Susan G. Komen doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break. Earlier this week they came out and said they would not be giving money to Planned Parenthood due to a policy that denies money to be given to groups under investigation. However, at the end of the week Komen decided to continue giving Planned Parenthood the grant after rewording the policy. There are many people firing at Komen for these decisions and to top it off the NPO is also rumored to be partnered with a pink handgun campaign.
This week has been a PR nightmare for the communications people of the non-profit. The founder and CEO of Susan G. Komen, Nancy Brinker, released a statement trying to clear up the confusion as to why Planned Parenthood was receiving funding from them. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts are flooded with people from both sides expressing their opinions and concerns. It was all a roar on every social media site and it only got louder when they announced that they reversed the decision and will continue said funding.
Their PR manager must not be sleeping. From a PR standpoint I commend them for replying to every negative and positive remark posted. But, the Twitter page seems to be a regurgitation of the same thing. “Please read our latest statement” is one of the two responses that is repeated for a reply. Personally I think it looks bad that Komen has been so wishy-washy in their decisions. I feel that this reflects poorly on them. No matter my opinion on their decision to fund or not fund PP I believe that changing their minds, twice, lowers their credibility. In class we have been taught how important credibility is for any company. The last thing we want to clean up as PR practitioners is a credibility crisis. They should have stood by a decision. They made it very clear they would not be funding PP because of the investigation, but then came back around and changed the policy and went back to funding PP. It is this indecisiveness that reflects poorly on them. (Official statement.)
The backlash does not stop there though. While trying to handle the negative results of their decisions regarding funding they are also trying to handle the accusations of a partnership with Discount Gun Sales to promote a special edition pink gun for breast cancer awareness month. Discount Gun Sales was forced to take town their website with the gun, but I was able to get this link to a story about it. Right now on Twitter they are replying to every individual that refers to this gun company saying that “they are not an official partner of ours.”
They’ve also had to reword to say they have never been any type of partner. Yes responding to accusations of the partnership is good and providing the public with a list of official partners as well but they set themselves up for more speculations. People are paying attention to their every word and since they repeatedly assured the public that it was never an “official” partnership it left room for doubt. They had to come back and say it was never any kind of partnership but by now the damage is done. The doubt has already spread.
Like I said it has been a PR nightmare because of the fact that the rumors of the partnership were passed along fast. People are not focusing on the good that they do because there is too much talk about the funds and the promotional gun. This could have been handled better within the NPO and their PR reps should have warned them against reversing their decision. Be prepared for anything. I don’t believe Komen was prepared for this. Their image has now been changed to a cowardly mouse. No matter what side you are on for the funding you can recognize the cowardliness. It was cowardly to initially stop the funding if you believe the funding was appropriate and it was cowardly to change their mind and go back to funding. It portrays that they were easily bullied into decisions and did not want to take the heat for what they were doing but by not sticking to one decision makes both sides mad instead of just one. Their PR should have been faster in getting the gun site down and in releasing an official statement other than a tweet that the partnership was illegitimate.
This is a big mess for PR to clean up and I hope Komen and others learned from this. I know I have.
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