Communications – New Zealand’s sinking feeling: 2024’s toughest PR challenges revealed

Source: Blackland PR

Wellington PR company Blackland PR today issued its annual list of the toughest public relations challenges for 2024, showing that the most difficult communications jobs in New Zealand were handling boat catastrophes and energy shortages.

Criticism of electricity generators following business closures due to high energy prices was rated the toughest issue because the event combined the highest public profile with the strongest range of emotional reactions, social impact and complexity of actors involved.

The top 5 included the global Microsoft outage, May energy shortages, Interislander grounding, and HMNZS Manawanui sinking

Blackland PR Director Nick Gowland said 2024 was a tough year for organisations handling issues. They could no longer rely on Covid 19 to divert public attention or serve as an excuse for blame when things go wrong.

“2024 was a year confidence and optimism sunk to new lows.  The national gloom was made real with major physical failures.

“It was bookended with two very high-profile and embarrassing mistakes. Both involved boats and both were human screw-ups with handling autopilots.  

“The Interislander grounding shows how simple mistakes can be used as evidence to confirm existing assumptions people have about organisations.”
He said the sinking of HMNZS Manawanui was a cause for national embarrassment and seemed to confirm that in New Zealand this year many things were not working well.

“It’s rare for non-government issues to rank so highly in terms of profile, but they were kept running by extensive social media, office water cooler chat, and news media speculation on the causes.”

Energy shortage issues featured prominently in the rankings, responsible for 4 of the top 10 toughest challenges.

“Top of our list were accusations that high wholesale prices forced the closure of businesses because it added a new tier of emotional reaction to the issue.

“These issues ranked very highly because everyone uses energy, and reasons for the shortages and prices were complex, interdependent, and required multiple actors to resolve, and communicate.

“It was much easier for people to construct simple answers to a complex problem and assign blame.  High profile, retail generators found themselves unfairly criticised in news media as responsible for job losses.”

Mr Gowland said communicators in 2024 had to deal with very unusual issues; rats in supermarkets, allegations of mishandling bodies, and lollies contaminated with methamphetamine.

“Photos of rats perched on supermarket shelves sparked disgust and therefore outrage. It spawned a months’ long national craze to find rats.  No supermarket was safe.”

He said the long life of the supermarket rat story was unusual as attention on issues faded more quickly than normal this year.

“Kiwis are emotionally drained after years of bad news, mistakes, and poor treatment from institutions. They didn’t have enough energy to get mad at everything.”

Mr Gowland said 2025 was also likely to be a very tough year, but companies could make it easier on themselves and consumers by being more upfront of problems, earlier.

“In the white heat of a public issue, it’s easy to blame and hard to explain.  Businesses can best prepare by telling customers when issues are likely, and to give unambiguous, practical information on what they’re doing or what customers’ need to do.

“Businesses sometimes trip up by explaining too much, but with unspecific language. This confuses, creates inertia and feeds cynicism.  One piece of direct, actionable information is usually all that’s required to convince.”

“A large part of PR is prevention. PR’s role is to think about the worst possible outcome and change things before they happen, or get too bad. 

BlacklandPR is a Wellington-based PR consultancy built for the social era. It specialises in today’s type of tough issues, using modern techniques to help organisations talk with real people.
BlacklandPR uses a scoring system that ranks issues out of 10 for four factors – Impact (how many people are consciously affected directly or indirectly), Profile (media coverage and ‘talkability’ in everyday life), Emotion (the intensity of emotional reaction), and Complexity (complications and technicalities of the issue).
In previous years BlacklandPR’s PR Challenges list has been headed by events such as the Covid 19 lockdowns, Roastbusters, the Fonterra botulism issue, and the Flag Referendum.

		Organisation affected
	High wholesale spot prices and blame for business closures	Electricity generators
	Global Microsoft outage
	Interislander grounding
	May energy shortage, criticisms on lack of resilience	Government
	HMNZS Manawanui sinking	Ministry of Defence
	Shortages of gas	Gas industry
	Increased financial scams
	Budget 2024 not including the funding of 13 cancer drugs	National Party
	Pylon maintenance leads to power outages in Northland	Transpower
	Decision to cap new Dunedin hospital spend	Government
	Public sector cuts	Government
	Government response to Hikoi	Government
	Shortages of various staple medicines
	Release of report into abuse in state care	Government
	Rats photographed in supermarket	Woolworths
	Classroom mobile phone ban implementation	Government
	Allegations of mishandling bodies	Tipene funerals
	Food parcel lollies contaminated with meth	Auckland City Mission
	TOW principles bill support beyond 1st read	Government
	SolarZero liquidation	NZ Green Investment Fund
	Credibility of RBNZ following surprise decision to cut rates
	Women Hurricanes Haka critical of government	Hurricanes
	Actura New Zealand collapse and cancellation of space camps
	Responding to criticism of traffic management changes
	Financial woes, CEO resignation and pressure on board to resign.	Fletcher Building
	Accusations of poor animal welfare practices at zoo	Orana Park
	Criticism of NZ Herald publishing Hobsons pledge advertisement
	Golriz Ghahraman shoplifting	Green Party