Click here to go back to the case studies page

Crisis communication – averting bad publicity

The situation 
A competitor of our client EPIC, an industry association of composite metal panel manufacturers for the construction industry, ran a deliberately misleading campaign accusing composite panels of not being as fire safe as their product. Video footage of a fire at a food processing plant was submitted to World in Action and got the TV show’s producers interested in running a programme on this topic. If endorsed by the show, the market for composite panels, worth £100 million, could have been wiped out.

The solution 
As soon as Davies Associates heard of the possible programme, we contacted an independent industry expert and asked him to speak to World in Action producers and researchers to offer them a balanced assessment. This addressed the short-term issues raised, but DA also wanted to prevent any possible future slurs. Therefore together with EPIC – Engineered Panels in Construction – we commissioned independent research to further evaluate the fire performance of composite panels.

The results 
After speaking to the industry expert we put forward, the World in Action producers abandoned the story idea and instead aired a transmission focusing on a spate of school fires in New York.  The EPIC style composite panels in Europe were not mentioned at all.