For an assignment, I studied up on a few PR crisis situations and how they’ve been handled. In 2005, Wendy’s fast food restaurant was involved in a crisis. A woman had found part of a human finger in her chili she had ordered. Instead of ignoring the situation, Wendy’s went right to work on letting the media and public know of the situation and what they were doing to fix it. Lou Williams, owner of a crisis PR firm, said specialists “should tell it fast and tell the truth.” This is exactly what Wendy’s did. Although this happened, I think Wendy’s reputation was saved by being honest. As one of the core values of public relations, I think honesty is the best policy. People feel more comfortable when they have been told the truth. Especially if it’s a popular organization that many people hope and believe in. Even in the case of fast food.
Johnson & Johnson has a crisis a while ago with their Tylenol capsules containing poison and causing several deaths. Johnson & Johnson immediately went to the media and public with press conferences, took all Tylenol packages off the shelves in all stores and became the first in the industry to use the new tamper resistant packaging just six months after the crisis occurred.
The crisis situation I enjoyed reading about most was when Pepsi Cola set up a crisis management team after hypodermic needles had been found in Pepsi cans. They put public safety first, went to find and fix it, and communicated quickly while taking responsibility for solving the crisis. The team used video news releases (VNRs) to show consumers that Pepsi canning processes could not be tampered with. Craig E. Weatherup, Pepsi CEO and president at the time, said, “A can is the most tamper-proof packaging in food supply. We are 99.99 percent certain that this didn’t happen in Pepsi plants”. The public relations team was what got that quote out to the media. They sent out several videos showing how fast the can was blown out, inverted, filled and closed all n less than a second Within 48 hours, the first video was seen by 296 million viewers, three times the number that usually watches the super bowl. By the end of the week Pepsi spokespersons had conducted more than 2,000 interviews with the media. All of this was done through public relations! I’ve come to understand how important it is to have specific knowledge on how to handle an organization’s crisis.
For an assignment, I studied up on a few PR crisis situations and how they’ve been handled. In 2005, Wendy’s fast food restaurant was involved in a crisis. A woman had found part of a human finger in her chili she had ordered. Instead of ignoring the situation, Wendy’s went right to work on letting the media and public know of the situation and what they were doing to fix it. Lou Williams, owner of a crisis PR firm, said specialists “should tell it fast and tell the truth.” This is exactly what Wendy’s did. Although this happened, I think Wendy’s reputation was saved by being honest. As one of the core values of public relations, I think honesty is the best policy. People feel more comfortable when they have been told the truth. Especially if it’s a popular organization that many people hope and believe in. Even in the case of fast food.
Johnson & Johnson has a crisis a while ago with their Tylenol capsules containing poison and causing several deaths. Johnson & Johnson immediately went to the media and public with press conferences, took all Tylenol packages off the shelves in all stores and became the first in the industry to use the new tamper resistant packaging just six months after the crisis occurred. 
The crisis situation I enjoyed reading about most was when Pepsi Cola set up a crisis management team after hypodermic needles had been found in Pepsi cans. They put public safety first, went to find and fix it, and communicated quickly while taking responsibility for solving the crisis. The team used video news releases (VNRs) to show consumers that Pepsi canning processes could not be tampered with. Craig E. Weatherup, Pepsi CEO and president at the time, said, “A can is the most tamper-proof packaging in food supply. We are 99.99 percent certain that this didn’t happen in Pepsi plants”. The public relations team was what got that quote out to the media. They sent out several videos showing how fast the can was blown out, inverted, filled and closed all n less than a second Within 48 hours, the first video was seen by 296 million viewers, three times the number that usually watches the super bowl. By the end of the week Pepsi spokespersons had conducted more than 2,000 interviews with the media. All of this was done through public relations! I’ve come to understand how important it is to have specific knowledge on how to handle an organization’s crisis.
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