A different kind of PR crisis

It’s pretty easy to define what a PR crisis is.  A few recent examples include the current NFL domestic violence case and the inappropriate punishments issued, General Motors’ recent recall after cheaply making cars and of course the BP oil spill.  Some are worse than others but all need to be taken care of and most definitely not ignored.  The most common way a crisis occurs is when an organization, business or person does something wrong and it either endangers somebody else or outrages the public.  That is the most basic definition. 

However, something that happened this week caused a figurative “light bulb” to go off and it gave me a new perspective on what a PR crisis could be.  I’m a very big sports fan.  I follow football (both college and professional) heavily, as well as professional soccer and basketball.  The New England Patriots, one of the NFL’s best teams for the past decade and a half, have started the season well below the normal standards set for the organization.  Starting with a record of 2-2, reporters and fans alike were making claims that the team was not good anymore, Tom Brady, who’s been one of the best quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen, needs to leave and the head coach, Bill Belichick, needed to be fired.

This perspective got me thinking.  I had never really thought a PR crisis within sports actually about winning games and not just dealing with some kind of outside problem, like the current domestic violence issue.  It made me wonder how you deal with a problem of this nature.  People claiming that is was “now or never” for the Patriots and being unhappy at how well they were playing, isn’t really something you can change.  The only way you can change somebody’s perspective in a problem of this nature is to win.  Winning solves all problems in sports.  But what if a team can’t win? 

There have been situations like this every season in every sport.  There’s always a bad team.  So how do those teams deal with being bad?  From a marketing and PR perspective, it must be difficult to deal with a situation like this.  It really depends on the team to solve the problem and to start winning.

Anyway, regarding the matter of the Patriots, I think people were overreacting.  As their game between against the Cincinnati Bengals draws to a close, the score reads New England 43, Cincinnati 17.  Maybe they’ve answered their critics, for the time being anyway.