Subway must want this year to end quickly. Jared Fogle, the company-created celebrity spokesperson, this week agreed to plead guilty of traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and the distribution and receipt of child pornography, according to the Associated Press. Sales were already falling. Now, with Fogle's child pornography case, Subway has a worst-case-scenario PR problem.
Make that "public relations" problem.
For non-practitioners, "PR" has become synonymous with spin, obfuscation and corporate-sponsored scientific studies designed to facilitate sales. This perception reaches the C-suite, where PR is sometimes designated as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.
Until a Jared Fogle moment comes along.
Fogle's case sends shivers beyond Subway's corporate headquarters in Connecticut and 21,000 franchises, to any organization that hovers over the border between a good reputation and a tarnished reputation. (In an upcoming issue of PR News' weekly premium publication, editor Seth Arenstein will share possible ways forward for Subway from public relations thought leaders.)
That's where all organizations exist—near that border. From the CEO to the customer service representative to the supplier's floor manager in another hemisphere, every individual in or connected to an organization has the potential to damage it with acts done, words said or written, images shared. PR as it's commonly perceived is merely a tourniquet, but thoughtful, effective public relations has clarity of purpose. It's relating to the public, communicating with people, listening and responding—in good times and bad.
If you're a public relations professional, you know this already, but do the executives who approve your budgets know this? Those executives need smart, effective public relations practitioners in their highest-level business meetings—before their Jared moment crashes through the window like a wrecking ball.
—Steve Goldstein, @SGoldsteinAI