Crisis PR Do’s and Don’ts, Brought to You by Komen and Planned Parenthood

by Racheal Caswell

Politics aside, as a PR professional I’m floored by the way Susan G. Komen for the Cure decided to handle communications regarding its decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood.  Instead of coming out of the gate with strong messaging about how its main priority is supporting women, the organization stayed silent. Instead of participating in thoughtful, well-crafted conversations with the outpouring of women posting on its social media pages, they again stayed silent. And in the meantime, they completely lost control of the messaging.

As Non-profit Marketing Guide points out, “how you feel about abortion is really irrelevant to this communications debacle unfolding before us.” Komen for the Cure seemingly went from beloved cause to villain overnight and effective public relations – or lack thereof – has everything to do with it. Almost immediately after AP broke the news that Komen for the Cure halted funding, Planned Parenthood sent out an email blast to its supporters asking them to provide additional donations and presenting specific ways Komen’s decision would affect women. They also included the number of clinical breast exams (170,000) and mammograms (6,400) that money had previously been used for. And as every good PR person knows, the media loves statistics.

Not stopping there, Planned Parenthood took to Facebook and Twitter, urging people to sign and pass on an open letter written by one of their activists, creating an image for supporters to share to their Facebook walls that displays the message “Still Standing with Planned Parenthood” and an arrow pointing to their profile picture, and even promoting a Tumblr blog written by women who have received preventative care at Planned Parenthood centers.

Meanwhile, Komen for the Cure spent the same amount of time removing negative comments from its Facebook page, ignoring Twitter comments and writing irrelevant posts about batteries and mummies. By the time they addressed the issue, the damage had been done.

So much of this snafu could have been avoided by Susan G. Komen for the Cure presenting a solid plan for where those dollars pulled from Planned Parenthood will now go in order to continue funding cancer screenings for low-income women. There may still have been some grumblings from Planned Parenthood and its supporters, but people on both sides of the political fence would likely have been appeased by knowing there was already an alternate recipient of funding. The negative reaction seems to have stemmed mostly from Komen for the Cure not having a plan in place.

This is a classic example of why your public relations campaign should always be proactive, instead of reactive. While you’re scrambling to come up with responses to a crisis, someone else is going to answer for you, and chances are it won’t be the messaging you want. If your client is facing controversy, try to get out ahead of it and present the news in a way that will reassure your audience you know what you’re doing. And if something breaks before you’ve had a chance to do so, don’t stay silent. Engage with the public and reinforce your messaging. It’s PR 101.

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