The Oddest PR Trial Thus Far

A totally random crisis occurred yesterday in the office. I arrived at work at 6:20 a.m. I received an e-mail from a co-worker, informing me that I should "try my link" because every time they did, it went to porn. The referenced link was to a site I am using for on-line enrollment for a conference aimed at girls in grades 6-9. At first, I didn't believe it - I thought the problem MUST be on the co-workers computer, and I told her so. Shortly afterward, I received a call from another co-worker who works on this project, telling me that yes, indeed, when someone tried to register on our site - they would be directed to porn (actually an escort service - but porn nonetheless).

It was somewhat difficult to not only decide what to do first - but to not freak out. (Maybe I did freak out a little bit.) Although the enrollment site is managed by a third party, I first contacted my IT department, explained the issue, and asked them to ensure the porn site was blocked, should someone in our company access the site. It should have been blocked to begin with, so I wanted to ensure our system had not been violated. I then called the third-party web administrator and explained what had happened. They assured me they could fix this really quickly - in just 3-4 hours! To me, 3-4 hours was a little long to just allow girls and/or their parents and teachers to access the site and be forever damaged. I couldn't log into the site to shut down registration, but a co-worker was able to - thankfully in time so that I only received one call - from a mother - and she was a very good sport. I also placed a note on a secondary site stating that "registration was closed due to technical difficulties" and would re-open shortly. Whew!

Where does PR come into play? How damaging could this event have been to my company, and to the conference - which is nationally known? My team was able to avoid repercussions because of quick actions and also PROBABLY because of the time of day. The web administrator I called was on her way to Japan - she wasn't happy to be called so early, but was able to take care of the situation before leaving the country. Also, because it was early, there was not a lot of activity on the site. If there had been more activity, or angry parents, my reaction would have been very different and demanded more time and creativity - ranging from a notice on the site, to personal letters to the parents - and who knows what else.

This event got my heart started early on a Tuesday morning. Who would expect such an event? I guess that now, I will.