC doesn’t tolerate or value those actions. In just about any major negative news story, crisis communications departments are quick to react to recover and repair the reputation of the company at risk. Crisis communications is hard work but necessary to keep the negative news stories out of the media. Sources: http://www.prnewsonline.com/lauer-rose-and-the-new-face-of-crisis-pr/ http://www.preparedex.com/six-guidelines-for-ethical-crisis-communications/ = By Claire Logsdon
2017 has seen many PR missteps and while it is only October, there are plenty of stories regarding the past 10 months. The story garnering most attention was Pepsi’s controversial ad starring Kendall Jenner, where they were accused of trivializing the Black Lives Matter movement. Though Pepsi eventually stopped using the ad, they initially refused to and then issued a public apology statement to Jenner instead of angry protesters. The next scandal on the list occurred during the aftermath of a video release of a passenger being aggressively forced off a United Airlines plane. First, the company refused to apologize for their actions, but after protests and boycott threats, they released an apology. However, the damage was done and United Airlines is facing a ten year all time low in sales. Cosmopolitan’s insensitive article put a positive title on weight loss that was the result of cancer, incensing people over the magazine’s poor word choice. Worst of all, the magazine has not issued an apology and refuses to acknowledge this issue. These are only several of the top stories regarding public relations mishaps this year; hopefully the country will see better PR in the year following. Torossian, Ronn. “The Biggest PR Crises Of 2017.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 Aug. 2017 By: Claire Bowman This weekend, the popular soap brand, Dove, received backlash for a racially insensitive advertisement. It featured a black woman who removed her brown shirt and transformed into a white woman wearing a light shirt. The company has since deleted the post from their Facebook page, but not before online users began to criticize them. People have been offended because the post insinuates that black skin is less clean than white skin. Though Dove has publicly apologized on their various social media accounts, we must wonder where this company’s public relations and advertising teams were trying to go when developing and approving the advertisement. Dove is a company that has been a large proponent of showing off diversity in the past, so this has left some dumbfounded. Their quick response to the post’s negative reception shows they care about how their brand is received, but what does it say about the brand and people of color? If Dove really wants to be seen as having inclusive products, then they need to keep a much closer eye on what they post in the future. Otherwise, their reputation with the public is going to deteriorate, as we’re living in too divisive of times for brands to be making mistakes like these. Photo Source: www.thewrap.com |
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