Carnival who?
Posted on Jan 28, 2012
As far as crisis goes, it’s pretty simple. If you own a cruise ship, about the worst thing that can happen is that it capsizes. If you are a politician, one of the worst things that can happen is a scandal.
Recently, we’ve had both, and from a crisis communications perspective, the way each has played out is most interesting. I expect both will serve as case studies in crisis communications well into the future.
First, the capsizing off the coast of Tuscany of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. This story, understandably, has been receiving front page and top of newscast coverage for much of the past two weeks. For the most part it has followed the usual path for crisis stories of this sort. First, coverage of the accident and rescue effort, quickly moving to who to blame, body recovery, and now with the focus switched to the environmental threat, what to do with it, and the lawsuits.
Lots and lots of stories. But a fascinating part, and this was an observation by a friend in an online newsgroup of PR practitioners and academics I am a part of, is the considerable success Carnival Cruise Lines, the parent company involved, has had in keeping its name out of it.
Just for the heck of it, I picked a couple of papers – the Toronto Globe and Mail and the New York Times and did a scan of headlines and a cross-section of stories each has run on this since the incident – call it an informal survey. The name Carnival only started surfacing to any measurable degree in the last few days, and this specifically in reference to the lawsuits. Through the earlier stories where the focus was the accident and the behaviour of the Captain, and the search for survivors, hardly a mention of Carnival, and when it was mentioned, it was buried well into the story.
There were PR tactics behind it, like making sure news releases go out under the Costa Concordia name, not Carnival’s, and that kind of thing, but still you would expect Carnival, being the more recognizable name, to be wearing much more of this. Who among us even heard of the Costa Concordia until this happened?
When a crisis occurs, there are inevitably two crisis, and sometimes more. The first one of course is the mishap itself, with the secondary crisis being the potential loss of confidence by the public to go on cruise ships, or at least ships connected to the one that had the accident.
Often the first job of a communications consultant in a crisis is keeping his or her client out of the news. In this case, keeping Carnival’s name out of it, at least as much as possible, to lessen any threat that the public would lose confidence in Carnival as a safe cruise line. I don’t know who is responsible, but from where I sit, they are doing one heck of a job.
The other crisis communications example I wanted to discuss is Newt Gingrich and his “open marriage”, but I’m told I’m supposed to keep these blog posts short, so I’ll save old Newt for next time.
Catch ya later.
5 Comments
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