In a balanced article in the 22 August New York Times, writer Peter S. Goodman talks to a heap of PR folks about the Goldman Sachs, Toyota and BP communication nightmares. It’s a good piece, especially one graf:
“Which raises a question: Are some crises so dire that public relationship victory is simply not on the menu? And, if so, what’s an embattled company to do?”
After living through the financial crisis with a regional bank, I can tell you that we did wonder whether there was anything we could do differently to try and make our sow’s ear into a silk purse. Or even just a paper bag, anything except what we were getting.
The question of visceral hatred that we see for Goldman Sachs and BP isn’t equaled for Toyota. Of course, the corporate reputations of both Goldman and BP weren’t near as positive prior to their crises as Toyota’s. In the Goldman case, was public opinion merely scapegoating a convenient target? We didn’t much like the idea that this company was busy racking up big profits whilst the average Joe saw 401 (k) collapses, layoffs and strife. BP had held itself out as a new breed (Beyond Petroleum). Meanwhile, Toyota had become the largest auto company in the world on the strength of perceived exceptionally high quality. There was more goodwill built up around Toyota, and although they had a few bumps, they seem to be returning to their lofty status.
One expert quoted in the article said when the facts are horrible, “the best PR fix may simply be to absorb the pounding and get back to business, while eschewing the sort of foolish communication gimmicks that can make things worse.”
We see, however, how heavy the pounding can get when companies decide to stonewall or be overly parsimonious in their statements. But I agree that sometimes, the news is just so bad, so damaging, that there’s no way to win. So, the question becomes, just how much crisis medicine are you willing to take?
Tags: communication experts, communication messages, effective communication, Journalism, PR, reputation management
Sean, even when the news is so bad, so damaging that there is just no way you can gain any crisis comms victory the ultimate judgement call is actually yet to come – did you or did management do everything you could to rectify the situation.
It is often this judgement months or years down the track which can even more damaging than the crisis itself. Why? Because it goes to the very values and moral obligations of the company and the management team at the helm at the time and if you fail in this regard you will be judged very harshly indeed.
I go back to the classic Johnson & Johnson Tylenol crisis. With no crisis comms plan in place and flying in the face of legal advice what did the CEO do? He turned to the values of the organisation to guide their crisis decision making. The rest is history – it still goes down as one of the best examples of how to deal with a crisis.
Craig – excellent comment, thanks. When the theoretical underpinning of your crisis plan is predicated on winning, it’s going to be tough to justify any activity that fails to make that more likely. This is why so many firms go the “no comment” route, even though there’s more than adequate research that indicates the foolishness of such strategies. In organizations with strong values, they can indeed rely on them for guidance. Unfortunately, it seems more and more that values are a set of phrases on a plaque rather than a foundation for the organization.
Did you see the op-ed about business and CSR that Paul Seaman talks about in his latest post? http://paulseaman.eu/2010/08/voodoo-pr-versus-voodoo-academia/