Lights on Stillwater Postponement a PR Crisis

As I'm going through the motions of the second day of school, Aug. 19, and ready to leave campus for the day. I receive a phone call from the Student Government Association vice president that its premier event "Lights on Stillwater" had been postponed until further notice. My first thought, "we have a PR crisis on our hands." Why would that be my natural inclination? Not only am I a PR major at Oklahoma State University, but also the public relations director for SGA. 

"Lights on Stillwater" is an event hosted by SGA, which brings in local businesses within the Stillwater community located on the OSU-Stillwater campus, more specially Library Lawn. Generally, more than  80 businesses attend the event. Local businesses have the opportunity to "showcase"  their products ad services to college students who are operating on a "limited budget." The event is always the first Wednesday of the fall semester. But mother nature had another plan. 

My first question to the SGA president and vice president, "Do you have a back plan already in place due to bad weather?" Of course, I receive puzzled looks. And I thought to myself, this is a test to see if I can apply what I've learned thus far in my public relations courses and apply it to a real crisis. Side note, I'm currently enrolled in a crisis communications course at OSU, perfect timing I might add.  Within five minutes we had five SGA executive team members calling all of the vendors notifying them of the postponement and when they would receive notice on the new date for the event. Luckily, we got a hold of all the vendors. But as a gut feeling, I decided that we should send e-mails to all of the vendors just as a friendly reminder. 

So I thought, what's next, notifying the student body. However, the postponement occurred on Tuesday the day before the event so how could we reach our target audience? The Daily O'Colliegan, our student-run newspaper, we were lucky to catch them in time before the paper went to print, well most of it. They ran a story on the front page discussing why the event was canceled because everyone reads the O'Colly, which I was later sadly mistaken. When I thought it was over, it wasn't. 

We forgot to pull the ad for "Lights on Stillwater," which ran in today's paper, Aug. 20. But the event postponement was clearly on the front page, however, there was still confusion. The situation was resolved due to word-of-mouth among the student body. 

So what's the lesson behind this PR crisis? Plan for the unexpected, know your target audience, know which form of communication is best suited for reaching your target audience and ALWAYS have a backup plan. 

As I evaluated the situation, I could have sent out a Facebook message to all of the members if the SGA Facebook group, sent out a mass e-mail to OSU students, faculty and staff and posted the event cancelation on the OSU homepage. All of these things could have been done if we had a plan to execute for such a crisis, but we didn't. 

So when reality hits, am I ready? I'm not quite sure yet, but with lessons such as the "Lights on Stillwater" postponement I think I'll be ready. 

Best, 

GPaul