Recent examples underline it’s important to have a robust crisis communications strategy in place. The Bodywork Company performing arts school in Cambridge was thrust into the news for the wrong reasons amid a story about the BBC’s .
The Mail Online’s media editor Paul Revoir reported how the BBC provided positive coverage of student ‘wellbeing’ work at Caroline Flack’s former dance school. It overlooked a damning Ofsted report which included claims students had been ‘fat shamed’.
The change in narrative meant the school was plunged into an unexpected crisis. Theresa Kerr, principal of the Bodywork Company, addressed the Ofsted report directly with media outlets. She apologised and provided the solution – removal of two teachers – to ensure that the issue would be publicly resolved.
The crisis was managed through an excellent PR strategy. Too often PR crisis management can be viewed as a process that gets under way in when something goes wrong – which inevitably happens from time to time. Crises by their very nature unexpectedly escalate into…
