Posts Tagged ‘Bad PR’

Heathrow Chaos: Turning Bad PR into Good

Under-fire BAA Chief Exective Colin Matthews has given up his bonus following the holiday travel chaos suffered by thousands of passengers at snow-hit Heathrow.

Mr Matthews was today again apologising to travellers, was again explaining what had caused the problems, and was again reinforcing what urgent action will now be taken to stop this from happening again. This is crisis PR textbook stuff.

Despite Heathrow Airport being totally, utterly and shambolically unprepared for the recent bad winter weather, the BAA boss has not hidden himself away and has bravely faced the assembled media throng – something many high-profile CEOs would not do, cowardly preferring to shuffle out their no.2 or the poor PR!

Whilst sacrificing his 2010 bonus will understandably not satisfy those angry and frustrated passengers who had to bed down for days in what the press deemed Heathrow refugee camps, it is a public admission of his failure, as BAA’s boss, and a personal gesture of goodwill.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Posted in PR Comment December 22nd, 2010

PR Disaster for BP

PR Week today reports that beleaguered BP is spending millions of dollars to minimise the PR damage caused by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which has been named the worst oil spill in US history.

With no end in sight to the ongoing saga, BP chief executive Tony Hayward has said: ‘I think this is clearly a major reputational issue for BP.’

As £12billion was wiped off the value of its shares earlier today, it seems that BP’s reputation – and its future - is at risk every bit as much as the Gulf ecosystem.

The results mean the company’s stock has fallen £42billion – more than a third of its value – since the fatal oilrig explosion six weeks ago.

Some analysts are predicting that BP may not survive.

Greenpeace, who are masters of effective PR, summed up the feelings of many around the world when they hung a large flag with their own design on BP’s West London HQ, rebranding the company “British Polluters.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | Posted in PR Comment June 1st, 2010

Bad PR: End of the Road for Toyota?

Toyota President Akio Toyoda yesterday admitted that the car manufacturer had ”pursued growth” above safety.

His sensational statement follows a string of major problems across a range of Toyota vehicles, which has led to the global recall of 8.5 million cars - and the worldwide battering of his company’s reputation.

Meanwhile Jim Lentz, President of Toyota’s US operations, has confessed that it took “too long to come to grips with a rare, but serious set of safety issues.”

Things seem to be going from bad to worse for the Japanese car giant and the media are already beginning to question if the company is now fighting a losing battle.

At the heart of Toyota’s reputational meltdown is its delay in identifying and addressing issues in the first place. Whatever the world’s largest car maker says and does now, there is a sense that it ignored problems until it was forced to take action.

The best crisis PR takes place at the first whiff of a problem. Senior management and PROs – indeed all employees – should be ever alert to potential threats and crises and then plan their way out of them or around them with urgent action, long before the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan.

Mr Toyoda, grandson of Toyota’s founder, will today apologise to the US Congress and the millions of Toyota owners for his firm’s failings, but is it already the end of the road for Toyota?

Tags: , , , , , | Posted in PR Comment, PR Tips February 24th, 2010

Tiger Woods Apology: A PR Farce

After keeping schtum for nearly 3 months, golfing superstar Tiger Woods finally stepped out of the shadows to speak publicly about his scandal-ridden private life.

Overall, he did say the right things; but his public apology was long overdue and the PR-scripted, 13-minute performance seemed robotic, disingenuous and overly long - with many viewers left wondering if he had done this only to salvage his career and hang on to big-money deals with those sponsors who haven’t yet walked away.

Family, friends and supporters filled the hand-picked press conference, which included just three pro-Woods journalists who were not allowed to ask any questions.

The carefully stage-managed – and in many people’s eyes, wholly unconvincing – affair ended with tarnished Woods tenderly embracing his mother before leaving the podium with his head bowed. Bafta anyone?

Interestingly, Wood’s wife Elin was absent from the PR circus.

Make up your own mind about the infamous Tiger Woods apology, which has drawn mixed reactions, by watching the full press conference here.

Tags: , , , , , , , | Posted in PR Comment February 19th, 2010