Public Relations (PR), is at its most dynamic when it is used to handle a crisis situation, since, a crisis can make or break an organizations reputation that has been built strategically over a period of time, the case study of BP’s Gulf Mexico Oil spill is a major PR disaster that was handled inefficiently and BP paid the price both monetarily and most significantly the image was severely tarnished.
The company in question Carnival Cruise Lines has been known for bungling the cruise experience and the disasters that have hit the cruise line are the fire in Splendor, the collision of Costa Concordia and the most discussed and talked about crisis, the Carnival Triumph, that left the passengers stranded for five days sans working toilets, due to the cruise line’s engine that caught fire and the disaster is popularly known as the ‘Poop Cruise’ due to the raw sewage, no air conditioning and rotten food at the cruise making life hell for the passengers (Tuttle, 2013).
PR is primarily directed towards the public both, internal and external and in relation to the case study the following were the concerned public who was addressed in the Carnival Triumph PR mechanism.
Internal Publics
The internal publics involved are as follows:
Cruise Line shareholders
Investors
Employees
Suppliers & Cruise Partners
External Publics
The external publics involved are as follows:
Passengers
Potential Consumers
Media
United States Coast Guards
The Port and City of Mobile
Customs and Border Protection
The communication tools to inform the publics became a pain for the management, and the company during the crisis, the media, with CNN, taking the lead and other major broadcasters provided a wall to wall account of the ongoing harrowing experience of the passengers on the Carnival Cruise Line (Thomaselli, 2013).
Besides, in this age of technology and digital media, the passenger’s social media, exploded on the digital world, with tweets, photos of the experience, that in essence provided more fodder to the media to expand on the crisis through family and friends, it won’t be far off to say that the impact of Cruise as a holiday avenue was severely impacted by the crisis.
The PR communication tools and techniques that were employed by Carnival Cruise Line, to inform, damage control and generate a sense of loss and apology, initiated by the company setting up a dedicated page on the Carnival website for updating news on the crisis constantly, the carnival Facebook page was also very much utilized, with more than 2 million people liking the page, the updating of the situation from a PR aspect was live and viral for the public’s (Thomaselli, 2013).
The twitter handles of the company, i.e. @CarnivalCruise and @CarnivalPR were fully mobilized and were issuing updates. The PR was functioning very much actively in taking calls of the concerned family member and friends of the passengers and most importantly the company was in constant contact with the designated on shore contacts of the passengers. An estimated 7,000 calls from passenger’s family and friends were taken by the Carnival PR team (Thomaselli, 2013).
The initial focus of the PR were the passengers and family and friends and the community, besides the communication tool used, i.e. social media to being the PR with was a flawed strategy, in view of the fact that the intended message for the desired public, i.e. Passengers and families and the community in general inclusive of the government, influencers and media, was nothing that was new, since, all the 3,000 plus passengers were sharing live the pictures, tweets and videos of the unfolding crisis.
The communication tool used on an initial level, Facebook and Twitter, received ample feedback from the concerned people and the 7,000 calls is an apt example of creating an impact.
The impact of the message was also magnified through the Facebook page that has more than 2 million likes thus giving the crisis PR efforts a substantial impetus in the eyes of the consumers.
The twitter handles were used effectively, however, PR requires a constant understanding of the situation at hand and to deal with it, requires as an astute sense of picking the right words and the time, when the hellish experience finally ended and the 3,000 tired and dirty passengers were disembarking from the cruise ship Triumph, the most inappropriate tweet from the @CarnicalCruise handle, outraged passengers, family, friends, the general public no bounds.
The tweet was ‘Off course the bathrobes for the Carnival Triumph are complimentary’, of course, it would have been said in jest by the handler, and that in essence showcase the handling of the PR by the company that was a bitter fiasco (New, 2013)
The external publics, as in the PR Experts and Travel Experts, all believed that the PR efforts, intent to create a positive impact, backfired and it did more harm than good for the image of the company.
The message could have been communicated more effectively by instantly making the media party to the crisis and to work in tandem from the start could have given the company traction in terms of limiting the damage.
The Carnival Cruise Line didn’t not respond to the media immediately, as they declined to comment from a query by the Huffington Post and that proved to be one big mistake, in view of the fact that, the wall to wall coverage done by CNN and other broadcasters could have been directed towards the positive side of the PR.
The biggest PR failure that really showed Carnival Cruise in bad light was the sighting of the Chairman Micky Arison at a Miami Heat basketball game, two days after the crisis started, and the social media went into frenzy once the news broke, regarding the Chairman’s antics (New, 2013).
The CEO Gerry Cahill should have been more proactive, and he only apologized in a new conference two days after the incident, that was a tad too late for the apology to pack any impact to the intended public.
The immediate reaction should have been to utilize the power of the tried and tested PR tool, press conference, the day the engine caught fire, the CEO should have been transported to the Cruise on a helicopter in lieu with key media personals and should have dealt the issue with a live press conference that could have streamed live on the website and Facebook page of the company.
PR is all about thinking on the feet and out of the box, the slow reaction snowballed the PR deficiencies, the company besides the suggested press conference, could have also utilized, the power of the media and issued immediate apologetic messages in newspapers to gain maximum mileage and generate a good feel factor in the eyes of the public’s.
The company kept going on social media, and didn’t take any other initiative to limit the damage. The lackluster effort, created uproar from the cruise industry, since the issue, showed the industry in a very bad light.
The PR failure, resulted in huge ramifications for the company since, more than 10 planed cruise were cancelled, and the company paid back the fares, besides, that the company returned the fares of the suffering passengers, that ranged from $800 to $1000, also the PR damage control was tried in the form of offering every passenger $500, credit of any future cruise, reimbursement of any purchase done on-board and the complimentary bathrobes that were used by passengers to write messages about the cruise condition (Thomaselli, 2013).
The Carnival Cruise, also secured hotel rooms for the friends and the family of the passengers, it has to be said that, in spite of all the PR efforts done by the company, the ship had sunk in relation to salvaging the situation in an effective manner by using the PR strategy.
The amateur manner in which the whole episode was handled should be a case study for PR managers of how not to handle a major crisis situation, and most importantly the management needed to have certain protocols in place, to handle the situation effectively.
The CEO Gerry Cahill was present when the ship finally reached its destination and offered every passenger apologies, however the effort was a tad too late to pack any impact.
References
New, C. (2013). Carnival Cruise Tells Passengers They Can Keep The Bathrobes In Total PR Fiasco. Huffington Post.
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/carnival-mexico-disaster_n_2690277.html
Tuttle, B. (2013). Travelers Still Avoiding Carnival After ‘Poop Cruise’. Time.
Retrieved from http://business.time.com/2013/05/28/travelers-still-avoiding-carnival-after-poop-cruise/
Thomaselli, R. (2013). Carnival Doesn’t Shy Away From Triumph Crisis—But Is Damage Done? AdAge.
Retrieved from http://adage.com/article/news/carnival-cruises-pr-response-triumph-crisis/239819/
