When a statement it’s not enough. The NOC*NSF case.

Nowadays, when a crisis appears, the media and the social media become a constant flow of information about the critical events. How can organizations deal with this imminent wave of bad information that can destroy them? We don’t have the perfect strategy that an organization can use in difficult situations, but for sure, we can help them to avoid to employ wrong strategies.

An example of “wrong PR strategy” has been the no-response of the Dutch Olympic Committee regarding the expulsion of the famous “Lord of the Rings”, Yuri van Gelder, from the finals of his discipline.

During a crisis, it is essential for organizations to give information about a critical event. As stated by van der Meer and colleagues (2014), there is the necessity to contribute to the creation of a coherent story that can attenuate the anxiety, the ambiguity and the uncertainty derived from a crisis. In this sense, essential for the survival of corporations is to adopt pro-active media policies, that, as explained by Verhoeven (2016), help organizations to provide the point of view of the company that can influence the frames that media give about the same organization. Especially when a crisis occur, respond to negative media coverage it’s crucial for organizations to obtain a more positive image.

The lack of NOC*NSF (Dutch Olympic Committee*Dutch Sports Federation, in dutch: Nederlands Olympisch Comité*Nederlandse Sport Federatie), was to do not respond in the appropriate way to the critical event. The Federation provided just a vague statement, without providing substance to its position about the fact. As we can learn from Holladay (2009), when organizations fail to deliver information about the crisis, the media will try to fill the gap with other sources that can have divergent points of view about the event. This absence can be perceived negatively from the publics, harming the image of the organization. In this specific case, the NOC*NSF without giving appropriate information has increased the ambiguity that was surrounding the fact.

What NOC*NSF could do was to provide a prepared spokesperson as representative for the Federation. In this sense, this person could have the power to frame the crisis in favourable way for the organization and he or she could dissuaded other sources to give different meaning to the fact. As Coombs (2015) stated in one of his article, it is essential to reply to a crisis in a consistent, rapid and correct way. For this reason, beyond a statement there should be also an authoritarian spokesperson who has to guide the flow of information into a positive influence of the media coverage of the crisis.

What organizations should learn from this case is that organizations have a voice, and their voices are important to give meaning and sense to the events, especially when a crisis occur. In today’s world it’s not enough to just provide a good statement, it is important to sustain your cause with an appropriate voice into the media game, because a “fly low” approach can help in minimizing the crisis, but it can not work into the long term run.

About the author:
Emanuela (25) is an Italian Master student in Corporate Communication at the University of Amsterdam. She is aficionado of sports media. She likes also cinema, series, travelling and enjoy the life with her friends.