Critical Takeaways from 2021 PR Mega Blunders
Like clockwork, very large and otherwise competent companies again demonstrated in 2021 that they are fully capable of inexplicably spawning company-busting PR blunders.
You think Peloton would have gotten it by now. The high-tech exercise equipment maker – which requires that you drop at least $2,000 the first year just to get in the Peloton pack – got hit again in 2021, earning the top spot on Bloomberg’s annual Five Biggest PR Blunders. Earlier in 2021, after a child got killed using one of the company’s popular treadmills, Peloton recalled the treadmills together with a delayed mea culpa from CEO John Foley: “I want to be clear, Peloton made a mistake in our initial response to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s request that we recall the Tread+. We should have engaged more productively with them from the outset. For that, I apologize.”
This was on top of a COVID-19 era ad gaffe where a woman preparing a “thank you” video appeared to be either frightened or disconcerted. It was subsequently panned by consumers. Bloomberg noted back then that the company “loses more points for crafting a response as tone-deaf as the ad itself. ‘We’re disappointed in how some have misinterpreted this commercial,’ the company said. An insincere non-apology is the only thing worse than not apologizing at all.”
Back on Top of PR Crises
And then Peloton did it again, vaulting it back to the top Bloomberg PR Blunder slot when it lost control of its brand in what was supposed to be a premier product placement position. On the much-anticipated HBO “Sex and the City” reboot, the Mr. Big character dies from a heart attack while using a Peloton product.
The initial reaction was a 11.3% drop in Peloton’s stock price. But this time Peloton moved swiftly. As Bloomberg notes (referencing the Wall Street Journal): “The company argued that the fictional Mr. Big’s lifestyle was to blame for his heart disease, and exercise likely prolonged his life… Peloton quickly threw together an ad with actor Chris Noth (who played Mr. Big) along with the Peloton instructor, claiming “he’s alive.” Critics applauded. Its stock rose over 7%.”
Tyrant-flavored Statements Not Preferred
The No. 2 slot for effectively demonstrating why companies need to retain PR counsel goes to Morgan Stanley. There CEO James Gorman issued a veiled threat in mid-June, issued a tone-deaf tyrant-flavored statement to his high-end workforce: “we’ll have a different kind of conversation” if employees didn’t leave their WFH environment after Labor Day and head back to brick-and-mortar Morgan Stanley offices.
As the Great Resignation phenomenon reared up nationally, Gorman pivoted with a “never mind” stance, amending and adapting his comments, and later admitting on CNBC “I was wrong on this…I thought we would have been out of it [the Coronavirus pandemic] past Labor Day, and we’re not.” Meanwhile, the emergence of the Omicron variant continues to demonstrate the unpredictability of this ongoing issue.
Terminating 900 on Zoom
Weighing in at No. 3 of top PR train wrecks for 2021 was Better.Com CEO Vishal Garg’s mercurial act of firing more than 900 employees on a Zoom call in early December 2021. As the New York Times reported, the backlash was immediate, and the SoftBank-backed mortgage company has now “brought on a third-party firm to assess its leadership and culture” while Garg is now “taking time off” following what Better.COM now describes as “very regrettable events.”
As Bloomberg reports, an expected outcome for this gaffe includes the possibility that “After communicating this decision so tactlessly, Better.com is unlikely to be able to successfully recruit top talent when it needs to hire again.”
“Senator Karen?”
Newly minted Trillionaire Elon Musk takes down the fourth reason proving the validity of professional reputation management following his ad hominem brand-defining moment of name-calling, labeling Senator Elizabeth Warren “Senator Karen.” The resulting Twitter War earned nobody any accolades, especially the current Time magazine “Person of the Year.” A possible outcome? Bloomberg warns: “cultivating a reputation as a troll rather than as a trustworthy leader stands to backfire on Musk in the future when lawmakers take up inevitable big questions about legislating driverless vehicles and space travel.”
List? What List?
The fifth PR blunder was committed by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. After announcing the 2021 list of Grammy nominees — a very big deal for the recording industry – the National Academy said something along the lines like “well, we had Deloitte perform an audit and the nomination of Linda Chorney was cleared.” The PR issue emerged after some other early lists had included the indie artist as a nominee. Hats off to recording Academy President-CEO Harvey Mason Jr., who – according to Variety — after being contacted by Ms. Chorney, “personally looked into the mystery of why her name was absent from the official nominations.”
Bloomberg’s take? “Get your facts straight before making announcements and anticipate eminently foreseeable controversies like this one before creating them.”
Thanks to Bloomberg columnist Kara Alaimo for eloquently demonstrating yet again the critical need for professional public relations — and the need for thoughtful consideration by executives that most crises are self-made, spawned by dreadful gaps in judgment. As Alaimo rightly portends regarding crises, “the savvier approach is to avoid creating them in the first place.”
And by the way, given that crises today move at the speed of light (that is, the instant of the internet), how’s your crisis communication plan?
By Michael Snyder, MEK, whose APR includes a specialty focus in crisis communications.