Good PR vs Bad PR

What is good PR vs bad PR?

What con­sti­tutes good pub­lic rela­tions doesn’t have to be complicated.

Here we go:

Good PR vs Bad PR

In pub­lic rela­tions, say­ing the right things will not be enough if you do the wrong things.

Doing the wrong things + say­ing the wrong things = bad PR

Doing the wrong things + say­ing the right things = bad PR

Doing the right things + say­ing the wrong things = bad PR

Doing the right things + say­ing the right things = good PR

What does this mean?

Every now and then, I have to point out that some organ­isa­tion­al prob­lems aren’t PR prob­lems; they’re organ­isa­tion­al problems.

With PR activ­it­ies, you can fix pub­lic rela­tions prob­lems but can’t fix organ­isa­tion­al prob­lems (harm­ful products or ser­vices, uneth­ic­al prac­tices, illeg­al prac­tices, etc.).

Learn more: Good PR vs Bad PR

Examples of Bad PR 

Here are ten major PR fail­ures where organ­isa­tions badly mis­man­aged their pub­lic rela­tions, worsen­ing the situ­ation instead of con­tain­ing the damage.

1. Pepsi’s Kendall Jenner Protest Ad (2017)

Pepsi launched an ad fea­tur­ing Kendall Jenner dif­fus­ing a tense protest by hand­ing a police officer a can of Pepsi. The attempt to cap­it­al­ise on social justice move­ments (e.g., Black Lives Matter) back­fired hor­ribly, as it was seen as trivi­al­ising real-world activism.

PR mistakes:

2. United Airlines’ “Re-Accommodating” a Passenger (2017)

A video went vir­al show­ing a pas­sen­ger (Dr. David Dao) being viol­ently dragged off a United Airlines flight after he refused to give up his seat due to overbooking.

PR mistakes:

3. BP’s Response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (2010)

After the worst oil spill in his­tory, BP CEO Tony Hayward made things worse by saying:

“I’d like my life back.”

PR mistakes:

4. McDonald’s #McDStories Twitter Disaster (2012)

McDonald’s launched a Twitter cam­paign (#McDStories) to share feel-good cus­tom­er exper­i­ences. Instead, it was hijacked by users tweet­ing hor­ror stor­ies about food pois­on­ing, poor ser­vice, and unhealthy meals.

PR mistakes:

5. Samsung’s Exploding Galaxy Note 7 Scandal (2016)

Due to bat­tery defects, the Galaxy Note 7 kept catch­ing fire. Instead of imme­di­ately recall­ing the devices, Samsung quietly fixed the issue, but replace­ment phones also exploded.

PR mistakes:

6. Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica Scandal (2018)

It was revealed that Cambridge Analytica har­ves­ted data from 87 mil­lion Facebook users without con­sent to influ­ence elections.

PR mistakes:

7. Uber’s “Delete Uber” Crisis (2017)

During Trump’s “Muslim ban”, taxi drivers in NYC went on strike in protest. Uber con­tin­ued ser­vice and removed surge pri­cing, lead­ing to accus­a­tions of strike-break­ing. The hasht­ag #DeleteUber went viral.

PR mistakes:

8. Dolce & Gabbana’s China Insult (2018)

D&G released a racist ad cam­paign fea­tur­ing an Asian mod­el strug­gling to eat Italian food with chop­sticks. When back­lash erup­ted, D&G’s co-founder called China “a coun­try of sh*t” in leaked messages.

PR mistakes:

9. Peloton’s Tone-Deaf Christmas Ad (2019)

Peloton released an ad show­ing a woman receiv­ing a Peloton bike as a gift from her hus­band and doc­u­ment­ing her fit­ness jour­ney. Many saw it as sex­ist, imply­ing the hus­band wanted his wife to lose weight.

PR mistakes:

10. Volkswagen’s Dieselgate Scandal (2015)

VW was caught cheat­ing emis­sions tests, falsely claim­ing their dies­el cars were “clean” when they were  40 times over the leg­al pol­lu­tion limit.

PR mistakes:

Key Takeaways from PR Disasters

Every situ­ation is dif­fer­ent, but there are some key takeaways from dam­aging PR disasters.

THANKS FOR READING.
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Get star­ted with this free Introduction PR Course and learn essen­tial pub­lic rela­tions skills and con­cepts for future suc­cess in the PR industry.

Introducing Public Relations

• What is Public Relations?
• The Public Relations Definition
• The Stakeholders in Public Relations
• The Influencers in Public Relations
• The Publics in Public Relations
• What Public Relations Does for an Organisation
• PR Approaches: Excellence, Rhetorical, and Critical
• The Four Models of Public Relations
• The PESO Model: Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned Media

Publics in Public Relations

• John Dewey and the ‘P’ in Public Relations
• Publics vs Target Groups (to be published)
• Seriality (Context Matters)
• Five Types of Publics

Comparing Public Relations

• Good PR vs Bad PR
• Public Relations vs Marketing
• Public Relations vs Journalism
• Public Relations vs Media Relations
• Public Relations vs Publicity
• Public Relations vs Advertising (to be published)
• Public Relations vs Public Affairs (to be published)

Public Relations Resources

• PR Things To Do (Get 100+ Ideas)
• Doctor Spin’s List of PR Blogs

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