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5 Biggest PR Fails of 2019

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In our 24-hour news cycle increasingly driven by social media virality — public relations disasters occur and are crowded out so quickly that many people, including me, don’t even notice them. In 2019, there have been a few exceptions to that rule, which are listed below.

These companies and individuals didn’t just commit one PR blunder, but rather a sustained or repeated series of PR fails that withstood the shortening attention span of the news media and public. The biggest PR disasters in of 2019 include:

PR Fail #1: Boeing Appears Callous After Crashes

After crashes involving its 737 Max airplane in late 2018 that killed 189 people and in March 2019 that killed 157 people, Boeing continued to publicly insist that its planes were safe instead of recalling all the aircraft immediately and launching an investigation.

It didn’t help that a National Transportation Safety Board investigation revealed later that the aircraft’s new MCAS software was a contributor in both crashes or that whistleblowers emerged to allege the company cut corners to reduce costs and speed production while not documenting safety faults. Boeing continues to lose orders from airliners and its stock price and revenue dropped precipitously throughout the year.

Boeing treated a major crisis involving the loss of hundreds of lives as if it were passengers complaining on social media about uncomfortable seats and lack of luggage space. Their response should have been contrite, swift and comprehensive.

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Even if human error was a factor in both crashes, such major catastrophic events involving the same airplane required the company to demonstrate that it was doing everything possible to investigate and protect passengers. Instead, it denied anything was wrong and let public opinion take control.

PR Fail #2: Facebook – Here We Go Again

After a very rough 2016 presidential election where the social media giant was accused of enabling the spread of misinformation from fake accounts, it was revealed the site sold user data to Cambridge Analytica and other outside groups for political research. This led the company being ranked as the “least trusted” tech company, according to a Fortune poll.

In 2019, even after Google and Twitter issued strict guidelines limiting political advertising, Facebook, as of this blog post, was still undecided about what it would do about the ads.

Its first public comments stated the site would do nothing in fairness to free speech, regardless of how false the claims were. Recently, a story leaked that Facebook might flag all ads as not fact-checked, which some pointed out would paint even well-cited ads with the same brush as those with fabrications.

Considering the hundreds of millions of dollars Facebook takes in from these and similar ads, it’s not surprising they are reluctant to push back, but the indecisiveness only ramps up the lack of integrity and untrustworthiness perception it has in the market.

PR Fail #3: College Admissions Scandal

Two famous TV actresses were implicated with at least 51 other parents in a scheme involving bribes and hired test-takers to help their children gain admission to prestigious colleges.

One would assume that the celebrities would have memorized and rehearsed a carefully worded script within 48 hours to perform before the news cameras. Instead, there was silence.

One of the actresses, Lori Laughlin, even signed autographs before a court appearance. The colleges involved in the scandal, namely Yale and UCLA, were far more transparent about what they knew about the fraud committed by the parents’ hired conspirators and then revoked offers to the students involved, which was a much better PR response to the crisis.

These institutions also have strong reputations that can withstand this tertiary involvement in such a scandal. I can assume the actresses’ legal teams urged them to remain silent. I would also bet their publicity teams had a crisis communications game plan ready, but they just weren’t allowed to execute it.

Regardless, in a society obsessed with celebrity, it seems like a missed opportunity by the actresses’ legal teams to sway the court of public opinion before the accused appeared in federal court.

PR Fail #4: IHOP Wearies the Market

In 2018, IHOP pretended to change its famous acronym to IHOb (for burgers), which, albeit quite intentionally, generated a news and social media storm. Depending on who you talk to, the stunt was either ill-advised because it was just a trick, or quite successful because it got people talking about and buying the restaurant’s burgers and it gained 60,000 Twitter followers.

After such a big response, IHOP went back to the well in 2019 to launch a new line of burgers with a marketing campaign that referred to them as “pancakes.” Get it?

Well, it didn’t generate quite as much news or social media attention as the fake rebranding and it just further confused the market. While more of a marketing misstep than PR, it does show how important brand trust is, even with tongue-in-cheek marketing.

After the name-change stunt and follow-up, what are consumers going to believe? Will they even bother paying attention to from the pancake-restaurant chain?

PR Fail #5: Uber is Lost

The PR and reputational struggles of the ride-sharing service continued in 2019.

After hiring a new CEO and its first chief marketing officer, the CMO and chief operating officer resigned and Uber laid off 400 marketing employees. This is despite a $500 million rebranding and reputation management effort launched after news media coverage of its toxic culture and driver underpayments emerged in 2017.

Unsurprisingly, the company’s stock price plummeted after its IPO in May 2019, although not solely related to its PR struggles. Not helping the reputational renewal was a report the company released in December 2019 showing nearly 6,000 reports of sexual assaults involving rides in the U.S. in 2017 and 2018.

The only positive aspect of this horrific PR moment is that Uber released the report itself, demonstrating some degree of transparency. Its top competitor, Lyft, which has its own similar problems, has yet to release such a report.

Bottom line

There is plenty to be learned about crisis communications and reputation management in these incidents and others, namely the importance of responding quickly, being transparent and controlling the narrative.

There are plenty of experts on such matters here at Amendola and you can read their insights here and here. Better yet, give us a call and our media relations and crisis management team can help you design a plan and keep your stress levels down and reputation up if such an incident occurs involving your organization.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work – and Delivers Results

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work and Delivers Results

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Everyone knows that success is not created in a vacuum. Teamwork permeates everything we do. In sports, we know the names of some standout players, but it is how they work together that delivers wins.

