Crisis Talk

How (not) to handle a public relations disaster in Chinese 危機公關(guān)套路大揭秘

Arat’s head found in cafeteria food might have seemed like the biggest public relations scandal an organization could ever face…but somehow， the administration of the Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College managed to make a disgusting situation worse.

On June 3， two days after a student shared a video of finding a suspiciously rat-head-like object in his food， the college argued the video’s “反映內(nèi)容與事實不符 （fǎnyìngnèiróngyǔshìshíbùfú， content does not correspond to facts）” and that the buck-toothed， bewhiskered object was in fact a piece of duck’s neck， a relatively normal food item eaten in parts of China.

When netizens refused to buy the explanation， the school and， later， the local authorities doubled down on the denial， until finally an investigation by higher-up officials revealed it was indeed a rat’s head.

Netizens dubbed the college’s public relations strategy in this crisis as “指鼠為鴨 （zhǐshǔwéiyā， calling a rat a duck），” a nod to the idiom 指鹿為馬 （zhǐlùwéimǎ） derived from an ancient story in which a powerful chancellor claimed that a deer gifted to Qin Shi Huang， China’s first emperor， was actually a horse. Other officials， fearful of the chancellor’s influence， all agreed with the obvious lie.

Deliberately confusing right and wrong is but one strategy that companies， institutions， and celebrities adopt to manage public relations crises， some of which pay off better than others.

Playing victim

One way to make a denial of a scandal even more effective is to play the victim， hoping to make the public believe that it’s you， not the people you supposedly wronged， who deserve their sympathy.

Singer and actor Cai Xukun， for example， recently denied the allegation that he forced a woman he’d impregnated to get an abortion. Cai’s PR team want the public to believe that the scandal is merely rumor-mongering：

I ask certain social media accounts to please refrain from spreading or believing in rumors.

Kěnqǐngxiāngguānzìméitǐbúxìnyáo、bùchuányáo.

懇請相關(guān)自媒體不信謠、不傳謠。（剩余4135字）