Google and the Seven Stages of Astoundingly Bad Crisis PR
Industries differ greatly, but in business, some things stay the same. Look at Google's (GOOG) most recent foray into a privacy hornet's nest. Given the company's experience with its Buzz roll-out debacle, you might think that its reaction was unusual ineptitude. However, if you look at the ham-handed PR by such companies as BP (BP) during the oil spill, Toyota (TM) and the sudden acceleration of its cars, and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) through its latest Tylenol recall, there's a keen similarity. All used a single playbook: the Seven Stages of Astoundingly Bad Crisis PR.
Whether it was sending roving cars to snap up private information from Wi-Fi networks, creating a wide-spread economic and ecological disaster, literally driving people to injury and death, or contaminating a huge number of consumer health products, each company has recently done something of such monumental idiocy as to drop jaws across the country. That would have been difficult enough, but all compounded the error, before and after the fact, with ill-advised attitudes and choices that turned their disasters into full-blown fiascos. Here are the steps that each used.
Channel Your Inner Magoo
Remember the cartoon character Mr. Magoo? The practically blind old man would get into trouble because he couldn't see reality and yet wouldn't admit to the shortcoming:PR, or public relations, refers to all the ways a company can interact with the world. Companies that undertake astoundingly bad crisis PR start by assuming that they can preen themselves for an appearance. But image is the corporate equivalent of character: It shows itself best when a company thinks that no one is looking. To say "Don't be evil" does nothing if your actions don't match.
Exult In Your Infallibility
Not even popes are infallible, let alone corporations. Often staffed by bright and accomplished people, companies sometimes forget how fallible they are. Google has repeatedly ignored its own screw-ups, including its controversial introduction of Buzz last February. With collecting personal data from wireless networks, it simply did so again, trusting to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Why? I got an interesting answer earlier today from Frost & Sullivan telecom analyst Mike Jude:About 10 percent of all Internet traffic goes through [Google's] servers. [Google management believes] they're essential to this technological environment. What they're thinking is that if they're doing it, it must be essential to the further development of the Internet.In other words, if the company does something, the action must make sense. Ah, hubris. Ah, humanity.
Keep Your Eye on the Short-Term Prize
This is the most important step. To be astoundingly bad at crisis PR, you must forget the question of whether the dollar you make today will cost you three by next week. J&J probably smiled at the money it saved through manufacturing shortcuts. BP could bank money savings by not implementing better safety programs. Toyota balanced likely legal costs against savings on each of those 8 million now-recalled vehicles.Google wanted the data. So what if this becomes the final straw and generates increased regulation? How inconvenient could government oversight become, anyway? Plenty -- just ask Microsoft (MSFT), Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), or the old AT&T (T).
Meet Mr. Murphy
This is probably the easiest step in astoundingly bad crisis PR. All you need is for something to go very wrong. That's easy -- it almost always does.Panic
This is the second easiest step in the process. If a company assumes that it is too smart to run into problems, then it won't take the preventative steps it might otherwise have. Some people are good in a crisis. Others, less so. But almost no bureaucracies are. Everyone begins trying to cover their own rears, communication breaks down, and corporate hysteria and finger-pointing sets in.Hide
Because even at this stage a repentant company could have a chance at sincere apology, astoundingly bad crisis PR requires Management to hide from the problem and hope it goes away. BP CEO Tony Hayward called the massive oil spill "relatively tiny." Toyota tried to blame floor mats rather than its own disinterest in safety. BP and its subcontractors all tried to blame each other. As for Google? Executives claim that they didn't even know they had the data.Suffer the Consequences
The last step for corporations that undertake astoundingly bad crisis PR is facing the consequences for their blindness, arrogance, greed, and fear. The payment is often masked. Toyota faced a fine of $16.4 million -- not even a good rounding error in its normal business. But in a bad market, how many car sales have gone to other companies? Who knows many drivers BP has sent to competitors? J&J may have come back stronger after the Tylenol scare and recall of the 1980s, but you can bet consumers are looking at alternatives today. Google faces not only the possibility of burdensome regulation or legislation, but further loss of public trust. And when your business model depends on people treating you as a trusted source of information, that's about as bad as it gets.Related Coverage: