Public relations crisis, every time I mention this word, I think all my colleagues engaged in public relations work will have a tight heart, "Don’t come!" However, the public relations crisis can’t be as we wish. If we don’t come, we won’t come.
So instead of obsessing about whether the crisis will happen, it is better to pay attention to when it will happen.
Public relations crisis management has a set of general rules, which will be introduced in detail below.
According to the development stage, we generally divide the crisis management of public relations into three stages:
1. Pre-crisis management
2. Management in crisis
3. Post-crisis management
According to different stages, we should take different actions, such as pre-crisis prevention, active response in crisis, and post-crisis resumption to sum up experience.
The following is elaborated from several aspects:
Public relations crisis management refers to the management of public crisis events (major events that threaten the organization and its reputation, stakeholders or the public) by governments and enterprises, and solve the problems in dangerous and difficult situations in foreign exchanges and internal management. That is, in the process of the emergence and development of public crisis events, in order to reduce and eliminate the harm of the crisis, the business entity directly takes countermeasures and management activities against the crisis according to the crisis management plan and procedures.
Public relations professionals play a vital role in crisis communication. When a crisis occurs, the main task of public relations personnel is to inform the relevant parties of the current situation, potential risks and public relations plans and implementation plans. A well-prepared crisis public relations plan should include the general public relations draft for the first external response after the crisis.
This general public relations draft should establish initial public trust and gain some time to investigate the problems currently facing. Public relations and marketing teams are the first line of defense. Whether we can survive the crisis safely depends mainly on the ability of enterprises to deal with public relations crisis management.
Part 2:When should we respond to the public relations crisis?
In the face of public relations crisis, public relations personnel need to know when to respond and how to solve the crisis.
It should be noted that not all negative comments can form a public relations crisis and damage the brand reputation. Usually, the real trouble will appear in the spread of business news, such as that published by People magazine.Takeaway rider, trapped in the system (complete analysis report →), detonated social sentiment, take-away enterprises encountered a major public relations crisis.

The social sentiment of the "takeaway rider, trapped in the system" event is mainly negative, accounting for 45.5%. The main content of negative sentiment is that netizens express their spit and dissatisfaction with the public relations response to "Hungry" and question the algorithm of the platform system.
Professional PR will evaluate and classify the severity of the crisis according to the degree of influence on the enterprise or brand. Assessing the crisis level in advance can help PR manage the crisis better and avoid wasting resources.
Hyposensitivity crisis
Refers to a situation that does not require any immediate action by public relations personnel, such as a competitor encountering a public relations crisis, but it may not necessarily affect its normal operation.
However, in the same industry, competing products may also affect their own business in some way.

After the flight attendant’s murder case (complete analysis report →), a network car company canceled the hitchhiking business, and at the same time, it also triggered the question "Should the hitchhiking business be cancelled?" And other social discussions about the norms and future development of the network car. Therefore, it is necessary to pay close attention to the crisis development of competing products and dispatch crisis response teams when necessary.
General crisis
Refers to the situation that may undermine consumers’ trust in the enterprise or brand and affect the sales of the enterprise. For example, among hundreds of positive comments, several negative comments are mixed. Then, public relations personnel should pay attention, but there is no need to convene a public relations crisis team.

In 2020, Ali promoted "rhinoceros intelligent factory" (complete analysis report →), and the positive emotional expression on the Internet was as high as 85%. However, some people worry that the arrival of rhinoceros factory will bring some threats to some production enterprises with low efficiency, high cost and small scale. The origin of rhinoceros from a big factory, the accessibility of grounding gas, and the intelligent mode naturally have an unusual attraction for businesses in the market, and their choice of rhinoceros will also reduce the living space of other small and medium-sized factories.
Major crisis
Refers to the situation that the crisis will have a significant impact on the reputation and income of the enterprise, and the public relations response team must act immediately.
Major crisis types include executive scandals (sexual harassment, infighting, PUA in the workplace, etc.), product quality problems (such as the use of expired raw materials in catering industry), punishment by regulatory authorities, financial crisis, etc. If you want to solve this kind of public relations crisis quickly, it is best to take action before the public and the media find it and spread it widely.
Because of the popularity of the Internet, the information spreads quickly and widely, and the crisis may escalate rapidly, and evolve from a low-sensitivity crisis to a general crisis or even a major crisis within a few hours. Therefore, public relations personnel must continuously monitor the changes of crisis situation.

