By Jeffrey McCrum
An inevitable fact of working in any industry is dealing with public relations crises. While some PR crises can be solved with a quick clarification in a press release, others are much more serious, with the eyes of the world watching to see what the organization’s response will be. Here are two organizations dealing with a bevy of PR crises in 2024.
Boeing’s bad year
2024 was a year to forget for aircraft giant Boeing. They have dealt with multiple incidents in
which parts have flown off of their planes during commercial flights, resulting in injuries and
some terrifying near misses. To put the icing on the bad PR cake, two astronauts sent to space on a Boeing rocket became stranded, and Boeing needed intervention from SpaceX to bring them home. Boeing’s responses to these incidents were seen as severely lacking, and CEO David Calhoun will be stepping down at the end of 2024.
Disaster for Ticketmaster
This year, Ticketmaster’s data was hacked in a massive breach, resulting in the personal
information of over 560 million customers being stolen. Ticketmaster’s parent company,
LiveNation, initially only confirmed the hack to shareholders. In addition, Ticketmaster and
LiveNation are being sued by the Department of Justice for having an illegal monopoly over
event tickets in the United States. And we thought making the Swifties upset was bad…
What is the best move when a PR crisis hits? Responding quickly and honestly and having a game plan in place for common crises in your field is usually a good move. Staying silent for a long period of time and letting media narratives take hold while you scramble to find the perfect message usually isn’t.
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