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The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle is a master class in how not to handle a crisis. Much will be investigated in the months ahead. But what I find particularly interesting is how Samsung communicated what was happening at each stage of the crisis.
This weekend, the US DOT banned the Galaxy Note 7 on all US flights, categorizing the phones as “forbidden hazardous material.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Yet, just a few days earlier, Samsung portrayed the situation as “temporarily adjusting the production schedule to ensure quality and safety matters.”
The gap between “forbidden hazardous material” and “temporarily adjusting the production schedule” is a massive chasm. A few weeks earlier, Samsung similarly described a “global product recall” as an “exchange program.”...
A GIANT public relations agency that has been under fire for a couple of gaffes in the last couple of weeks says it is taking steps to try to make sure such blunders do not recur — the kinds of steps it would recommend to clients in the same predicaments.
“What the leadership team decided,” Ben Boyd, president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman in New York, said in an interview on Friday, is that “we will treat ourselves like we treat a client.”
“Lesson learned,” he added.
“Just because you advise clients on the complexities of today’s world, that doesn’t mean they’re easier to manage,” Mr. Boyd said, adding that “it would have been smart” to have had in place at Edelman some of the internal protocols and processes that the agency’s 5,000 employees suggest that clients adopt....
When the CEO of a company responsible for contaminating drinking water tried to walk away from a press conference, one reporter refused to let him leave.
As I watch this crisis unfold, only 150 miles away from my home in Montreal, there are two things in particular that stand out: the crisis leadership and communications fail of the Chicago-based company that owns the train, Rail World Inc., and the executive Chairman that everyone looked to for leadership, but was no where to be found, Edward Burkhardt.
Rail World Inc.’s crisis communications failThe biggest communications fails are those (crisis communications) that do not exist, and those that come across as insincere and half-assed in a crisis situation.I wish I could report to you that Rail World Inc. had at least utilized social media as a communications tool for communicating with stakeholders, the media and concerned residents of the Lac-Mégantic community, but unfortunately I can’t. The company has zero corporate social presence and I suppose it never occurred to them to create, at the very least, a Twitter account to keep stakeholders updated throughout the crisis....
As you’re aware, since 2007, Sara Rosso—arguably your most passionate superfan—has hosted World Nutella Day. She love(d) your product so much that she wanted the world to dedicate a single day—February 5—to embracing it. What she did was nothing less than astounding. On the World Nutella Day website, Rosso has gathered more than 700 recipes, tweeted and shared on Facebook the favorite sayings, stories and links of Nutella fans and, most important, encouraged everyone to try Nutella just once. But on May 25, all her hard work will have been in vain. That’s because you inexplicably shut down her tremendous efforts, sending a cease-and-desist letter to her mailbox—the sort of action a brand might take against a brand hijacker, hacker or activist....
As long as this aspect of our culture remains true, I would argue the problem is really one of society and that we are all complicit to some degree. It is not a coincidence that virtually all fashion and cosmetic companies behave somewhat similarly to Abercrombie & Fitch. Among the mainstream brands, perhaps only Dove, with its real beauty campaign, has ever seriously committed to a marketing campaign with a counter-culture heart. If Jeffries did anything, he figured out his customer’s aspirations and designed advertising that appears to fulfill them. This has, and likely always will be, his job as a marketer. In that sense, he’s perhaps only guilty of being both good at his job and terrible at PR....
Fans dressing up as their favorite movie characters while attending opening weekend film showings is nothing new. However, costumed moviegoers who partnered with Capital 8 Theatres in Missouri to promote the premiere ofIron Man 3 recently caused a panic, for which the theater is now apologizing. Had the cosplayers been dressed as Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, we imagine no one would have been particularly alarmed, but some group members donned S.H.I.E.L.D agent costumes — complete with fake firearms — which, given last year’s tragic shooting at an Aurora, COmovie theater (and the current high-alert mentality when it comes to guns), might not have been the best idea. Moviegoers, understandably frightened by the sight of people dressed in what appeared to be body armor and carrying assault rifles, called the local police. Once the dust settled, the complaints began rolling in and the theater was skewered on social media, some even accusing Capital 8 of intentionally causing the kerfuffle as a publicity stunt. In response, the company issued the following apology...
RBC broke the first rule of public relations, failing to plan for the possibility that employees whose jobs were being outsourced would be upset and take their complaints public, says one PR expert. In February, 45 of the bank's personnel were informed that they would be replaced by outsourced workers after the bank contracted a number of technological services to iGate, a California-based firm that specializes in sending jobs offshore. According to an RBC employee, personnel were given 90 days' notice. At least one of the Canadian employees complained that she was asked to train her own foreign replacement....