Ali female employees were violated (complete analysis report →), and the public opinion broke out quickly, with a long tail of public opinion. Judging from the characteristics of fermentation, in the early stage of public opinion development, information such as "safeguarding the rights of female employees in Ali’s canteen" and "female employees in Ali were exposed and infringed" only spread in Ali’s workplace circle, and the spread range was relatively narrow. After the parties posted on the intranet, the relevant information was reprinted by some netizens to platforms such as pulse and social media, and gradually spread to the public’s field of vision. With the help of social media and major media, public opinion warmed up in an all-round way and entered an outbreak period. During this period, the response of all parties and the conflict of the details of the incident led to the collective boiling of the public opinion field, and the pressure of public opinion faced by Ali, Hualian and other involved subjects increased greatly. On August 9, with the announcement of the preliminary disposal measures of Ali and Hualian, the public’s public opinion began to decline, and the public’s attention began to shift to other details. "Hotel management loopholes" and "people involved in a trend" became important clues for public opinion follow-up discussion.
Part 3:howMake a crisis public relations plan? (Pre-crisis management)
Public relations crisis may occur at any time, so enterprises should formulate a set of crisis public relations plans to ensure that employees know what to do to minimize losses.
Matters that must be considered when making a crisis public relations plan;
monitorbrandpopular feelings
According to China Internet Development Report (2021), by the end of 2020, there were 989 million netizens in China, and the Internet penetration rate reached 70.4%. The total number of mobile Internet users exceeds 1.6 billion. There is no doubt that we are in the network age.
According to Digital 2021: China, there are 931 million social media users in China. Social media allows everyone to express their opinions or comments. This means that the crisis will occur in channels that enterprises do not own and control. The public relations team may not have noticed the crisis, and the crisis has already started to ferment and upgrade on this channel and affected the reputation and sales of the company.
In order to prevent the public relations crisis from escalating, it is necessary to know people’s evaluation of the company or product.
According to CNNIC’s Report on the Latest Number of Websites in China in 2021, as of June 2021, the total number of websites in China was 4.22 million. There are a lot of online channels, and it is obviously very difficult to know all the references about your brand on the Internet.
The simple and direct solution is to use professional Internet public opinion monitoring and analysis tools, such as the micro-business information and public opinion monitoring system, which can collect online public references including predefined keywords. The system also provides screening and analysis. Enterprises can mark, cut and collect according to their own needs, so as to analyze key information.
From the perspective of crisis management, what practical value can Internet public opinion monitoring tools provide?
Emotional analysis and reference quantity
Know the business situation (free trial →)All the mentioned emotional tendencies can be automatically classified, that is, you can directly see whether the discussion on the monitored objects (enterprises, brands, products, marketing activities, etc.) on the Internet is positive, negative or neutral.
Before the analysis, we should combine various data to get more valuable information. For example, emotional analysis should be combined with the amount of mention. The mentioned amount refers to the total number mentioned in the set time range.
The surge in the number of references and the general negative emotions indicate that a public relations crisis is brewing.

