Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.

Today we’re reviewing the biggest PR disasters of 2022 with crisis communication consultant Amanda Coleman. 

Just to confirm we’re talking today about events and disasters where communications played a key role, we’re not suggesting all of these examples are crises driven by poor PR - although in a number of the cases we talk about on this show a poor communications strategy made a bad situation worse!

Amanda is the author of the excellent book Crisis Communication Strategies which looks at how brands can prepare, control and recover from any kind of crisis.

Before we start the PRmoment Awards 2023 final entry deadline is on 27th January, check out the awards site PRmomentAwards.com for all the details.

Thanks to the PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.

Here’s a summary of what Amanda and PRmoment Ben Smith founder spoke about:

2.30 mins January: Bad weather got the UK off to a bad start!

4 mins February saw the start of the war in Ukraine - Putin’s murderous slaughter of the Ukrainian people has been well documented but as ever, sadly, communications have played an important part in the war - both for government communicators and brand communicators.

5.30 mins A discussion of the multiple stakeholders President Zelensky has needed to communicate with during the war in Ukraine.

9 mins March saw the beginning of the Johnny Depp: Amber Heard legal case.

10 mins A chat about the infamous Will Smith Slap of Chris Rock.

11 mins April: A Kinder Egg product recall because of a salmonella outbreak, just a couple of weeks before Easter!

13 mins May: The Uvalde Texas shooting: an unimaginable act of evil and Amanda talks us through some of the communication responses of the police that could have been improved.

15 mins The Wagatha Christie trial began. The result came in October but while “there were no winners but there was definitely a loser.”

18 mins June: The Afghanistan earthquake with a 5.9 magnitude caused terrible destruction. Amanda talks about the “almost paralysed response of the West to a humanitarian disaster.”

20 mins The UK Summer and some extreme heat.

22 mins Boris finally went - the culmination of many months of one of the worst reputational scandals the UK has ever seen.

23 mins Sept: Did Liz Truss’s incompetence unwittingly rescue Boris’s reputation?

26 mins The Mini Budget: Is Kwasi Kwarteng that dangerous mix of being both arrogant and wrong?

27 mins How the Monkeypox outbreak benefitted from the communications lessons learnt during Covid.

28 mins The death of Her Majesty The Queen: An event long prepared for but that still took many people by surprise.

29.30 mins October Sunak takes over and he’s brought stability - “which was about all he was going to be able to do given the difficulty of the brief.”

31 mins November The cost of living crisis had been building since the summer but in November it came home.

32 mins How the increase in costs has shocked society.

33 mins The challenge of the energy providers: Will they lose consumer confidence when their financial results report huge profits?

“It feels like it’s building to something”

35 mins China Covid Protests: In unexpected news President Xi bows to public opinion!

36 mins December: A month like no other when it comes to Industrial action in the UK

“The two sides are becoming too polarised…they need to appear to be more conciliatory”