Business has become one of the favorite whipping boys in the media to provide temporary diversion from the usual stream of personal scandals, talk show confessions, and entertainment releases. Do a good job, and you will seldom appear. Be remotely connected to something harmful, controversial, or threatening, and the world is at your door. Ms. Cohn does a very effective job of explaining why this is, and how you can influence it.

The book is organized around 7 deadly sins in a public relations crisis. These sins are really mindsets that are mistaken and will usually prove harmful:

It will never happen here (chances are it will)

I don't care how it looks (the more you ignore it, the worse you make things, up until the day that everyone involved is fired)

Let them eat cake (describing things inaccurately just draws more wrath and personal jeopardy)

It's not our fault (customers and the public aren't looking to find out who's at fault, they want to know who's going to take responsibility for solving the problem so they can feel confident again)

Just say "No comment!" (people will assume you are hiding something and more negative attention will come your way)

Just numbers on a balance sheet (the source of all the damaging material will probably come from current and former employees -- good internal communication and behavior are most critical)

React first, think later (you can step into a mess from which you cannot extract yourself, like quicksand)

These sins and the stallbusting solutions for them are detailed in each fascinating chapter. These sections are enlivened by a wide variety of former crises handled unsuccessfully (such as the Exxon Valdez) and successfully (such as J&J's Tylenol recall). Almost all of them will be familiar in general, but you will get added detail to help you understand why a company did or did not do well.

Ms. Cohn herself is very experienced in this area and draws on personal examples in many cases, especially the crash of an Air Florida jet in Washington, D.C.

The basic lessons revolve around the concept of establishing crisis scenarios and practicing how to handle those scenarios before they occur. You also get directions for how to do the practice so it will be relevant and realistic. This benefits of this type of simulation training are also spelled out well in The Art of the Long View, which you may wish to read as well.

The book is filled with an enormous quantity of do's and don't's. I found it hard to keep track of them all as I went along. I was pleased to see many of the concepts behind them summarized on pages 329 and 330. You might find it easier to absorb the material in the book if you began by reading the introduction, then went to these two pages, and returned to the beginning of the book.

The management process described here would work well in any problem-solving environment. Although the author does not make that point, you should be sensitive to it. You have a lot more to gain by studying this book closely than you realize, and broadening its application. Stalled thinking is also a problem in other critical areas of a company.

Remember that an ounce of prevention can often be worth much more than a pound of cure!

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Will Serve You Well In a Crisis  Nov 26, 2004
By TJ Walker "Author, 'Presentation Training A-Z' and 'Media Training A-Z' www.mediatrainingworldwide.com"
Cohn has been there and done that. She carefully dissects well-known crises in the news and lets you know how they could have been handled better, and more important, how you can survive and thrive if similar crises were to hit you and your company.

garbage  Oct 12, 2011
By ginger pen
There is nothing of tangible use in this book for actual PR or communications professionals.

If I wanted a book of mostly corporate US anecdotes (that aren't that well told frankly, and demonstrates the very shallow bias of the author and their lack of understanding of the actual issues in each circumstance), I'd buy one of those bathroom readers and get as much insight.

60 pages in and realizing that this book is simply jumping around from example to example, I started skimming instead and I'm pretty sure I got the same out of it as someone that read it thoroughly.

The title of this book invokes a proper guide to the PROCESS and PLANNING (yes folks, they do exist and should be the road map for any crisis scenario) for good PR and comms work. Instead, the author just says 'be prepared, use common sense, be quick to react, be honest and be genuine".

Thanks Sherlock. Can I have my 16 bucks back?

Seriously. It's that bad. Judging from some of the other more, ahem, positive comments. I suspect a little stacking of the deck from other so-called PR gurus trying to sell their wares hoping for reciprocity on their review pages.

Nice PR guys. Real clever.



Principles are Good, But Examples are Dated  Oct 06, 2011
By Judith C. Hoffman "crisis lady"
I've read a number of books in the field of crisis communications. The principles taught here underscore what I learned other places. It is filled with many examples to illustrate the points, but what jumped out at me is that the examples refer to cases that are over 10 years old. Particularly if college students are using this as a text, they may not remember the cases cited.

A Lesson in Ethics, Too  Feb 14, 2008
By Tsingtao Tootsie
I have used this book in my undergraduate intro to management classes, and besides being good for learning about crisis control, it's a fabulous lesson in the value of honesty and caring. Many young people are not willing to take responsibility for errors, and the upshot of the book is "figure out what to do when things go wrong, and then, without admitting fault, own the problem and set about finding a solution." Now it's in paperback it's an even greater bargain.

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