JWT India created a series of disturbing ads for the FordFigo, one of which shows former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi flashing a peace sign from the front seat of a car that has three curvaceous women tied up and gagged in the trunk. Ford and JWT have both issued an apology. Ford did not approve the ads; the agency was just publishing some speculative renderings to show off its creative chops. JWT India is Ford's agency for the Figo in that country....
Paypal co-founder/insanely rich guy Elon Musk isn’t afraid to defend his far-out ideas, be they successfully marketing an electric automobile or convincing rich people to move to his future colony on Mars. But can he fight back against what CNBC calls “Tesla’s PR #EpicFail“? His auto company’s latest electric car, the Model S, won Motor Trend‘s car of the year award among a wave of very positive reviews, but The New York Times auto critic John M. Broder‘stest drive didn’t go so well....
...So why did it take more than two months for Kelley to come to her own defense? Kurtz says she told him her "publicist" advised her to lay low and the story would blow over in a couple days. Kurtz guest Lola Ogunnaike correctly points out that this was terrible advice. Some stories do blow over but--particularly in the modern environment -- when you have a story that involves spy chiefs, generals, angry lovers and politics, the media's thirst for more detail is going to outlive a participant's determination to wait things out....
Your company has just dropped a huge clanger. Your logo’s blasted across every news outlet and you’re getting torn to shreds on twitter. That’s when people always say the same thing. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.
That may have been true in the past. When getting your brand into the public eye was an expensive and complicated exercise. With the advent of social media, every brand uses their own online channel to access loyal customers and gain new ones. You can now create your own publicity, and make it all positive, so the old truism starts to lose its power.
Social media has also created more opportunity for large community debate, and widespread criticism. Mistakes on social media tend to be picked up more quickly and attacked more ferociously than mainstream media gaffes. That should mean that brands, in total control of their own accounts, should be really careful about what they say. Which makes it all the more shocking when they’re not....
[Three social media PR failures and lessons for KitchenAid, Progressive Insurance and Wilcoxson's Ice Cream ~ Jeff]
The parents of a 10-year-old girl in the U.S. have made public details of the appalling service they got when United Airlines "lost" their daughter midway through her trip from San Francisco to Traverse City, Mich., for summer camp. Annie and Perry Klebahn of San Francisco have made public a complaint letter to the airline detailing how the company lost track of their daughter, Phoebe, on a June 30 flight during a transfer at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. The journey would become a harrowing one for the family involving a byzantine set of phone calls to locate their missing child as well as her luggage. [Not only do they break guitars, United Airlines is not so good at handling child passengers either. Bad PR and poor crisis response -- JD]
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To the public, Jared Fogle was a geekishly charming icon of personal dedication and accomplishment. But few knew the real Jared, a man frequently driven by his sexual obsession with underage girls.
Court documents filed by prosecutors Wednesday—and acknowledged as true by Fogle's attorney—detail years of sordid sexual activities by Fogle, who regularly spent time with prostitutes while traveling for work, in part as Subway's best-known pitchman.
Prosecutors say Fogle had an opportunity to do the right thing in 2011 when he learned his charitable foundation director was secretly filming children to create pornography. Instead, Fogle reportedly encouraged the exploitation, a decision that resulted in 11 other children being victimized, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Debrota....
The maker of ‘Watch Dogs’ sent an Australian news publication a safe with a copy of the game inside. When staffers got suspicious, they called the cops.
Oprah Winfrey, one of the world’s richest women valued at over 2.9 billion dollars, was refused 3 times the opportunity to examine and purchase a 37 thousand dollar Tom Ford handbag. This happened at a posh upscale boutique in Switzerland.
The resulting news and social media backlash for the boutique involved and Switzerland itself (the country’s tourism office also apologized to her) was rapid and explosive, with negative commentary from news organizations, Facebook, Twitter, media publications and the like chiming in. Don’t be surprised by this! Anything that touches on deeply personal values (racism, gender equality, lifestyle, health, etc.) will quickly mushroom into an immense social media unconscious event. It will either become a social media dream or in this particular case…the ultimate social media brand reputation management nightmare.
This wake up call provides a powerful opportunity for businesses regarding their reputation management process. Not every business has a plan in place and for those who don’t know where to start, consider these 3 compelling reputation management tips....
