It’s rarely a good day when Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly blasts your organization in front of an audience of more than 2 million people.
That’s what happened to the American Red Cross in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy when O’Reilly hammered the venerable relief agency for failing to act fast enough to channel millions of dollars in donations to victims’ families.
Cut to another tragedy three years later as the Red Cross mobilized to raise more than $400 million in the wake of the Asian tsunami disaster. Asked to recommend a charity to trust, O’Reilly told viewers, “I’d go with the American Red Cross or Catholic Charities. Both seem to be well organized and accountable.”
If you can win Bill O’Reilly over to your side, you’re doing something right. And while Red Cross vice president Darren Irby is not likely to dwell on 9/11, he will point out to marketers next week why the lessons of crisis management are as relevant to a cookie company faced with a nationwide backlash over trans fats as they are to a relief agency. The venue is the MIT Sloan CMO Summit in Boston on March 16-18, and the topic is protecting a brand in a “hostile” marketplace.
“Sometimes organizations get so caught up in a particular path where they get so entrenched in trying to fox the problem internally, they can’t see what trends are taking place externally,” Irby told CHIEF MARKETER in an interview.
But when handled correctly, “a crisis can help a particular organization. Tylenol is the most famous one,” Irby said, referring to Johnson & Johnson’s up-front reaction after seven Chicago residents died from swallowing poisoned tablets in 1982. J&J won praise from critics and, more important, regained the trust of consumers by being proactive and honest about the incidents.
“When there’s a sense of chaos, which can be internal–the CEO leaves, for instance–it’s a matter of taking the basic procedures I’ll be talking about, our standard operating procedures in times of disaster,” Irby said.
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