A wine guy from New Jersey provides the template for how potential public relations nightmares can be turned into a positive through the use of social media, including blogs, and by being transparent and truthful.
Gary Vaynerchuk who has brought wine appreciation to the masses with his Wine Library TV podcast and who has grown a family wine store into a $60 million business faced a potential PR disaster when his community wine review site-Cork’d-was hacked by an adult site.
In this video, he describes his response. It serves as a real life pattern for anybody dealing with touchy situations that could go sour with plenty of backwash and potential for damage. Those who could benefit would be politicians, pastors, business people and anybody else in the public eye.
Notice how he jumped on the problem and got his wine community informed and how they mobilized to help him deal with the problem.