The Melting Chocolate Of Marwako And What The Future Holds For Them

What happened to Marwako can happen to any organization. Corporate organisations in the world are ebbing up to maintaining good relationships with its publics. Trying to constantly position it as an organization in good standing and high ethical standards.

In Public Relations, we have what is called Proactive Strategies and Reactive Strategies. The Proactive Strategies are mostly the common practice by which many PR units in the corporate world adopt as they remain susceptible to potential threats that are most likely to result into crisis when preventive measures are not taken.

These threats normally hit organisations either from within or outside, or both at the same time. So what Marwako failed to do was to constantly run what is called Environmental Scan (internal and external) as a proactive step to identify potential threats (issues) and deal with them in order not to escalate into crisis.

Issues are not crisis, but issues can transform into crisis if little attention is paid and in the case of Marwako, they could have quickly taken some remedial action by first of all apologising to the lady, administer some proper medical treatment to her, compensate her and finally fire the supervisor who is at the center of this controversy.

Unfortunately, Marwako as an organization operating without seeing the importance of having PR agency/institution as part of the organisation gives credence to the reason why they are where they are today.

I have said this, time and again that an organisation without the management of a Public Relations Unit/practitioner is like a baby without a mother. Your existence could be cut short in the changing environment of opportunities and threats.

Marwako has failed in the test of proactiveness and for that matter is now facing a crisis. And when that happens, the organisation has to adopt Reactive strategies to manage the crisis.

I learnt Marwako has apologized to the lady/victim and the public particularly its stakeholders and has also suspended the supervisor. In public relations, this is a reactive action strategy called Vocal Commiseration Strategies by showing some level of concern, regret and apologising. However, the apology letter which has been issued by the supervisor in question in its entirety is misplaced seeking to justify the wrongful act.

But, is that enough to redeem it image (short term) in order to restore its reputation (long term)? NO! And whether or not Marwako will collapse under this current situation is a difficult question to answer.

The idea of allowing the worker to sort of defend the indefensible (the supervisor) as captured by citifmonline under this current atmosphere of public disaffection and disarray is like sitting on a time bomb trying to prevent it from exploding.

But however, they can survive this "tsunami" and this will require some space of time by setting what is called Reputation Management Goals. And by doing so, they must adopt another reactive action strategy called Rectifying Behavior Strategies which require that they investigate the issue, undertake corrective action and show repentance to the public. This will require the service of a PR consultant to achieve this goal.

My advice to all organisations, corporate entities and government institutions is that it cost more to be Reactive than Proactive. There are institutional threats everywhere and this was something that Marwako could have done to easily prevent the issue from reaching that far but like i said earlier, it is going to cost them a lot of cash and time to be able to rebuild their brand again.

By Abubakari Seidu Ajarfor
Development Journalist
Public Relations Consultant
B.A in Public Relations Student
[email protected]