Edelman Chicago Puts CIW Members in the Hot Seat at Crisis Simulation Lab
Tucker Automotive Company has taken its customers for a wild ride this year. After years of struggle, the iconic Midwest car manufacturer was seeing profits and popular success—with an innovative, stylish two-door sedan known as the Tucker 48—when it was hit with its fourth recall in the past fifteen years.
Never heard of Tucker Automotive? That’s because it doesn’t exist—or at least it hasn’t since the Chicago-based company shuttered its doors in 1948 after having manufactured only a handful of cars.
But Wednesday, April 30, Tucker resurfaced as a part of an all-hands-on-deck, 90-minute simulation led by members of Edelman Chicago’s Crisis & Risk Team at the Chicago Ideas Week (CIW) Members’ Lab “Burning Down the House: An Edelman Crisis Simulation.” Senior Vice President Andrew Liuzzi and Vice President Ryan Cudney started their workshop with, literally, a crash, showing a simulated viral Youtube video depicting a Tucker 48 crashing. They then divided the nearly 20 members in attendance into two teams and tasked them with managing the PR nightmare facing Tucker Automotive, as allegations surfaced that Tucker executives knew about faulty mechanics before putting their cars on the market.
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| CIW Members watch as Gregory Tall responds to allegations that Tucker Automotive knew about its sedan’s faulty brakes in the crisis management simulation led by Edelman Chicago. |
“We should already have had this [press] statement,” CIW Co-op Member and Adler Planetarium President and CEO Michelle Larson said, as the teams scrambled to put together a response to national press.
Liuzzi and Cudney drew on their own experiences as crisis consultants during the Lab, advising teams to “take a measured approach” and warning them that “no comment is a four-letter word.”
That advice served Member Gregory Tall well when the Director of Human Capital Management at Robert Morris University was asked to accompany an Edelman employee to an adjacent office to be given exclusive information on Tucker Automotive. There, Tall was instead asked to answer a series of questions about Tucker’s reactions to the emerging problems with their cars.
“You killed it,” Cudney said of Tall’s on-point responses when the video was played for members before asking them to consider how they could apply those same principals at their own jobs.
Members Peter Tyschenko and Grace Brigando, who in their positions at ComEd/Exelon often manage fall-out after major storms, certainly plan to bring the tips they learned at the Lab back to their offices.
“Social media is something that is really new to us,” Tyschenko said, noting the way the Tucker Automotive exercise required members to react to Twitter and Facebook posts in addition to stories from traditional media. “It was so interesting to see [it play out] from this perspective.”
Liz Durkin from kCura agreed that the simulation gave her a new perspective on crisis management. “There are so many ideas going through my head,” she said.
CIW memberships are 10 percent off now through May 15. To become a CIW member, visit chicagoideas.com/membership.
