Handling Negative Press In Your Industry

A client of mine called concerned that his competitor was featured on the evening news for all the wrong reasons. The investigative story focused on the competition’s alleged poor customer service and bad business practices. My client had two immediate questions– does one bad apple spoil the whole cart and what does this mean for our pending coverage scheduled for the next day? My answer to both questions – this is an opportunity.


We tackled the latter first. We reviewed the coverage and determined the story focused primarily on the competition and not the industry. The reporter who did the story was a member of the investigative station’s team. The reporter who was scheduled to cover my client was a feature reporter. He’s not known for gotcha stories. I contacted him to see if the angle I pitched him was still the one that interested him. He confirmed it was.

Now back to the cart and apples. We used the story as an opportunity to share advice about how to spot scams, and offered to answer questions about the industry to anyone – free of charge. We shared the information on our social media channels and via email. We developed talking points for staff and fielded a few questions from clients and the public.

Utilizing some key public relations tactics we leveraged the situation to work in our favor. An event like this can happen in any industry. Be prepared and think things through before you react. Had we buried our head in the sand on this one, we would have missed out on some great press and goodwill.