Heineken explains its response to dog-fighting PR crisis

Tara Carraro, senior director of corporate communications for Heineken USA, tells PR Daily how the company snapped into action during a recent PR firestorm.

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(Here’s our previous post that recaps what happened.)

People assumed that Heineken had somehow been involved with the event—something that was far from the truth. But as the Mark Twain quote promises, “A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

The task of crafting and communicating Heineken’s response fell largely to Tara Carraro, senior director of corporate communications for Heineken USA, along with a global communications team. Immediately, they sprang into action upon learning about the photo and dedicated themselves to responding to every consumer complaint, which meant around-the-clock monitoring.

Carraro shared with PR Daily how she and her team handled the crisis behind the scenes and what lessons we could all learn from the ordeal:

Did Heineken have a policy in place for dealing with social media crises before this incident? What can you tell us about it?

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