One necessary facet of a holistic PR plan is crisis management. Businesses must be willing to try new things in order to grow and prosper, but as we know, the best laid plans of mice and men can often go awry. That is when the crisis manager needs to step in. In this week’s Weekly Wrap, we discuss public backlash. These companies opened themselves up to public scrutiny and received a little more heat than expected. Here’s hoping their crisis managers are hard at work.
Airbnb’s new campaign “Is Mankind?” was intended to explore the kindness of man. The minute-long video that accompanies the campaign features a baby walking away from the camera and the tagline, “belong anywhere.” But with Airbnb sharing social media posts that read, “Go look through their windows, so you can understand their views” and “Sleep in their beds, so you may know their dreams,” the ad campaign is coming off less endearing or thought provoking and more creepy.
Fifty-five years after the publication of Harper Lee’s beloved novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Lee has released its sequel, “Go Set a Watchman” to mixed reviews. In the novel, Atticus Finch, who was a near universally praised character for his moral quality in Mockingbird, is painted as a racist and a white supremacist. Some readers enjoyed the book, citing that Watchman is more realistic in its portrayal of the character, but others, both readers and critics alike found that the new portrayal ruins the image they had of Finch when they first read Mockingbird. It was certainly a bold move, but the backlash has been harsh.
For weeks, Prime Day, the “holiday” created in honor of Amazon’s 20th anniversary was touted as “having more deals than black Friday” for its Prime subscribing members. The only problem: the deals weren’t very good. There are, of course, some good deals, but the consensus seems to be that the store is trying to unload a bunch of old junk. Angry customers took to twitter to vent their frustration, calling the event “Amazon’s Garage Sale” among other names. The responses ranged from sarcasm to humor and outright anger.
Share your thoughts on these recent examples of public backlash in the comment section below.
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Adam Tapparo is an intern at WordWrite Communications. Find him on Twitter @AdTapps. 
