crisis management

ASSIGNMENT #3 CASE STUDY CHOICES Crisis Case #1 – Carefree Cruise Line (pgs 13; 129-130; 158; [boxes]) It’s Friday a little after 5 pm I Miami, Florida, the location of the headquarters for Carefree Cruise Line. The majority of your cruise ships have the Carefree brand, but your company also owns a number of smaller cruise lines, what can be called sub-brands. A call comes in that a cruise ship in one of the sub-brands is in distress. The ship is off the coast of Italy, and that is a six-hour time difference from your headquarters in Miami. The call notes that a Mayday has been issued and the ship is being evacuated. You are working with the public relations personnel assigned to the crisis management team for Carefree Cruise Lines. …It is now 12 hours since the report of the distress call. The crisis is already generating a great deal of media coverage in Europe and the United States. This coverage is found in both the traditional and online news media. The ship hit a rock and sand quickly not too far from shore. The ship was evacuated but there are passengers and crew who are unaccounted for and authorities have begun to locate the bodies of crew and passengers who died in the accident. There is not a clear number of injured or dead yet. Pictures are appearing on television, in print publication and online of the cruise ship lying on its side in the water. There are also images of and interviews with passengers who survived the sinking. Carefree Cruise Lines has a very active Facebook page The company regularly posts messages to the site and people comment on posts. There are over 250,000 followers of the Carefree Cruise Lines Facebook page. The company and the CEO each have of a Twitter account. Neither the company nor the CEO have a blog. While active, the company’s Twitter account has a little over 50,000 followers. Message on the Facebook page and on Twitter are coordinated – a basic message is adapted for each channel. Your social media manager oversees the creation of social media messages and monitors the online discussion about Carefree Cruise Lines. The increasing media coverage is intensifying the crisis. …24 hours after the distress call is reported, the intense traditional and online media coverage continues. Safety is emerging as a key them in the media comments. It is reported that the captain waited too long to begin the evacuation and that the safety drill for passengers had been postponed from the first day of the cruise to the second day of the cruise. The ship sank the first night of the cruise, meaning passengers had little information about how to abandon ship.

News media and people posting online, many of whom cruise regularly, are highly critical of the company’s safety efforts in this case. Some are calling into question the safety of all of the ships in your fleet. Some comments are questioning the safety of the entire cruise industry. There is a bright spot on the Facebook page: the vast majority of people commenting on your crisis efforts are supportive. Many report how safe they felt on previous cruises and now how concerned your crews seem to be about safety on board the cruise ships. Crisis case #2 Diamond Pet Food pg 146 (box) In late 2005, reports began to surface of dogs suffering from aflatoxin in their dog food., with at least 76 dying from it. Aflatoxin is a fungus on corn that can damage a dog’s liver. The Food and Drug Administration found that all of the stricken dogs had been eating Diamond pet food. The company tests all corn shipments for aflatoxin and rejects shipments that test too high. Diamond Pet Food decided to recall the related dog food products. What type of instructing information would consumers need? What other messages would you include in your crisis response? What would you do to help make sure pet owners hear of this recall? What other groups might be willing to help get your message to owners? Crisis Case #3 pg 7; pg 147 (box) It is April 10, 2006 and the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have posted a warning about Fusarium keratitis on their website The messages also note that Bausch & Lomb has stopped producing and shipping RENU with MoistureLoc and that investigations so far have shown no proof that the product causes infection. At this point, there has been no recall of the product. However, large retailers, such as Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid (US retailers) are pulling the product from their shelves. Bausch& Lomb tells people about stopping shipments, informs people about the warning signs of a Fusarium keratitis infection, and reminds people to properly clean their contact lenses.

Messages from the American Optometric Association reinforce the Bausch & Lomb message by saying improper cleaning can lead to Fusarium keratitis. A slight complication appears. The government and news media report that similar outbreaks of Fusarium keratitis hit Singapore and Hong Kong in November 2006. Bausch Lomb voluntarily suspended sales of ReNu with MoistureLoc in those countries. Does this change your response?