Press Book

Dear all,

Before starting this blog let me introduce myself. I am Anisha Gaya from Charles Telfair Institute, Mauritius. Doing my last semester, I am actually doing PR 393, Business Capstone, as well as doing PR 300 again as last semester I was not able to pass this module with flying colors marks! Thus, this semester, with 3 modules, its quite a tough and hectic one as all three modules are composed of facing "real" situations and not just reading books and calculated exams.

Concerning my internship at the Central Water Authority (Mauritius) which is a Governmental organization, I have reached approximately my 22 days of internship and actually planning to do one or two weeks more as the Communication Director is planning to do a : "Save Water Campaign" during the following weeks and this shall be an additional experience for me as well as help me to include additional works in the final report.

As for the past weeks, till my last blog and the "World Water Day"(WWD), which was held on the 22 & 23 March 2011, we did a lot of follow up such as debriefing sessions with all the members who participated in the event. During the debriefing sessions, we all gave our view points about what went right and wrong, what could be done better for next year event. However, all the members did agree that this year was the best WWD ever organised.

As for me and my contribution to the organbisation, the Communication Director asked me to prepare a Press Book concerning the World Water Day. Since my 1st to my last PR modules done at CTI, never did i hear about what was a Press Book. When the Communication Officer mentioned it, I didn't not asked what was really a Press Book about as i thought i shall find it on the Internet. But to my great surprise, on the Internet a press book was only described as photo albums. The next day (last week) i went and asked about the Press Book to the Communication Direction and then he explained to me what it was all about.

In fact, a Press Book is an evidence about an event. An evidence that the event was indeed held and somewhat a proof that is kept in the organisation. For example if someone whats to know about the event, the Press Book contains materials (records) such as :

• What is the event about-An introduction
• When and where was it held
• Happenings (steps) during the events-Program
• Press releases
• Public opinions
• Experiential Marketing
• Media Kit
• and summaries in terms of press & online coverages- for example what the press( TV, Radio, Newspaper or internet) communicated about the event.

That's all for this blog. Till my next one, I hope everyone is enjoying and almost done with their internship.

Regards,

Anisha Gaya

Crisis Communication Plan

Hello everybody,

For this post i would like to talk about Crisis Communication in PR and its importance as well as consequences.

Doing my internship at the Central Water Authority, last week (3 April) there happened to be a very important issue if not dramatic incident involving heavy oil being poured into water to be consumed by the habitants of Lallmatie (Mauritius).

Indeed this has been a crisis situation involving the CWA. The communication Officer was very busy going onsite, solving the problem and calming the habitants as the incident involved children being severely ill and hospitalized due to this water contamination.

Crisis communication is a primordial tool of the PR profession designed to protect and defend an individual, company, or organization facing a public challenge to its reputation.

In the case of the CWA, the challenges came in the form of investigation from media inquiry, violation of environmental regulation and a number of situations involving legal,ethical, and financial issues.

When the reputation of a company is under attack, protecting and defending it becomes the biggest priority and this is done though effective crisis communication plan

When events like this happen, the media firestorm can quickly overwhelm the ability of the entity to effectively respond to the demands of the crisis. To emerge with its reputation intact, an organization must anticipate every move and respond immediately and with confidence.

Effectively responding to the challenges of a crisis requires more than the typical skills of the public relations professional, requiring instead experience at the highest levels of the field, such as investigative reporting.

Crisis communication includes crafting messages often tested by research and polling. A rapid response capability is an essential element of crisis communication.

Additional tactics includes proactive media outreach to get messages and context to the media, identifying and recruiting credible third party allies who can attest to the company’s side of the story, and striking first, not waiting to be hit.

Responding quickly, efficiently, effectively and in a premeditated way are the primary objectives of an effective crisis communication strategy.

The inherent lag time in formulating responses to a crisis can result in considerable losses to company revenues, reputation as well as substantially impacting on costs.

Coming back to the incidents, everything has been handled effectively and things are back to normal thank to the communication officer who did things with dexterity and passed messaged to the media in a timely manner. He also found the very right words to communicate to the population and the media. Unfortunately i was not able to accompany the communication officer on spot as he had to do thing very rapidly but nevertheless i was able to listen when he had the media on the phone. Here also he used very tactical communication to talk to the press, without reviling too much information, effectivly comforting the press and spoke very confidently.