Tiger Woods and lessons for corporate communications
I don’t wish on the personal difficulties of Tiger Woods and his family, but it strikes me that the way his advisers have handled the whole affair have made several mistakes. And I am not only one to think so.
For example, the Guardian says,
…the decision to remain hidden from public view since the accident may have been his biggest public relations mistake – and, perhaps most humiliatingly for such a proud man, it has become a running joke.
So what should he have done? Well, the basics of dealing with various kinds of disaster are fairly clear cut:
- Communicate: Admit there is problem
- Communicate: Apologize
- Communicate: Say what you are going to do about it
- Do it
- Communicate: Say what you did
The key thing is to be open. A classic case study is Johnson & Johnson whose product Tylenol was tampered with. A good summary is provided on Mallen Baker’s website. As he concludes:
The features that made Johnson & Johnson’s handling of the crisis a success included the following:
- They acted quickly, with complete openness about what had happened, and immediately sought to remove any source of danger based on the worst case scenario – not waiting for evidence to see whether the contamination might be more widespread
- Having acted quickly, they then sought to ensure that measures were taken which would prevent as far as possible a recurrence of the problem
- They showed themselves to be prepared to bear the short term cost in the name of consumer safety. That more than anything else established a basis for trust with their customers
