Spokespeople, celebrities, scholars and CEOs have pored over articles and case studies trying to learn from the mistakes others have made in handling crises. And few subjects
have provoked more study than Bill Clinton and McDonalds. Both have faced their share and more of crises. The good news is that many have learned good lessons, coming clean early
and often, doing instead of talking, paying attention to constituencies as well as complainers, and, in general, handling crises better. But sometimes, all the study in the world
may not immunize you from a crisis, as McDonalds recently learned.
Hundreds stormed restaurants in India and three lawsuits have been filed against McDonalds for using beef flavoring in their French fries. McDonalds never suggested that their
French fries were vegetarian, but somehow large number of vegetarians came to that conclusion when McDonalds announced several years ago that they were switching to 100% vegetable
oil for frying.
When the controversial fact was revealed, McDonalds did what we always tell people to do... they apologized. But they issued the apology on their Web site, and the litigants,
among others, felt that was insufficient. I'm not sure I can fault Mickey Dee on this one... the chain serves billions of hamburgers a year - why anyone would go there looking for
vegetarian food is puzzling. Most media and crisis experts today counsel clients to use the Internet to release information whenever possible, which is exactly what McDonalds did.
Could they have used other media as well? Absolutely. Would that have shortened or prolonged the crisis? I'm not sure. This is one that has legs on several continents and lawsuits
galore. No matter what happens, it will be with us for awhile. The point is they learned from past mistakes.
Congressman Gary Condit is another story. It would be one thing if he had been living under a rock or on Mars for the past few years, and thus could explain the fact that he
clearly didn't learn anything from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. But this man has been living and working on Capitol Hill, for goodness sake.
Any faithful reader of this column would know that my advice would be to: (1) Always come clean; and (2) Never, ever make your lawyer your spokesperson. Nothing convinces
people you're guilty faster than putting your lawyer in front of the media first. Every major media pundit and image guru has weighed in with an opinion, and most seem to agree
that if you have nothing to hide, why aren't you talking? And why did you hide behind your lawyer?
The Levys aren't any better. They immediately went out and hired a well-known PR firm, which smacked of media manipulation and opportunism. Haven't the American people been
clear enough? We DON'T CARE what our politicians do between the sheets with interns; it's what they say to us when we look them in the eye on network TV that's important. Be
honest and we'll forgive you. Congress-man Condit gets an F.
(Katharine Delahaye Paine is president of Delahaye Medialink (603/431-0111). Image Patrol is based on a subjective content analysis of major news sources covering a crisis.
Comments are not intended to criticize the work of the company in crisis, but rather to illustrate the role the media play in shaping the perceptions of various stakeholder
goups.)
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McDonalds; HQ: Oak Park; Ill.,
2000 Sales: $14,243 million; Employees: 364,000 |
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Criteria
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Grade
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Comments
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Advice
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| Extent of coverage |
F
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The story is everywhere there's a golden arch. It's the worst kind of crisis... one that spreads around the globe, full of passion, lawsuits and misinformation. Which means that the litigants won't let it go away. Could McDonalds have been more upfront? Hard to say. Could they have immediately agreed to formulate a vegetarian French fry? Not easily. Reformulating a product that is distributed in millions of retail outlets is not simple. Would it be less expensive than the damage this crisis could do to their reputation? Very probably. |
The more information you can get out there early, the faster a crisis will go away. You also should look at any crisis from a big picture perspective and weigh the costs of reputation damage vs. what may look to be a large upfront charge. |
| Effectiveness of spokespeople |
C
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Pointing to a Web site is never a good substitute for real dialogue. The McDonalds' spokesperson was okay, but the sound bite fell short. |
Actions speak louder than words. While they offered an explanation, they didn't volunteer to take any action, which might have diffused some of the ire. |
| Communication of key messages |
B
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Every story contained the legal caveat that "they never said their fries were vegetarian" and that they apologized. They also got across a great many messages about how big they were in India and other parts of the world. |
Keep the messages simple and they get repeated. The question you must continuously ask is: are these the right messages? |
| Management of negative messages |
C
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Not much more you can ask for but balanced coverage and most of the coverage mentioned both sides of the argument. It's a tribute to McDonalds' PR folks that the coverage was as balanced as it was. While the litigation got prominent mention, so did McDonalds' side of the story. |
Balanced coverage is primarily a result of good long term relationships with the media. After years of escalating crises, someone at McDonalds must have learned how to get it right. |
