Analyzing Public Relations Crisis: Carolina Girls Case Study Report

This report analyzes the public relations crisis faced by Carolina Girls, a fashion store, stemming from an incident involving a teenage shopper. The report delves into the genesis of the crisis, tracing the events from the initial accusation of shoplifting to the escalation on social media platforms, particularly Facebook. It examines the organization's assessment of the reputation issue, highlighting the failure of the public relations department in effectively managing the situation. The report details the consequences of the organization's response, including negative publicity and the deletion of their Facebook profile. Furthermore, it provides workable recommendations for future crisis management, emphasizing the importance of transparency, contrition, and proactive engagement with the public. The report underscores key lessons learned, such as the enduring validity of the customer-centric approach and the need for swift, effective responses to social media crises to protect brand reputation. References from various academic sources are included to support the analysis and recommendations.

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PUBLIC RELATIONS
Student’s Name
Professors Name
College
Course
Date

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PUBLIC RELATIONS
A crisis is any situation that compromises the integrity or reputation of an organization.
In relation, this is where the concept of public relation joins the conversation. Public relations is
the discipline which takes charge of looking after a company’s reputation with the primary
objective of understanding, supporting as well as influencing opinion and behavior. Also, public
relations can be defined as a social science used in identifying and analyzing new trends,
predicting their impacts on an organization, effectively counseling corporation leaders and also
establishing planned action lineups aimed at serving both the public’s and the organization’s
interest. Every crisis situation is normally unique and hence requires a customized system of
response. The primary focus of this report is to efficiently analyze key lessons that can be
derived from public relation crisis. The report is directed to the Chief Executive Officer from my
department as the Corporate Reputation Manager.
Background of the issue
The genesis of the crisis is traced from when a teenage girl, named Cassey Syler went out
for shopping and paid a visit to one of the fashion stores in South Carolina with the hopes of
purchasing a new wallet. In her words, immediately she walked into the fashion store doorway,
an appointed saleswoman in the shop allegedly called one of the colleagues a shoplifter. The
crisis escalated more intensely since Casey race was black. In connection, Casey’s mother, a
successful blogger known as Rene shared her daughter’s ordeal and experience on her Facebook
platform. As you can imagine, virally exploded within a day and in return, this prompted an
appropriate counter measure retaliation response from the fashion store of Carolina Girls on their
Facebook page as well.
Carolina Girls organization’s assessment of the reputation issue

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The crisis, however, initiated a further controversial scenario in another second phrase.
True to say, had the crisis been left there after the public apology, the fire would have been
quickly extinguished (Claeys & Cauberghe 2015, P. 70). On the contrary, later on, Carolina Girls
put up a further Facebook post claiming that an intensified investigation had exposed the fact
that there was no evidence pointing out that such remarks had been made and rather pinned the
fault on the teenage shoppers that were in the store at that particular time. The logic behind the
store's assessment is that it was the very first time such a crisis had hit the store and hence
because they had a brand image to protect, it was not completely possible for one of its
employees to have made such comments (Brynley-Jones & Brynley-Jones 2017). The post as
expected pocked a hornet’s nest that was already settled.
Role of public relations in developing the organizational response
In this case, the public relations segment of the organization failed in their role since their
primary objective should have been to establish and maintain positive relationships with any
given third party (Harvey & Sealy 2016, p. 60). The lack of an efficient company response can
be credited to the failure by the company’s Public relation department which is also a key
component in analyzing this case study.
The result of the Organization’s response
As a reaction technique, the store’s page was attacked with precarious comments from
across the state. Subsequently, many of the comments were so severe that they had to be brought
down by the site’s administration. In relation, to compound what they had now accepted as the
mistake they had done in mishandling the crisis, Carolina Girls had to delete their Facebook
profile to prevent further damage. The acting CEO of the store attracted further negative
publicity to the crisis when she spoke to a news channel. Stephanie Davies claimed that the

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organization had made several attempts to find a midpoint through setting up a meeting with
Rene Syler and her daughter with no avail. It is unfortunate that the damage had already
escalated and that the interview only succeeded in drawing more and more online ridicule.
Workable Recommendations for the future
Several crucial lessons can be learned from the Carolina Girls social media crisis being
that our corporation belongs to same industry as Carolina Girls. One fundamental lesson is that
the old ideology that the customer is always on the right is as valid as today as it has been
throughout the years (Helm &Tolsdorf 2013, p. 150). It is important for a corporation to
acknowledge that no matter how confident it is that the client was on the wrong and hence at
fault, counter claims, denials as well as buck passing are the social media correspondent of an
independent grenade (Kim & Sung 2014, p. 85).
Initially, Carolina Girls effectively managed the crisis by publicly apologizing as well as
making attempts to reach the aggrieved party at a private angle (Akram 2017, p. 231). However,
later on, they inexplicably inflamed the already intensified situation by insisting to pin the blame
on its customers and also censoring negative comments about the customers rather than
positively engaging with the already angered online population. In addition, deleting its
Facebook page was a mistake since the act was similar to an ostrich sticking its head in the sand
while expecting a pride of lions closing in not to see it and hence was a major mistake (Jin, Liu
& Austin 2014, p. 85). The most appropriate technique to counter such an issue is to be
transparent and contrite from the very beginning. Also, withdraw the issue from the public
domain as much as possible as well as ensure that the response made by the firm is satisfactory
enough from the customer’s angle (Brynley-Jones & Brynley-Jones 2017). If this is not
sufficiently done, the organization risks a full scale fire that will automatically be a giant task to

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extinguish and hence could irreparably damage the company’s brand which we have all worked
tirelessly hard to build.

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References
Akram, S., 2017. The Impact Of User-Generated and Organization’s Information and Sympathy
Based Crisis Response Strategies on Organizational Reputation and Secondary Crisis
Communication: A Case on University of Management And Technology,
Lahore. Science International, 29(1), Pp.231-231.
Beldad, A.D., Hegner, S.M. and van Laar, E., 2017. Proactive Crisis Communication When
Precrisis Reputation Is Rotten? The Moderating Roles of Precrisis Reputation and Crisis
Type in the Relationship Between Communication Timing and Trust and Purchase
Intention. In Creating Marketing Magic and Innovative Future Marketing Trends (pp.
679-684). Springer, Cham.
Brynley-Jones, L. and Brynley-Jones, L. (2017). 6 Examples of Social Media Crises: What can
we learn? - Our Social Times - Social Media for Business. [online] Our Social Times -
Social Media for Business. Available at: http://oursocialtimes.com/6-examples-of-social-
media-crises-what-can-we-learn/ [Accessed 17 Aug. 2017].
Claeys, A.S. and Cauberghe, V., 2015. The role of a favorable pre-crisis reputation in protecting
organizations during crises. Public Relations Review, 41(1), pp.64-71.
Coombs, W.T., 2014. Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.
Sage Publications. 13(2), pp.91-100.
Harvey, W.S. and Sealy, R., 2016. Building HR's reputation.
Helm, S. and Tolsdorf, J., 2013. How does corporate reputation affect customer loyalty in a
corporate crisis?. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 21(3), pp.144-152.
Jin, Y., Liu, B.F. and Austin, L.L., 2014. Examining the role of social media in effective crisis
management: The effects of crisis origin, information form, and source on publics’ crisis
responses. Communication research, 41(1), pp.74-94.

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Kim, S. and Sung, K.H., 2014. Revisiting the effectiveness of base crisis response strategies in
comparison of reputation management crisis responses. Journal of Public Relations
Research, 26(1), pp.62-78.