In public relations and marketing agencies, clients depend on team members to not only know their craft but serve as an extension of the marketing teams. How individual stars execute as part of a larger, cross-functional team is where you will really see results.

What do you need to build a great team? Some of the best groups share a few key elements.

Shared Goals

Being part of a team is entering into a relationship, so remember your parents advice find people with similar goals. Working toward the same objectives builds comradery as well as teamwork. Clearly stating those goals ensures everyone is on the same page.

Complementary Strengths

Having a group of people who are carbon copies of each other, for those of you that remember print forms, is not only boring. It stifles innovation. Remember what Winston Churchill said: “If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary.”

You want people with different experiences and assets to round out your team and bring ideas that you may not have come up with on your own. Identify what characteristics are needed to succeed. Know your strengths and recruit people that have different ones. Then, offer enough autonomy to let each member’s expertise shine.

Communication

Proper communication is the backbone of every good collaboration, so it must take into account people’s personal preferences. Colleagues can each react differently to how information is presented, so it is important to understand the nuances of your team.

Proactive feedback is also important to keeping the team on track. Don’t wait until there is a problem keep responses consistent to prevent issues. The ability to brainstorm, strategize and work through challenges is the result of good team communication. There is also an added bonus created from this trust.

Transparency

This takes communication to the next level. For teamwork to thrive, each member needs to execute off of the same playbook. Ensure your PR and marketing teams are in the know about your organization functionality in development, your key drivers, business decisions motivators, and the skinny on your customers favorite features. This enables teams to proactively act in your best interest and deliver real results.

Individuals can certainly accomplish many tasks from the outside; however, it is like passing to the Patriots Rob Gronkowski the ball will be caught, but maybe not as gracefully. Expertise is not always enough. Transparency removes the handicap and creates synergies that deliver above and beyond your expectations, tapping into resources that will best guide your programs to reach your business goals.

Public relations and marketing are about building your brand in a way that supports overarching business goals creating thought leadership, increasing brand awareness, motivating behavior from select groups. Don’t get lost chasing tactics. Keep your objectives in sight and build the team that will get you there.

Cubs GM Theo Epstein built a culture of transparency

Fostering A Culture of Transparency

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On the night of November 2, 2016, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, ending the longest drought in the history of American sports

OK, before I continue a caveat. This isn’t going to be another metaphorical sports-as-insert-unrelated-industry-here blog post. I’m not going to compare media relations to a clean-up hitter nor end this piece advising your team to “hit is out of the park.”

But there is a practical lesson the Cubbies historic run can offer to organizations that contract with a healthcare PR agency.

When he was hired to run baseball operations for the Cubs in 2011, Theo Epstein held a remarkable press conference. He explained that in order to build a winning club, the entire structure needed to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. The overhaul would affect every aspect of the organization, even the ball park, and that several years would pass before the front office’s effort bore fruit.

It didn’t take much to read between the lines the Cubs were going to stink. And not in the usual way fans had become accustomed to. In other words, history-making bad.

What was remarkable and perhaps overlooked about that press conference was Epstein’s transparency. It’s an unwritten rule in sports to never admit to a rebuild, to confess that the product you are placing on the field may be intentionally awful for the foreseeable future.

If you were a Cubs fan between 2011 and 2016 and you referred to “The Plan,” everyone knew what you were talking about.

Reflecting on those sour years, Epstein said, “You realize it’s just easier when you’re transparent. You realize it works with everyone. It works managing up, it works with the media, it works with agents, it works with your fans.

It’s kind of the best way to do things if you can pull it off. Something as simple as transparency is really scalable, because it quickly impacts the culture.”

Transparency is a critical component of a successful PR program. Great PR teams are proactive. Not only do they get ahead of stories, they also help create the narrative. But that only works if a transparent culture is fostered between the agency’s team and the organization it represents.

PR teams that understand the good, the bad and the ugly of the organizations they represent allow them the space to best position the company and its narrative in the public eye. Quietly working on a months-long initiative only to bring it to your PR rep’s attention the day before launch and expect the moon in terms of coverage is unrealistic. Obscuring a poor outcome or promising customers that never show up to interviews puts your rep on the defensive and makes your program reactive, always playing catch up.

Think of your PR team as the guardians of your reputation. They can only protect and position what they know. In short, anything and everything you tell your PR teams helps them help you. On the flip side, a good PR team is going to be explicit about being upfront, diligent and discreet in their communications.

So what are the ingredients for a culture of transparency?

  • Be open. It’s important to focus on missed opportunities as much as victories, so we can learn from our experiences and apply it to the next campaign.
  • Seek and deliver feedback. PR is as much an art as science. Some initiatives work, others don’t. If your agency’s style of operation doesn’t mesh with your own, speak about it openly and frankly. If you have a good agency, they’ll adapt.
  • Make sure good news isn’t the only news. Every organization hits a rough patch a delayed initiative, an unhappy customer, internal shake-ups. Keeping your PR team in the loop helps them offer constructive advice and a strategy for dealing with these issues should they become public.

A transparent culture impact everybody it build trusts, strengthens relationships, and enables your PR team and organization to tap the flexibility and creativity required to be a positive, proactive force in the marketplace.