A painful chapter in the company's past had been resurrected with startling clarity. Even after United set the record straight, lingering concerns over the company's corporate reputation caused the stock to close down more than 10% for the week.

Thanks to a single blog post, published by an anonymous blogger, one of the world's premier airlines was caught flat-footed in the media public relations environment in which stockholders and analysts now live. In United's case, the blogger had no malicious intent, but recent history provides graphic examples of companies being hijacked by online miscreants seeking to do harm.

One example occurred just last month, when video appeared on YouTube showing two Domino's Pizza employees defiling food that was about to be served to customers. The event mortally imperiled Domino's corporate reputation millions of potential customers watched the disgusting video workshop. But Domino's own crisis PR response -- the company eschewed online engagement and waited 24 hours to see how traditional media would react -- only added to the damage.

A decade ago, companies had a full day to assemble their crisis teams, develop their crisis communications training course and decide upon the best seminar or class for disseminating those messages. Yet in the first 24 hours after the now infamous Domino's viral video appeared, more than 750,000 people (or more than half the daily readership of The New York Times) had already viewed it and hundreds of blog posts were commenting upon it. The damage was done well before the traditional media were on story. A week after the video's YouTube debut, Domino's stock had plunged 10%.

Domino's didn't realize that it had already fallen behind at the first sign of crisis. The company -- which handled the ensuing aspects of the crisis in textbook fashion -- misplayed the first 24 hours, but that's the entire point. In today's digital media-driven news environment, the first 24 hours of a crisis are often the only 24 hours a company has to effectively protect its brand credibility and trust. One step they can take is offering crisis communications training courses or a workshop.

The United and Domino's case studies -- along with many others in recent years -- reveal how many companies that have demonstrated a mastery of marketing their brands online still struggle to use those same online crisis media training seminars in a crisis without having as corporate crisis management plan or a school crisis management plan.

It is therefore incumbent on companies to mitigate such threats with a crisis management plan, provide crisis management training workshops and classes, and "bulletproof" their brands before they become the subject of critical online conversations.

Source: Richard Levick  link

Related: Crisis Training