Every crisis produces its losers, its winners – and its crisis profiteers. The latter case is – and this is by no means meant in a derogatory way – the guild of crisis communicators. If you take Google as a guide, “crisis communication” is already the “industry word of the year” with almost 100,000 entries. Specialist seminars are being held – and a “Swiss Association for Crisis Communication” has just been founded, which is thinking aloud about how Federal President Merz should have uae rcs data acted towards all the Gaddafis and Steinbrücks.
But everyday life is much more banal and, for the majority, Gaddafi-free. When the young Zurich entrepreneur Carl Hirschmann got into a crisis a few weeks ago – well documented by the media – a number of crisis-theoretically hardened PR companies from Zurich city centre or the Zolliker Gold Coast refused to accept the mandate.
The reason: fear of losing their own reputation. Finally, the former editor-in-chief of "Blick", Sacha Wigdorovits, known as the "man for the rough stuff" ("Facts"), stepped in, and at least one cannot accuse him of false moralizing. Because Wigdorovits knows: good PR that is even better paid is always a bit of dirty work. Nevertheless, the question arises: what is the point if the PR man is almost as well known as his client? Or to put it another way: isn't PR a business of discretion? In this respect, the Federal President acted more skilfully. If Merz had his own crisis expert, he stayed nobly in the background. If not - which is to be expected - Merz's actions checkmated all crisis communicators with philosophical elegance: if you don't even recognize the crisis, you don't need crisis communication.