GMA Seminar Addresses Food-Related `Armaments'

March 15, 2001

Mike Deaver, global vice chairman of Edelman Public Relations Worldwide and former assistant to the president in the Reagan Administration, will offer insights from more than 30 years in national politics and public relations to a seminar May 15-16 in Chicago sponsored by the Grocery Manufacturers Association. GMA members are faced with product recalls, food safety scares, biotech protests, labor strikes, discrimination lawsuits, environmental accidents, corporate restructuring and factory closings.

The seminar is designed to prepare companies in the food, beverage and consumer products industry to better anticipate and handle looming crises and prevent small issues from becoming major disasters. Deaver, who provides strategic counsel to corporate clients including Nike, CSX, Nissan, and Microsoft, is credited as the architect of the Reagan communications program, including the landslide presidential campaigns of 1980 and 1984.

Geared toward communications professionals and other executives responsible for handling corporate crises in the food, beverage, and consumer products industry, the seminar will combine marketplace lessons from top crisis management experts, with practical guidelines for improving corporate crisis IQ. Attendees will learn how crises evolve, the players in a crisis, how to better work with the news media and what companies can do to better prepare for handling crisis situations.

For more information on the seminar, contact GMA's Communications Department at 202-337-9400 or download a registration form at www.gmabrands.com/events2001/2001.cfm.