Combating negative publicity

I have worked with many clients who would freak out whenever there is a negative publicity about their company or services. Once we were a day before a through the line campaign launch and a negative piece, an unfair claim against client's negligence went on frontpage headline with a local paper and everyone went into panic mode. The newspaper offered to interview our client - a chance to clarify the situation but the board decided it was best to lay low on the matter - hoping it would go away.

Well it did - after putting all media on hold and changing some of the marketing messages from targeted to generic. At the same time we also lost the perfect opportunity to turn a negative situation into positive, and put multi-channel marketing into work by creating not just strong brand awareness but education to the public too on a product the market had very little knowledge of.