It might be farfetched to think you can learn a thing or two
from a high school drama, but when I think of strategic public relations
tactics such as event planning, Clueless’ Cher Horowitz immediately jumps into
my mind.
In the movie, Cher delivers an incredible speech paralleling
the need to plan to include refuges in the nation and planning a birthday
dinner. The speech earns her a passing grade in a debate course. Let’s evaluate
her plan to deal with crisis:
“Some people came that, like, did
not R.S.V.P. I was like, totally buggin’. I had to haul to kitchen,
redistribute the food, and squish in extra place settings. At the end of the
day, it was like, the more the merrier.”
What this scene has taught me in my career as an event planner,
and ultimately resource manager, is how to think quickly on your feet. Cher’s
event was a success because of contingency planning. In public relations, the
idea of contingency is necessary to plan for crisis, mismanagement, and any
sort of business problem. We would all like to live in Cher’s world, where
things are perfect and everyone R.S.V.P.’s but in actuality, things happen and
you have to roll with the punches.
As a PR professional, you can chose to accept this reality
and plan ahead for all strategic initiatives. As wonderful and organized as
your plans may be, it is always best to plan for emergency. Having a
contingency plan allows the quick assembly of a business solution which leads
to quick recovery from previous oversight. Large events are sometimes more difficult to
plan for with a variety of things to go wrong, but most PR professionals have
the type of personality to allow them to think quickly. However, quick recovery
still comes from planning.
In keeping with the celebrity theme, one of the greatest
saves in event programming that I have witnessed came from a cloud computing
conference I attended a few years ago. The program called for former President Bill
Clinton to address conference goers in the evening during a San Franciscan winter.
The alternate guest booked for the event
was a pop star who had been attending the entire conference, and had planned to
speak the next day. Promotional video had been showing all week to promote the
singer’s presentation on how his production company uses cloud services. As guaranteed,
weather in San Francisco prevented Mr. Clinton from appearing on time. The
coordinators quickly shot to a video presentation of the pop star, waiting in
the wings, and introduced him. He delivered a well prepared speech about cloud
computing and impacting your business process efficiently.
To conference goers,
the impromptu speech was a bonus, and ended in a well-received concert. Whether
a previously defined contingency plan or an effective reaction, the event went
on without hiccup and kept the constituents of the conference happy.
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