The Lehman Brothers crisis will be represented by the PR department releasing statements about all of the aspects of the crisis that will explain what happened, information about how this will affect customers who have money invested in LB, and a statement will be released concerning employees of LB.
The Lehman brothers corporation wanted to effectively convey a sense of safety to the stockholders, investors, competitors, the media, and the general public that even though Lehman brothers was filing for protection under Chapter 11 under the bankruptcy laws, that the people and their money would be safe. The Lehman brothers did not release many memos to the employees immediately because many saw the firm on TV, but still went into work not knowing if they would have jobs the following day. The ultimate purpose was to try to make the people feel secure. Although it is hard to release a document or media source saying that the money is safe, even though they are filing for bankruptcy, the Lehman brothers corporation had to release some information to the people, for both those involved and those not involved. The Lehman brothers corporation's final year has been labeled as "the wild ride" and coincidentally, the person who termed this phrase was very accurate. The collapse of the multinational corporation had devastating effects that ranged from local economies to the global market. The outlandish decisions that came from the corporate office to back buyers requests to buy homes with no value was not the only reason for the downfall of the real estate market and in turn the American economy, but it was a large scale effort by many investment firms to invest in the real estate market when the bubble was only getting bigger. Lehman brothers were one of the large players in this investment scheme, but they were one of the firms that took the largest hits along with a large chunk of the blame. As the bubble grew, more and more investors dropped huge sums of money into the real estate market and eventually the appraisers realized that the value was so over inflated that the "bubble" popped and here we are today in an economic recession trying to dig our way out of trillions of dollars of debt.
One effective media format that we can display one of the documents could be a youtube video. After watching the jetblue ceo's quick video, I thought that it was appropriate. While one can argue how the video could have been better, it did get the message across even if it was in a controversial manner. Youtube videos reach a huge global audience and therefore most people would have access to the information at their convenience and not have to wait for a news channel to play it. Another media format we could release is a press release. I understand that we are required to release a recorded video, press release, and internal memo, I am not sure how they could most effectively convey their message. I believe that after learning more about the responses to the actual Lehman brothers releases, we can learn from what the people were looking to hear and how it is most effective to release it in order to produce a more effective set. Granted we are not the heads of the PR department of a multi-billion dollar firm, such as LB's but we can produce a highly effective and professional set of documents and releases looking at the whole fiasco in retrospective sense. http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-198.htm
We will present our information to our audience in a power point presentation and will develop a statement that will be mailed out to the now unemployed employees and explain what happen.
Our audience will be the workers that lost their jobs from the Lehman Bros. company, and will explain what happen and why it happened. Our audience will also include those who have stocks or shares in LB.
A professional tone and appearance is necessary to properly convey the severity of the crisis. A calm and assertive approach will be used to encourage composure among the audience. We will explain the crisis with extreme clarity and reasoning to reduce confusion and questioning.
The text will begin with a very brief history and success of the Lehman Company. After this we will explain what triggered the decline in the Lehman Company, such as clients withdrawing their money, losses in its stock, and assets losing value. Next we will explain the measures taken by the company in attempt to regain control of their situation. Finally we will sum up Lehman’s overall losses and declare their chapter 11 bankruptcy and what exactly this means.
RE: Lehman Brother's Proposal (Amanda F, Christina K, Noah B, Jo
OK, you've got a start here, but you want to think of this document as a plan of action. Remember that its primary audience is your corporation, so you want to outline a game plan. You can start by establishing the situation (context), who has been affected and how (audience), and what needs to be done to correct the problem (purpose). Then you can move on to the particulars of the press release, the recorded message, and the internal memo. Break down how these texts will be constructed—what points they will hit, how they will create a particular tone through specific language, repetition of key phrases, or visuals, where and how the texts will be circulated, etc.—to accomplish your purpose.