Wanna read about some PR people speak on the current Coke and Pepsi crisis? Check out this news story in International Herald Tribune. Oh!Don’t forget our last post on this.

Some extracts…
…In some ways, Coke’s and Pepsi’s immediate response came out right of crisis management text books. As soon as the Center for Science and the Environment announced that drinks manufactured by the two companies in India contained on average more than 24 times the safe limits of pesticides, both companies knew they were headed for trouble. They formed committees in India and the United States, working in parallel on legal and public relations issues. They worked around the clock fashioning rebuttals They commissioned their own laboratories conduct tests and opted to wait until the results came through before commenting in detail.

This approach quickly backfired: their reticence merely fanned consumer suspicion. They became bogged down in the technicalities of the allegations, instead of focusing on winning back the emotional support of the their customers.

“They got behind the curve and now they are chasing the crisis,” said Richard Levick, president and chief executive of Levick Strategic Communications, which is based in the United States and which specializes in advising businesses in this kind of crisis.

“We have some way to go to restore consumer confidence in our brands,” said Kari Bjorhus, Coca-Cola’s communications director.

Rajeev Bakshi, who heads Pepsi in India, agreed that there was much work to be done. “Has our side of the story got across to the consumer yet?” he said. “Not really. I am concerned about that.”

…But Coke and Pepsi should have known better, said Suhel Seth, a leading public relations expert in India and an adviser to Coca-Cola India. “Fringe politicians will continue to be publicly hostile to big Western companies, regardless of how eager they are for their investment,” he said. “Large multinational corporations are still seen by pockets of consumers and opinion makers as marauders and not as contributors.”

Levick, the American public relations consultant, agreed. “They underestimated their own importance,” he said. “Much more than companies, they are symbols of the West. They don’t realize how powerful that is.”

“In the U.S. and the West there is a certain dignity to silence, said Seth, the Indian public relations expert . “But here people interpret silence as guilt. You have to roll up your sleeves and get into a street fight. Coke and Pepsi didn’t understand that.”

The companies also failed to realize how fast news travels in modern India,

“We are living in a new, very aware India,” said Amit Agnihotri, a public relations analyst in Delhi. “We have 36 news channels. People are interested in what is happening around them. Coke and Pepsi haven’t understood the power of this new India. They tried to wish this problem away, by ignoring it, by not responding to it. That won’t work any more.”

Coca-Cola also decided to go on the attack, though indirectly. Coke officials from in Delhi gave detailed briefings during which they questioned the scientific credentials of their accusers. They directed reporters to blogs containing large quantities of uniformly pro-Coke entries and handed out the cellphone number for the director of an organization called the Center for Sanity and Balance in Public Life. Public relations experts said this approach was unwise.

“Crisis abhors a vacuum,” Levick said. “They needed to show leadership. These minimalist statements were not adequate.” …
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