Crisis & Issues Management
When a crisis strikes or an issue threatens, there is no room for misinterpretation or misunderstanding. Every message must be carefully crafted and wordsmithed. Even a wrong nuance can easily make matters worse.
Blair ensures that your side of the story is told accurately and honestly. Our experience is that being strategic, proactive and getting in front of the story can help mitigate long-term damage to a client’s reputation, and even offers opportunities to position the company in a positive light in unfavorable circumstances.
We have helped clients and their attorneys in a wide range of high profile situations, including employment discrimination, malpractice liability, right-to-die controversies, custody battles and HIV / AIDS issues.
Crisis & Issues Management Case Study
When a physicians' group affiliated with Cedars-Sinai faced a potentially damaging, highly contentious and well-publicized employment discrimination suit, BLAIR worked with both Cedar-Sinai’s physicians and outside legal counsel to develop communications that would tell their side of the story in a reasoned, easily understood manner.
BLAIR was engaged at every level, ranging from media training for the physicians to serving as spokesperson for the hospital and physicians group at court proceedings.
Barnes Jewish Medical Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis: BLAIR served as spokesperson for the family and physicians of a patient in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), who were unfortunately caught in the cross fire of a fractious right-to-die controversy. The case became a cause celebre for activists on both sides of the issue, generating significant media coverage worldwide.
While Barnes Jewish was positioned squarely in the middle of this agonizing debate, BLAIR recognized that a unique communications opportunity existed given the hospital’s role as the teaching hospital for the Washington University School of Medicine. Blair's key strategy included orchestrating an educational dialogue in the regional media reflecting various points of view in the religious and medical communities about the diagnosis of PVS.
