Wild Card

             When it comes to public relations, it’s just a world of pointing fingers and trying to make up for someone’s mistakes. There are even entire agencies dedicated to these tasks, people who get payed to not make mistakes, but humans make mistakes, and sometimes they’re bigger than we could’ve ever expected. Companies such as Toyota, JetBlue, and Bud Light put thousands, if not millions of dollars into their public relations strategizing. However, what one considers to be clever marketing can turn into a PR nightmare in an instance.

    Overall public relations can be defined as the practice of managing and disseminating information from an individual or an organization (such as a business, government agency, or a nonprofit organization) to the public in order to affect their public perception. This is so necessary in an age where information spreads like wildfire. Public relations bridges the trust between a business and its consumers, if this trust is damaged then so is the business and its revenue. Public relations companies work along side individuals or businesses to keep them on the right track. They often work with their social media, marketing, and advertising to make sure they don't say something wrong, keeping everyone happy is the ultimate goal. However, this is easier said then done.

    One of the greatest public relations fiascos dates back to 2007 when JetBlue fount themselves in a crisis. JetBlue, known as a "smaller" or "less popular" airline was climbing in popularity as they offered ample leg room and satellite religion on their planes, but this progress with their customers came to a halt on Valentines day of 2007. New York's JFK airport had a winter storm forecasted to change to rain. As this change was made, JetBlue allowed customers to book flights and started boarding. However, the ice never changed to rain so many passengers were stuck on the runway for up to 9 hours and with only 17 of the 156 scheduled flights departing that day, operations were thrown off for an entire week. In order to try to save face, JetBlue's lead director of PR pushed the owner to go on talk shows an apologize, simply to save face. JetBlue then set out to hire an entire team dedicated to deal with irregular operations, in case of possible weather crises in the future. JetBlue hired a new CEO, made sincere apologies, and offered a customer bill of rights to rebuild after this crisis, simply a work of public relations. 

    Toyota is another company that found themselves in quite the PR pickle in 2010. In fact, they managed to endure a scandal that no company ever wants to face, death or injury lawsuits. In 2010 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its statistics on traffic accidents from the last decade, revealing that there were over six thousand complaints of sudden acceleration in Toyota automobiles, 89 of these instances resulting in death, 57 in injury.