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Showing posts with the label Chicago Bears

A Lesson in Public Relations Continues

What a case study for healthcare! The Chicago Bears just can't get it right. This has been a continuing comedy of PR errors that only leaves you scratching your head. Damage control..... Day after the press conference, the President of the team goes on the media tour to clarify statements on what the organization meant. (See my previous post) Damage control pure and simple. It gets even better...... Then it turns out the press release about the firings was wrong and that really two of the assistants weren't fired, but were more like employee-at-will kind of relationships with no contracts. The offensive coordinator and his position coaches had contracts and will be paid. Probably some legal issues now because of that. PR lesson continued..... Look. For your own PR efforts, you control the message and the day when you decide to go public. Winning or losing a PR battle is not controlled by the media, it is your responsibility. You, through your actions or inaction's will dete...

A Lesson in Public Relations

The Chicago Bears held a press conference on January 5, 2010, after a dismal at best season long performance by management, the coaching staff and players. No need to go into the gory details; the lesson here is how not to handle public relations. For weeks now, the media and public has been in an uproar over team performance. This was exacerbated by a perceived lack of indifference and arrogance by the team leadership. Clearly a crisis communications situation if anyone in the PR department at Halas Hall was paying attention. The Press Conference A press conference is held, they trot out the team President, General Manger and Head Coach all in that order. The President speaks, apologizes and was contradictory in his remarks about the situation being unacceptable, change is needed, mistakes were made, but things are going to stay essentially the same. He spoke for 20 minutes which was 15 minutes too long. The GM gets up apologizes, says mistakes were made, change is needed, but things...

HIPAA and the Press

The Chicago Bears, Brian Urlacher and HIPAA No, this is not a joke. It has been most interesting reading sports columnists and broadcasters lament to a great common chorus that no one knows about the extent of Urlacher’s injury and his neck surgery. The Bears aren’t talking, the doctors aren’t talking and nobody else is talking. It is as if some serious plot has developed to keep the real story from the media. Hogwash….. As a 20 year healthcare executive life changed a few years ago when HIPAA became the law of the land. Simply put, if an individual does not want anything released about their medical condition, treatment, so forth and so on, that was that. No press leaks, no briefings from the Bears, no info from the hospital, doctor’s or anybody else. The federal government has clamped down really hard on the privacy issue and this falls into that. Urlacher is the only person, who can make the decision on who does or does not receive any information about his medical condition or trea...