| Impact on consumers |
B
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Chances are pretty good that the percentage of vegetarians in McD's target audience was small to begin with, and no doubt, just got smaller. |
In this day and age of marketing opportunities, you need to always weigh carefully which audiences you want to spend resources on. |
| Impact on investors |
C
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Lawsuits will always make some investors nervous, but the vast majority won't pay much attention |
Whenever possible, pre-brief your investors with a separate document that outlines the facts, the potential risks and ultimate impact. |
| Impact on employees |
B
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Since neither the lawsuit, nor the revelations about beef flavoring resulted in any sort of change in franchisee policy or behavior, most employees were probably unaffected by the crisis. |
Employees will always see that which affects their jobs, their paychecks, and their friends within the company. Beyond that, you have to hit them over the head to get them to pay attention. |
| Overall score |
C
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McDonalds clearly learned lessons the hard way, and have radically improved how they handle a crisis. But sometimes, no matter what you've learned and how hard you try, the opposition gets equal play. |
The important thing is to follow the basic rules of crisis communications: be honest, upfront and open; express concern and compassion; and if appropriate, take action to rectify the problem. In this case, the only thing that McDonalds could have done better was to take action. |
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Rep. Gary Condit (D-CA); HQ: Washington;
D.C.; Elected: 1989; est. Constituency: 570,000 |
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Criteria
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Grade
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Comments
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Advice
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| Extent of coverage |
F
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What part of "media feeding frenzy" don't you understand? Sex, lies and politics are chum to those hungry Capitol Hill media sharks, and the Congressman should have seen it coming and taken appropriate action to divert some of that attention. |
In today's society, certain triggers virtually guarantee headlines. This story had all of them. And the notion that your lawyer could handle fallout is absurd. When you have hurricane warnings, you don't just take out your umbrella. You bring in the experts and take control of the situation. Not only did Congressman Condit lose control, but because his lawyer is managing the hired PR gun, she can't get control either. |
| Effectiveness of spokespeople |
F
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I'm not sure who is worse, the Congressman or his attorney. It doesn't matter, since it's clear that Condit won't say anything his lawyer hasn't approved. This makes him look that much less credible and that much more suspicious. |
What part of "don't use lawyers as spokespeople" haven't I already said? The media assumes that even if you have an iron-clad alibi, you've obviously done SOMETHING wrong if you've hired a high-profile/priced attorney. |
| Communication of key messages |
D
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The police have done an excellent job getting the message across that he's not a suspect in the case, but other than that, the major messages that have been communicated about Congressman Condit are that he's a womanizing adulterer. |
The problem with letting the lawyers and the media control your messages is that it becomes very hard to get your side of the story across. Essentially, whatever message Condit may have had has been drowned out. |
| Containment of negative messages |
F
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Condit may have wanted to control all those bad messages about previous affairs and his young, rakish days but he was dreaming. By staying silent and attempting to hide from bad news, he made the situation 100 times worse. |
When you don't provide your own information, you leave the media no choice. They go dig up whatever dirt they can |
| Impact on constituents |
D
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After Clinton, we learned that affairs seldom have much impact on voters. The bad news is that after Clinton, we learned that lying DOES have an impact. The moment we found out he lied, his support began to erode. |
Never, ever knowingly lie. The media will invariably find out the truth and you will have made the situation worse. |
| Impact on colleagues |
C
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Condit actually had a fighting chance early on in this mess to portray himself as a hapless victim of a sex-crazed media pack and pick up some sympathy, particularly among his Capitol Hill colleagues, But his obfuscations and retreat behind his attorney spokesperson removed that option. Since few of his colleagues are without similar skeletons in their closets, most of them have been pretty silent on his behavior. |
In this media era, visuals are everything, and it's very easy to dominate a story by supplying the right visuals. The Levy's have learned this technique well. Unfortunately, neither Condit nor his lawyer has a clue. |
| Overall |
F
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Condit has made just about every mistake you can make and the results are exactly what you might expect. |
It's rare these days to see an example of a crisis in which virtually every rule of crisis management has been broken, but this could be the case history for the new century of how NOT to manage your crisis. |