Talk about a PR disaster.
FEMA, the federal disaster agency, created its own when it staged a phony press conference last week in which FEMA employees posed as reporters and threw soft-ball questions at agency leaders so they could tell us what a good job they were doing at the California fires.
During yesterday’s commentary on “Face the Nation” on CBS, Bob Schieffer had a good suggestion for FEMA: fire the flaks who were responsible for this mess. And if the agency wants to generate authentic publicity, send whichever PR people are left to California to help the fire victims.
“Somewhere on their employment application form there must be a clause that says “Your IQ must be below a certain level to work here.”
Thanks to James Romenesko for the heads-up on this one.
Speaking of press conferences, the majority of them are a huge waste of time unless you’re dumping bad news and giving all media the same story. Far better to stage an interesting media event that they’ll really care about. (See “Creative Alternatives to Boring News Conferences.”)
How is the Public Relations Society of America, the trade group for PR pros, responding to the FEMA flap? Oh so very gently.
PRSA is simply urging FEMA to adopt the PRSA Code of Ethics and offering its assistance. You can read more about it at http://tinyurl.com/yugu2q
Why didn’t the association take a stronger stand?
Ouch! No wonder companies keep goofing up when it comes to PR.