Media Action Plan: Be Ready for Unexpected Good (and Bad) Events

This article, titled "Catching a Curveball" by Anna Jackson is from the October 2007 issue of Business Officer: How did Boise State University leverage a positive Fiesta Bowl story? How the Monroe Park Campus of Virginia Commonwealth University handled a fire? How did the University of California, Davis spin an unexpectedly high freshman enrollment? How did the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill manage the fallout from 2,700 applicants mistakenly being told by email that they had been accepted?

1. Get ahead of the curve. As the story of an erroneous e-mail, indicating students’ admission to UNC months prior to student selection, spread beyond Chapel Hill, the University of North Carolina was up front with the media, taking full responsibility for the mistake. Stephen Farmer, director of undergraduate admissions, understands why the story was of interest to media outlets far beyond his state. By and large, he thought that the reporting was fair to the university. “Our position was that we made the mistake,” says Farmer, “so we were not going to complain about the inconvenience it caused to us;” instead, UNC apologized sincerely for the inconvenience it caused to students.”

2. Coordinate your messaging. At Boise State University, administrators soon realized that they were sitting on a big story. After fielding numerous media requests, the communication department drafted a press release with all of the major developments brought about by the institution’s underdog Fiesta Bowl victory. Stacy Pearson, vice president of finance and administration, says that by having a sound communication plan in place, the university was able to capitalize on a rare and exciting opportunity to highlight, before a national audience, the institution’s many achievements beyond its football victory.

3. Use the media to your advantage. At the University of California, Davis, the story that broke in May 2006 was a nearly 26-percent increase in freshmen acceptance for the fall. In intervening months, as the university prepared classrooms, dorms, and course schedules to accommodate the record influx, various media outlets visited the campus on many occasions to cover the enrollment story. Fred Wood, associate vice provost for undergraduate studies, says that the ongoing visits may have been driven in part by expectations that the university would experience difficulty meeting its enrollment commitment. During one interview, recalls Wood, the reporter observed that the university seemed to have everything under control and wondered aloud where the story was in all of this. On each occasion, university leaders were able to show that the institution was well prepared for the influx of new students. The conscious effort by UC Davis to use the media to the university’s advantage resulted in parents and students who were pleased with the process and reassured by the institution’s progress in the months leading up to the fall semester.