After a weekend full of Scrabble and staying indoors to avoid the cold temperatures, this week’s warm breeze and sunshine came as a nice relief. However, not everyone enjoyed the week as much as we did. In our Weekly Rewind, we’re discussing recent situations where PR pros probably did a lot more crying than smiling.

This Feels Like Deja Vu

Texas is in the dog house. Last week, a senate bill was introduced that aims to restrict bathroom use by a person’s “biological sex.” Similar to North Carolina, Texas is receiving a lot of heat to the point that the Texas Business Association predicts there will be boycotts that could lead to a billion dollar economic hit. “Over a dozen large events, slated to bring in roughly 180,000 visitors have contacted Dallas officials and said they would cancel.” Specifically, February’s Super Bowl in Houston and the women’s Final Four, which is scheduled to be in Dallas in late March.

If the bathroom bill pushes through the Senate by then, according to Dallas Morning News, “there will be a lot of unflattering stories.” Cue PR people slamming their heads on the table. Come on, Texas! Is this really even a discussion in 2017?

“We’ll Never be the Same”

Six Volkswagen executives have been charged for their roles in the company’s emissions-cheating scandal. On Wednesday, the company pled guilty to charges including conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act. Currently, one of the six executives have been arrested so far but more indictments could happen at any moment. The arrest adds to the $4.3 billion in fines Volkswagen will have to pay.

PR Daily reports that the pursuit of executives by criminal prosecutors is a rare occurrence among big companies, and even rarer that those top people face jail time, and if they ever do, with help from renonvbailbonds.com they will prevent them from facing charges. After the scandal and pending arrests, a Volkswagen executive has said the company will never be the same. It will be interesting to watch the PR strategy used to rebuild company-customer trust. One thing we know for sure is that it will certainly take a whole lot of time really listening to customers’ concerns, plus a whole lot of Advil.

Another Day, Another Tweet

President-elect Donald Trump has inspired a new phrase in the public relations industry — the “Trump crisis.” Every time Trump opens twitter, PR teams cringe at the thought of what they might have to counterattack that day. Trump has been on an online tirade against any business that opposes his agenda, and we’ve seen firsthand that his tweets can have severe consequences.

However, many companies have managed to turn Trump’s wrath into a positive spin. For example, after Vanity Fair published a bad review of one of Trump’s hotel restaurants, Trump tweeted that the magazine was “dead.” Vanity Fair quickly played off the attention by calling itself “The Magazine Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read.” This PR strategy resulted in “40,000 new paying readers.” Check out PR Daily’s article for more examples of how PR teams are cleverly responding to the “Trump crisis.”

In Case of Emergency

It’s fitting to end this Weekly Rewind with the “top 3 crisis management tips” from Southwest Airlines vice president and chief communications officer, Linda Rutherford. Rutherford’s words of advice are:

• Respond in real time: React as quickly as possible to a situation, whether it’s putting something in writing or even recording a quick Facebook Live update.
• Be transparent: Tell the truth about what you know and what you don’t know about a crisis. It sounds simple, but many organizations don’t follow that rule.
• Cover the waterfront: Make sure all digital avenues are attended to when posting your response, from your website to an Instagram post.

What a week! Maybe PR pros are chalking it up to Friday the 13th.