Summary:

The Corporate Communication Project asks students to identify a real-world corporate crisis that has occurred within the last five years, analyze its causes and effects, and respond to it with multiple documents. (The class will examine a large GM automobile recall that occurred in 2014 as a case study.) Students will position themselves as part of a corporation's public relations team and produce a variety of separate but related materials for distinct audiences:

• a Crisis Analysis Report for corporate executives
• a Press Release for news media outlets
• an Internal Memo email for employees
• a Video Message for customers

All of these materials should address the crisis in a professional, ethical, rhetorically-effective manner. Materials will be submitted electronically as email attachments and links.

It is likely that some of the corporate crises students select already have corresponding materials available online. This project requires students to produce original work, so the instructor will check for similarities between any official and student versions of these texts. (Students of course may draw rhetorical strategies from official materials or other models.)

Deliverables:

1. Intention Document (5% of project grade)
2. Crisis Analysis Report (20% of project grade)
3. Press Release (20% of project grade)
4. Internal Memo (20% of project grade)
5. Video Message (20% of project grade)
6. Materials Analysis (10% of project grade)
7. Postmortem (5% of project grade)