(This week, PR News editors Phil Hall and Courtney Barnes throw snowballs at Olympic skier Bode Miller and his penchant for reckless sound bites.)
PHIL: I don't envy the damage control squad on the U.S. Olympic Ski Team. Their star athlete, Bode Miller, spent the past month shooting his mouth off with
extravagant and embarrassing comments on getting "wasted" while in competition. When that brouhaha settled, he then told Rolling Stone that baseball slugger Barry Bonds and
champion cyclist Lance Armstrong require extra pharmaceutical assistance to perform. I don't doubt Miller will score a few gold medals at this year's Winter Olympics, but he's
already earned a couple of tin medals in the PR department. Anyone who deals with reputation management will agree that our man Miller is literally a loose cannon on skis.
COURTNEY: True, and there are some interesting parallels between a team of athletes and, say, a corporation. Both have the same end goal in mind - winning - and both
require that their members work together to achieve a positive end result. Sadly, one bad apple, be it a mouthy skier or a wayward CEO, can ruin the progress of the whole team.
Damage control takes resources, and often times corporate reputations can't afford too many suckerpunches and subsequent cleanups. But how can a PR practitioner take one for the
team, so to speak, and rein in their corporate reputation before it hits the skids?
PHIL: With Bode Miller, the U.S. Olympic Ski Team already knew his propensity for inappropriate commentary and they were ready to extinguish his PR fires. But at the
same time, there was a mixed message: Miller was pressured to apologize for his comments on drinking and skiing, and he left no doubts that his too-carefully-worded apology was
not an organic action. And there was no disciplinary action against him by the U.S. Ski Team - he literally got off with a wrist slap and then went back to his bad habits of harsh
sound bites. Unless there is some degree of punishment for reckless behavior, the lesson learned here would be that star players have their own rules and are free to spoil a
team's reputation because they are perceived as indispensable.
COURTNEY: Yes, but do the same rules hold true in the corporate universe? Bode Miller may be indispensable to the U.S. Ski Team, but is an executive immune to
repercussions greater than wrist-slapping? I tend to believe the answer is an emphatic "no." Boards of executives have a long history of overthrowing people in power - note
Morgan Stanley's coup to oust former-CEO Philip Purcell - so it is important to have a unified voice and mission when corporate discrepancies are made public. Transparency
is always a must, as is a resilient and sturdy spokesperson. And PR managers don't want to look like they are following other C-suite executives around with a broom and a dust
pan, just cleaning up messes as they are made. When possible, opt for preemptive strikes to take control.
PHIL: Now there's food for thought - corporate America teaching the sports world how to behave!