In terms of how not to handle the press, this is an object lesson.
Your company is in panic mode, days away from a huge event. The media is swarming all over you. You want to hide, bury your head in the sand. That’s understandable – we’re all human. Problem is…we’re not all the CEO of the biggest security firm in the country that is about to safeguard the “Greatest Show On Earth”.
Here is what the PR department of G4S said to the industry magazine PR Week today with regards CEO Nick Buckle’s lack of media appearances during this PR crisis.
Head of PR Nicky Savage told PRWeek: ‘Our main focus is making sure we can deliver the security at the games. The main issue is he [Buckles] is 100 per cent focused on getting the delivery right. That’s his main priority. You can debate whether that’s the right approach.
‘His priority as chief executive is to deliver our contract to Locog.’
Savage added that there are no plans for Buckles to face the media over the weekend, but it would be getting the messages out through ‘the usual channels’.
Well that’s a lovely notion G4s and all sounds super-duper that your CEO is concentrating so hard on delivery but a CEO’s role is, like it or not, to face the media when there are tough questions to be asked about the business. Otherwise, they will feed on scraps and speculation and they won’t be quite as sympathetic when you do finally face them.
Lesson…be prepared for a PR crisis. There is surely no way that this wasn’t known about for some time with worries in the comms team that “the press will have a field day” etc.
Fail to prepare…prepare to fail.
Now your PR crisis is just getting bigger. The snowball must be stopped and it will only begin to slow down if you face the music.