100 Great PR Ideas
Jim Blythe
ISBN: 978-0-462-09949-1

IDEA 1: Create a crisis team
Bad things happen in most industries from time to time. Some industries are especially prone to newsworthy incidents—airlines are an obvious example—while others may go for years without anything happening that would hit the headlines. However, if a crisis does occur, it is amazing how fast it can turn from a simple, solvable problem into a PR disaster.

For many firms, such a crisis can be enough to destroy the company. When a Pan American airlines flight was destroyed by terrorists over Lockerbie, the company suffered a PR disaster when it emerged that warnings had been given about a bomb on the aircraft. The fact that PanAm received an average of four bomb warnings a day made no difference to the public perception: shortly afterward, PanAm went out of business. The problem was that PanAm did not have an effective crisis management protocol.

The idea
Many companies have a well-established crisis team who anticipate scenarios that may create PR problems, and work out solutions in advance. When Eurolines, the European long-distance bus company, suffered a crisis they had a plan in place. A Eurolines bus from Warsaw to London was hit by a lorry in Germany, injuring a number of passengers (some seriously). The company’s crisis team were ready: some passengers were hospitalized in Germany, some were given the option of returning to Warsaw, others were given the option of continuing to London.

At the London end, a large hotel was booked to receive passengers. Medical staff were on hand to provide help (although of course all injured passengers had already received medical care in Germany) and interpreters were available. The passenger list was checked to determine the nationalities of passengers—not all were Poles, since some had travelled to Warsaw from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and even Russia to meet the connection in Poland. Rooms were booked for all passengers and also for friends or family who had expected to meet the coach. Eurolines’ operations director was also present, as well as the PR officer, to field questions from the Press and specifically to prevent reporters from harassing passengers for comments. A buffet was provided for all those present, and the following day Eurolines issued free tickets for onward connections in Britain, recognizing that many passengers would have missed their connections or whoever was meeting them in London. The organization was exemplary: efficient, effective, and geared to creating goodwill all around. Such a slick approach does not happen by accident—it only happens through careful planning and rehearsal.

In practice
• Choose the right people to be on the team. They need to be senior enough to carry credibility with the firm’s publics, and to understand the possible problems and solutions.
• Arrange for the crisis team to meet regularly to consider possible scenarios.
• Practice—do dummy runs.
• Ensure that team members know how to deal with the Press— having someone say “No comment” to every question is a PR disaster in itself.

The 99 other great sales ideas featured in this book:
2. Define your opponent
3. Do good by stealth
4. Pull a stunt
5. Set an ambush
6. Be humorous
7. Keep them waiting
8. Hold a competition
9. Write a reverse pyramid
10. Run a media event
11. Catch them young
12. Press your journalist
13. Think small
14. Know your journalist
15. Be controversial
16. Be prominent on Google
17. Be the brand
18. Develop all the angles
19. Create a photo opportunity
20. Create a feature
21. Write a feature
22. Piggyback your story
23. Run with the runners
24. Create goodwill in the season of goodwill
25. Take the fight to the enemy
27. Move to the third level of sponsorship
28. Involve your stakeholders
29. Sponsor something in B2B
30. Write a newsletter
31. Take control of your interviews
32. Let people rip off your ideas
33. Join a trade organization
34. Tell the whole story
35. Write a letter
36. Get yourself on the expert commentator list
37. Give a speech
38. Think local
39. S**T happens
40. Stimulate debate
41. Be cheeky
42. Write a case study
43. Run a survey
44. Involve the employees
45. Develop your news sensitivity
46. Link your PR and your advertising
47. Bring your enemies inside the tent
48. Go where people will see you
49. Be bold in a crisis
50. Catch your celebrity early
51. Look forward
52. Find a freelancer
53. Get your netiquette right
54. Watch your back
55. Go against the flow
56. Do something very very peculiar
57. Put in some style
59. Do something incongruous
60. Move from the general to the particular
61. Mobilize your forces
62. Let your enemies talk
63. Text your customers
64. Photograph the beneficiaries, not the benefactors
65. Consumer science sells stories
66. Be quirky
67. End in -est
68. Create some “how-to” tips
69. Bad news travels faster than good news
70. Develop a company history
71. Give a gift that really does something
72. Profile yourself in Wikipedia
73. Join LinkedIn
74. Use testimonials
75. Auction something
76. Sponsor something for your customers
77. Put yourself on your website
78. Check out the blogs
79. Partner with a charity
80. Enter competitions
81. Become sustainable
82. Use technology for crisis management
83. Get the search engines working for you
84. Get your own domain name
85. Use a lookalike
86. Blogs are your friend (1)
87. Blogs are your friend (2)
88. Come fl y with me
89. Send a photo of yourself
90. Grab onto something unpopular
91. Watch TV
92. Upstage your competition
93. Think of the children
94. Tell them about yourself
95. Tap into Valentine’s Day
96. Piggyback on celebrity news
97. Keep it short (sometimes)
98. Create a top ten list
99. Do a random act of kindness
100. Get on YouTube