Erin Brockovich, the environmental activist portrayed by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film about her life, was arrested this weekend on suspicion of boating while intoxicated at Lake Mead near Las Vegas. Brockovich’s breathalyzer tests reportedly showed her blood-alcohol level was more than twice the legal limit of .08 as she struggled to dock her boat late Friday night. “She was not sure how to maneuver the boat into the dock,” Edwin Lyngar, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. “It’s a simple thing if you can think clearly. But if you add alcohol and unfamiliarity of the area, it can all cause serious problems.”...
Earlier this week, I posted about the Facebook meltdown and trials and tribulations of Amy’s Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro in Scottsdale. Arizona (Epic Facebook meltdown, PR fail or publicity ploy?). This un-reality show couldn’t get much stranger. It has more twists, turns and intrigue than a Shakespearean tragedy. Or maybe the Keystone Cops would be more accurate? The bistro was featured in a raucous season finale episode on Kitchen Nightmares featuring explosive celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. It was an entertaining and highly-charged reality TV episode complete with drama, screaming, yelling, heroes and villains....
The two owners of Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro took over the restaurant's Facebook page last night to fight unruly commenters, and man, was it embarrassing.
Sometimes you come across a PR fail that is so big, it’s hard to believe. Marketers at Mountain Dew (owned by PepsiCo) hit the bottom of the barrel when it comes to racism and disrespect to abused women everywhere with a new video spot. The firestorm for Mountain Dew's marketing fail is just getting started.
After disturbing—not to mention unsanctioned—mockup ads appeared online, the PR pros in Ford’s Asia Pacific division snapped into action on a Saturday morning. Are you having a rough Monday?
At least you weren’t handling a fast-moving PR crisis all weekend.
That was the case for Ford Motor Co.'s public relations team as it crafted a response to a disturbing mockup print ad for its Figo model that staffers at an unaffiliated agency had posted to the Internet....
If there’s one trend we’d like to kill deader than the Harlem Shake, it’s “Keep Calm and Carry On”. Now comes news that will hopefully mark the end of this meme:Amazon is in a big pot of extra-hot PR water after briefly carrying a series of T-shirts bearing charming slogans like “Keep Calm and Hit Her”, “Keep Calm and Knife Her” and the winner, “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot.” We think we speak for everyone when we say “Yikes.”...
Well, the cover-up continues from the Paterno family over the ballyhoo created by Jerry Sandusky's tragic child abuse right under the big ol' schnoz of the entire Penn State athletics department. Take this headline from PennLive.com and Central Pennsylvania's Patriot News: 'Victim lawyer calls Paterno family response a PR gambit.' Of course it is. The family wants to repair its image, tarnished as a result of its patriarch's chronic neck problem. You know? Turning the other way.
The article discusses the investigation commissioned by Penn State and conducted by former FBI director Louis Freeh. The scathing — and third-party — report found Paterno, former President Graham Spanier, retired senior vice president Gary Schultz, and on-leave athletic director Tim Curley covered up child abuse allegations against Sandusky. Yet, the Paterno family claims those conclusions were unfounded....
A note to readers: While most of the PR failures we write about are unfortunate, they are also amusing (on some level). This one, however, cannot be categorized as anything but horrifically insensitive, bordering on cruel. Relatives of the victims of last summer’s movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado recently received invitations from Cinemark USA to attend the reopening of the same theater at which their loved ones lost their lives. The invitations, which were sent just after the holidays, urged recipients to “reserve [their] tickets” for an evening of remembrance and a movie to follow. In response, family members sent a strongly-worded letter to Cinemark in which they expressed anger and outrage at the company’s lack of compassion, calling the invitation “disgusting”. They also noted that Cinemark representatives never reached out to offer their condolences; the company even rebuffed requests to meet with family members without lawyers present. The letter admonishes the reopening celebration as a “thinly veiled publicity ploy” and calls for a boycott of the theater....
Bloggers take to Twitter against Samsung, Public opinion turns against the phone maker, after it allegedly left a blogger stranded in Germany, Technology... Did Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd take bloggers from India to Germany with the understanding that they were to cover the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin, only to change their roles from reporters to promoters at the last minute? Or, was it a simple misunderstanding between the bloggers and the Korean electronics maker’s public relations team?... [Samsung could have easily avoided this big PR Fail. It didn't - JD]
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Tom Fishburne's cartoon says it all. PR people need to give advice on how to close the gap between reality and crisis weasel words.