PR

Holmesreport: Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Crises of 2002

Die Top 10 der PR-Desaster von 2002

"The year 2002 was a year in which individual companies suffered catastrophic crises, but it was also a year in which American business as a whole suffered a chronic crisis, as constituents—shareholders, employees, regulators, the public at large—began to question whether the entire American corporate system was hopelessly corrupt.

Ordinarily, such an epidemic of ill-considered corporate behavior would have elevated the role of the senior corporate communications executive to a permanent place in the CEO’s inner circle, and provided a bonanza of new business for public relations firms. But in 2002, those gains conspicuously failed to materialize.

“The past year was filled with what seems like an unprecedented number of very widely publicized and unusually intriguing crises,” says Craig Martin, managing director of the Washington, D.C., office of Ruder Finn. “Corporate giants Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom tumbled, and cultural icons Martha Stewart, Jack Welch and Augusta National were humbled, albeit to varying degrees. "