There’s a syringe in my Pepsi can crises. In most cases a crises occurs at the most unexpected times. The crisis seems to take the organization by surprise and is usually reached due to a lack of a control and response system. This is apparent in the case study “There’s a syringe in my Pepsi can! ” Effective communication is the key to successful communication to the Pepsi crises. (Center, 2003) In this case the consumer claimed to have found a hypodermic syringe in a can of diet Pepsi and this was quickly followed by many similar reports from around the country.
Pepsi immediately produced and distributed information showing that it was impossible for a foreign substance to make its way into the canning process. The president and other top managers made themselves available to the media where they explained the company’s safety measures in the canning process. Public fears were dealt with and the crisis diffused. (Center, 2003) Crisis management is a plan of action to be implemented quickly once a negative situation occurs.
Reputation management is a strategy that is used all year long, utilizing a proactive approach. Crisis Management is evolving into reputation management for a number of reasons. First, this new phrase should attract more attention from top management. Presidents and CEOs do not often want to think about potential crisis situations. For many executives, a crisis is something that happens to someone else. It is a distant thought that can quickly be relegated to the back of the mind, replaced by concern for profit and productivity.
So, the phrase “crisis management” may not sell well at the top. But every executive must be concerned about the reputation of the company or organization. First, communicating quickly and proactively in a crisis is mandatory. When your reputation is at stake because of a crisis that occurred one hour ago, it is not a good to call a meeting to discuss strategy. Second, the most important rule in defending, preserving or enhancing a reputation is that you work at it all year long, regardless of whether or not a crisis strikes.
(Patterson, 2005) A example of good crisis management where the company went all out to get back on track as earliest as possible with out losing a lot of customers or sales due to the incident. This shows that Pepsi has an effective crisis management teams who did their job and most important was the fact that they earned the respect of there clients and employees. Pepsi was able to communicate with its public effectively because of its PR campaign.
Vice President of Public Affairs Becky Madeira was able to address the news media, customers, consumers, and employees as well as local Pepsi-Cola bottle with its “One Clear Voice” approach, which informed the public of proper facts and any new updates as they arose. (Center, 2003) Pepsi’s PR campaign involved four principles, putting the public safety first, establishing and fixing the crisis, communicating with the internal and external public on a regular basis, and taking responsibility for fixing the crisis.
The company’s strategy was to reassure the public that this was not a manufacturing crisis, what was happening was not occurring inside our plant (Center, 2003) The PR team used specific PR communication tools to accomplish these principles. The PR coordinator Madeira, used specific techniques to inform, influence, and motivates the public such as video news releases (VNR), press releases, charts, audio tapes, diagrams of the production process and photos for external and internal distribution. The VNR, proved to be the most effective approach to communicating with the public.
Some other approaches to consider would be guiding the company through a series of worst case scenarios such as flash flood or even a terrorist attack, the company can offer checklist and field proven action tests for a quick result. The PR department should instruct all manager and corporate executives on how best to prepare their teams for a crisis and how to deal with customers, employees, and the media in the aftermath. (Center, 2003) Pepsi’s public relations teams established a successful strategy using effective communication between the organization and public.
Madeira, managed to build an effective and comprehensive blueprint to actually avoiding potential disaster situations. This concept should be adopted by other organization to guide a company through the aftermath of a disaster. In reading this article, I’ve come to the conclusion that sometimes the best management policies are only possible when managers realize and consider the threats or potential disaster and identify them rather than allowing them to flare up into a serious problem.
There is serious need to actively engage in crisis prevention where the first step is the prognosis of when, why, and where conflict will erupt. These techniques do more than secure the structure of a business. They show managers and leaders how to rebuild the spirit of their employees, so that the business can be restored quickly and maybe even result in an organization that would be stronger than before. (Center, 2003) In conclusion, I feel that the most important publics were; the consumers, the press and the employees of Pepsi.
I do believe that Pepsi handled the crises in a professional manner when addressing the publics. The techniques used in this article were adequate in the manner of getting the information out to all the publics. I do feel that maybe immediately following the first incident notification of the syringe that was found, possibly getting out to all the publics involved the information of the possible syringe finding and that the investigation was started immediately. This might have had a greater impact on the following occurrences.
This information would have let the publics that filed false findings know that Pepsi was taking the matter seriously and that the investigation would eliminate the possibility of the syringe coming from with in the plant facility and the bottling line.
References
- Center, Allen H. , Jackson, Patrick. 2003. Public Relations Practices. Managerial Case Studies and Problems, 6e. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Pearson Education Company. Retrieved from: https://ecampus. phoenix. edu/content/eBookLibrary/content/Print. aspx? assetid=9be00cae-11…