So now would be a good time for Caribou to learn how to do crisis PR on Facebook.
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But this week, the company flunked crisis PR 101 and spawned a social-media firestorm with its inept handling of the issue.
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Michael Fertik owns ReputationDefender, a start-up company that helps individuals and companies manage their online reputation--essentially a Web-centric crisis PR firm.
"Very straightforward, " says Karen Doyne, a crisis PR consultant at Burston Marsteller.
Any crisis PR consultant worth her retainer would certainly advise him to decline the fee and the terrible optics that go along with it.
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Though coolly saying it will appeal the verdict and expected to win, it's clear that Morgan Stanley (nyse: MWD - news - people ) is bunkering down in crisis PR mode.
The bank's internal communications chief, Ray O'Rourke , has a background in crisis PR from his days as an executive at Burson-Marsteller, where he represented Pan Am Airlines in the Lockerbie air disaster and Perrier in its more recent benzene fiasco.
Over the course of three days, 101 went through a series of sessions with the Vatican, covering the new media landscape, social media trends among young people, the changing nature of institutional communications and crisis management PR.
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Take Tom Cruise, who was beset in a PR crisis before Suri entered the world.
During the initial reaction to a PR crisis, it is vitally important to ensure that, although it is a challenge in the Internet age to exert any control over the general discourse, communications within your sphere of influence are tightly controlled.
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While I can respect that such communications are not, typically, for public consumption, Ari finds himself in a position where his crisis management firm is in need of some crisis management and, as any PR executive will tell you, the best crisis management usually involves simply telling the truth as quickly as possible.
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Sure, you could try to solve your crisis by firing your ad and PR agencies, in the hopes that a new buzz campaign would bring you radically different results.
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"You have to act like a leader, " says Torod Neptune, crisis management leader at tech-focused PR firm Waggener Edstrom.
Fees run the gamut, but typically you'll pay more for crisis-related work than other forms of PR.
As America prepares to celebrate the Super Bowl, there are several storylines proving that timely PR responses are critical to responding to crisis and managing reputations.
"Senior management must be front and center, " says Bill Keegan, director of crisis management at Edelman, a large Chicago-based PR firm called on to manage several product recalls.
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