The January 13 accident of the 4200-passenger Costa Concordia cruise ship is worldwide news and a public relations black eye for the ship’s owner, Carnival Corporation.As this is being written a few days after the incident, the grounding and capsizing of the giant vessel seems to be a case of severe human error. According to many news reports, Captain Francesco Schettino deliberately steered off course so that he could show off the ship to residents on the island of Giglio, Italy, home of the giant ship’s headwaiter. After ripping a hole in hull of the $450-million vessel, the captain fled the ship before many of the passengers.
While it’s hard to anticipate a ship’s captain going rogue, it seems that an appropriate crisis communications plan should be in place, regardless of the cause of the crisis.
Of course, Carnival has a communications plan in place, using time-tested crisis communications procedures for getting out as much info as quickly as possible. However, there seems to be a significant disconnect between the messages and the way many of them are delivered.
Despite having numerous promotional messages, banner flashes and other catchy elements on the homepage of their website, there is nothing directing readers to more information about the Costa Concordia.
If you search, you can finally find the information on the blog page, called Funville. I’m sure the irony is apparent to many website users.
Facebook, Twitter and a company’s website are all valuable means of quickly communicating with customers. However, cruise lines are in the business of selling fun. The bright colors and promotional messages that dominate the Carnival Cruise website certainly send mixed signals when dealing with a serious topic such as passenger safety.
A more appropriate crisis communications response might be to set up a temporary landing page for information about the incident. That would be a service to travelers, families and other interested parties. It would make the information easier for them to find while separating the promotional content for customers who weren’t concerned about the Costa Concordia.
That would be a better plan, because I think we’d all agree this doesn’t look like Funville.
