Negative Publicity and Business
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This paper is an examination of the ways in which companies deal with the effects of negative publicity. Negative publicity can be such a devastating situation for a business to face that an entire branch of public relations has arisen in the effort to anticipate potential problems and provide a plan of action to deal with them. "Crisis management" has become as vital to a corporate business plan as a long-term financial program. However, no matter how exhaustive the plan or how imaginative the possible scenarios, most companies are simply unable to anticipate every possible crisis they might face. Johnson & Johnson, for instance, could not have guessed that someone might decide to put poison in a few random capsules of Tylenol, while Procter and Gamble never considered the fact that their original, turn-of-the century moon-and-stars logo might someday be interpreted to be a Satanic symbol. The companies that have handled unexpected crises best have not been those able to predict the exact nature of those crises, but instead have been those whose fundamental public relations policies and corporate strategies have made them able and willing to respond openly, rapidly, and completely when disaster strikes. Crisis management, the technique of "helping clients put the best possible 'spin' on a bad situation" (Stauber 19) was invented in the early 1900s by a public relations consultant named Ivy Lee. Lee worked with a number of major American corporations, and one of his
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nd an inner factory seal.
The company's actions, countering the work of a still-unknown criminal, cost J&J $100 million. Yet not one stockholder complained about the expense, and Tylenol quickly regained its market share and the confidence of the public. In fact, public admiration for the company rose significantly because of J&J's swift, forthright way of facing the crisis.
A dozen years later, Intel had not learned from J&J's experience. A survey had recently placed the company sixth on Fortune magazine's list of "Most Admired Companies" in America. However, the company was about to face and fail a test of that public admiration.
Late in the summer of 1984, Thomas R. Nicely, a math professor at a small college in Virginia, posted a notice on the Internet that Intel's Pentium microprocessor, one of the best-known and most-used chips in the personal computer field, had a bug in it. The flaw in question was actually very minor and likely to cause only small mathematical errors in some of the computer's more advanced calculations. In fact, Intel had already become aware of the flaw, but had chosen to keep quiet about it. However, Professor Nicely's announcement became instant news, in large part because the Pentium proc
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1843
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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