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PR Fuel: Recalling Contingency PlansThe weather in the Berkshires was perfect last weekend. I was in the mountains of western Massachusetts to celebrate the wedding of a good friend, and other guests and I marveled at the good fortune bestowed on us by Mother Nature."If only the weather was like this last week," one guest muttered to me. Probing, as I tend to do, I found out that this guest had helped plan a public event to launch a new product by a company based in upstate New York, just a few hours from where we enjoying the wedding festivities. The event took place outdoors, which would have been fine had it not poured rain. "We had no contingency plan," the guest, an executive at the company, told me. "The people who planned it banked on good weather and when it started to rain, we had to rush everyone into the cafeteria." Journalists, business partners and employees crowded into the cafeteria, the guest said, because it was the only room in the office complex large enough to handle the crowd. "It was a disaster," the guest continued, asking that I not reveal his company's name for fear of additional embarrassment. "We had to spend more than thirty minutes setting up the sound system so people could hear us and the acoustics in the cafeteria proved to be horrible." The rest of the event did not go much better as people's moods soured due to the poor sound and the flustered presentations. Media coverage of the event, which the company hoped would be the catalyst for a public relations campaign, was minuscule. "We had a wire reporter there and we were hoping that his story would make it onto the national wire," said the executive. "He couldn't hear the presentation though, so he never wrote about it." I asked the executive who was to blame and he smiled. "The PR people, of course. They planned it." I could have gone on, mentioning perhaps that everyone knows how quickly the weather changes in this particular season ("If you don't like the weather now, just wait five minutes"), but the day was one to celebrate. I instead offered to get my fellow guest a drink, and our conversation quickly turned to baseball. Event-planning, as those who have been involved with it will tell you, is a difficult process. Schedules need to be coordinated, collateral material needs to be assembled and presentations need to be prepared. Entertainment and catering may need to be booked, and guests must be attended to. Securing a site for an event can prove troublesome depending on the budget, and setting an agenda can be a pain when too many people are involved in the planning process. Contingency plans are a must when you're planning an event. As the example above illustrates, weather can have an obvious impact on an event planned outdoors. In this particular case, the people planning the event ignored the will of nature. They should have prepared the cafeteria ahead of time and shifted the event indoors once the morning weather report hit. Even a "chance of showers" can ruin an event. I did ask the executive one more question about the event. "Had the PR people ever planned such an event before?" I asked. "No," he replied. "This was the first time we ever did anything like this." "Lesson learned," I said, as we toasted to the happy couple. ___ Speaking of lessons learned, I can't help but point out the trouble that toy-maker RC2 Corp. has gotten itself into. The Oak Brook, Illinois company already racked up some bad press earlier this year when it was forced to recall more than one million "Thomas & Friends" toys due to dangerous lead paint. RC2 smartly tried to win customers back by sending "bonus gifts" to those who returned the toys. The move backfired, however, when RC2 had to recall the bonus toys due to, you guessed it, lead paint. "This is so exactly what the villain in a children's movie would do," Eban Schletter, a parent whose daughter's toys were impacted by both recalls, told The Associated Press. "It's just ridiculous." The supply chain can be a tricky thing for manufacturers, but as Schletter says, this is ridiculous. Checks and balances were obviously not in place, and the company's PR people should have been asking management questions (maybe they were) about the origin of the replacement toys. Remember, public relations is not just about pitching or dealing with queries from the media. PR people must be guardians of their company's brand. In doing so, they must ask difficult questions and push for answers, reminding everyone else in the organization that their job is ultimately to protect everyone's job by helping keep the company out of trouble.
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