L ‘Oré al Double Eleven Pre-sale Price Difference Event (complete analysis report →), after the media reported "L ‘Oré al ampoule mask refund price difference" on November 15th, the negative information began to increase obviously, surpassing the positive information, reaching a peak on the 18th. Before that, it was always positive.
Public relations personnel need to closely monitor the dynamic changes in order to respond before the media and the public find problems. If, on the other hand, the surge is mentioned positively, it means that the enterprise is doing well!
Screening function
The public opinion monitoring data obtained by different enterprises will be quite different. If it comes to monitoring large enterprises or online celebrity products, there is no doubt that a lot of data will be obtained.
These contents may all be related to the monitoring theme, but as the public relations personnel of the enterprise, they may only need to pay attention to some of them. Therefore, it is better for public opinion monitoring tool to have filtering function to extract more useful information. Micro-business information can provide rich screening items such as region, information type, field, platform type, date and mood.
What options are filtered to help crisis management?
crisis forewarning
In order to prevent the spread of public relations crisis, public relations personnel need to find the potential crisis earlier than others, so they need a public opinion monitoring tool that provides real-time warning function for sensitive key information. Micro-business information can be pre-warned by SMS, email, WeChat, in-app notification and other ways, and all mentioned alarms or filtered mentioned alarms can be set.
Maintain crisis sensitivity
Some brands with better products or services may think that they have a good reputation and there is no need to do crisis management. Obviously, this idea is too beautiful, and excellent students can’t guarantee that they won’t answer wrong questions in every exam. Similarly, excellent enterprises don’t mean that they can be immune to crisis.
Therefore, the question we should pay attention to is not whether the public relations crisis will happen, but when it will happen.
If the enterprise makes a crisis response plan in advance, every member of the enterprise will know how to deal with and what to do whenever a crisis occurs.
Crisis response plan can also help new employees to get started quickly during the public relations turmoil, and know how to act and what the company strategy is during the crisis.
Part 4:Deal with public crisisThe seven steps of
The crisis public relations plan is more strategic guidance, and it is also important to know how to do it when the crisis actually happens.
The following summarizes the seven steps based on the experience of senior public relations practitioners:
1. RightcrisisClassify, don’t“every bush and tree seems an enemy—be in a state of extreme panic"
Not all negative comments about the brand will turn into a public relations crisis. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to respond to negative comments.
Evaluate the impact of these negative comments on the overall performance and reputation of the enterprise before deciding whether to respond and how to respond. Some problems will disappear by themselves, while others need to provide targeted solutions. In terms of reputation management, it is the best choice to follow the trend.
2. Quick response
When there is a major crisis, we should respond. At this time, time is life. The sooner this problem is solved, the more likely it is to control the topic tendency and minimize the damage.
When a major crisis occurs, people expect a quick response. At this time, public relations personnel have no time to carefully write some thoughtful response drafts.
At this time, some general public relations drafts prepared in the crisis public relations plan can come in handy. Public relations personnel can modify the template according to the actual situation, and then publish it through social media and other channels.
The choice of distribution channels must be suitable for the communication channels of most users and other stakeholders, so that it is easier to get dissemination.
A quick response can give people the impression that the situation is under control, and also buy time for a more detailed explanation.
Step 3 determine the firstperson in charge
After the crisis public relations plan is formulated, employees need to be trained and rehearsed accordingly, so that they know what to do and how to implement it.
It is very important to define the relevant people in charge of public relations and their responsibilities, such as who is responsible for the writing of public relations draft, who is responsible for the promotion and distribution of public relations draft, who is responsible for the direction control and final review. If we don’t know who is doing what specific work, the public relations team can’t enter the rescue crisis state at the first time.
Generally speaking, the first response team is the team responsible for customer service or social media.
Customer service personnel are at the forefront of facing customers directly, and they can find public relations problems before reaching a wider audience (such as the media).
The convenience and universality of social media make information dissemination easy to spread in a viral way. If the operators of social media accounts find negative references, they can quickly resolve the crisis through online communication and problem solving, thus protecting corporate reputation.
But if the crisis escalates, a professional and reliable public relations team needs to have
Chief executive officer
People with legal knowledge
The person in charge of communication with the media
The person responsible for communicating with other stakeholders (for example, communicating with shareholders and suppliers)
The person responsible for communicating with customers.
The person responsible for product development and production.
The person responsible for writing the public relations draft.
The team will decide what to send out and how to send it out, so as not to lose the trust of customers as much as possible. The establishment of public relations team will ensure the smooth progress of crisis communication and ensure that the people with corresponding responsibilities do the right thing in the right place at the right time.
4. Assess the crisis situation
Professional PR should evaluate the public relations situation and take corresponding measures. Every public relations crisis is different, so different methods and responses are needed. This is why the first step of the public relations crisis response team should be to evaluate the crisis.
According to the scale of public opinion and the possible impact of public relations crisis, the team should choose appropriate countermeasures, with the ultimate goal of eliminating or minimizing the impact of the crisis.
5. Crisis public relations execution
A quick and sincere response can buy some time for the enterprise. The next step is the implementation of specific actions.
How to respond and deal with it depends on what kind of industry you are in, but there are also general rules to follow.
First of all, if you want to minimize the losses, you must never deny the problem, shirk the responsibility or ignore the voice of public opinion, which will only worsen the situation. Admitting mistakes and making up for the losses to users can establish a mature and responsible image of the enterprise.
Step 6 Work with influential people
Once a brand, product or service is attacked by public opinion, you should also look for someone who can help you speak out.
Therefore, you should pay attention to finding celebrities and kols who can speak for your brand during and after the crisis.
The key to KOL cooperation is to choose the right person. public opinion monitoring tools can help you find the right KOL to help you deal with the public relations crisis.
Set the monitoring theme with the industry field as the key word, and you can see the most active, influential and popular public accounts in this field in the "Analysis" tab. It should be noted that it only provides a reference list of influential communicators. Next, we also need to check what kind of content these accounts usually publish, their participation (interaction) in the content they publish, and which social media platforms they are active on (social media, Zhihu, WeChat, Xiaohongshu, bilibili …). According to the above analysis, choose the most suitable KOL to voice the brand "platform".
7.Resume of public relations work
Excellent people usually go back to work, review and reflect on past behaviors, then find problems and learn from experience, so as to realize the accumulation of experience and the breakthrough of ability.
Questions about specific crisis public relations events: What did you do right? What parts are unqualified? What can be improved?
Regarding the construction of public relations team: Does the team need more training and guidance? Should the roles in the team be adjusted and re-divided? Do you want to add new members?
Question on public relations execution: Is the response fast enough? Is there any way to improve it? What kind of communication channels should be used? Do you need to change the expression and wording?
By answering these questions, we can get some valuable reference information for establishing a more perfect public relations crisis strategy.
summary:
Public relations crises often occur in expect the unexpected and are easily spread by news media. However, the occurrence of a public relations crisis does not mean that things are irreversible. The key is to know how to react and turn the situation around in this bad situation.
First of all, we should establish a daily brand public opinion monitoring and pay attention to the network information about brands; Then make a public relations crisis plan.
When the public relations crisis occurs, both enterprises and employees will be under great pressure, and employees need to understand the public relations management strategy of the crisis company to avoid "catching the blind" at the last moment.
Crisis is hard to avoid, but you can choose to minimize the loss. This is the ultimate significance of public relations crisis management.