Filed under: Business columns, Customer relations, reputation management | Tags: corporate ethics, Customer relations, IRS, peter kurer, public relations, public relations ethics, reputation management, Swiss banks, UBS Bank
At its most basic, public relations is an effort to achieve the intimacy and trust of interpersonal communications. What makes it so difficult is to achieve this goal while targeting tens of thousands, if not millions, of people. But there are strategies you can adopt to make your tactics more effective. One of the most important is to behave ethically at all times: do the right things, and when you stray from the straight path, own up to it completely and without excuses.
Whatever misdeeds Swiss bank UBS is guilty of, this is the tack they are taking now. The bank has admitted wrongdoing on a large scale, according to the NYT story about it:
In a striking admission, UBS said that from 2000 through 2007, some of its private bankers and managers had “participated in a scheme to defraud the United States” and the I.R.S. by helping American clients set up and conceal offshore accounts. The scheme involved falsifying or not properly obtaining or filing certain tax forms required of both the bank and its clients.
Another important step in the PR process is to have a high-level executive perform the mea culpa, to demonstrate the organization’s commitment to avoiding malfeasance in the future. UBS can cross this off its list as completed; the words of its Chairman, Peter Kurer:
“UBS sincerely regrets the compliance failures in its U.S. cross-border business that have been identified by the various government investigations in Switzerland and the U.S., as well as our own internal review. We accept full responsibility for these improper activities.”
In a nutshell, that’s what’s required. A statement admitting not just guilt, but summarizing the extent of the guilt. Then, the statement of regret/remorse from a high-level executive, to humanize the statement and make it resonate with target audiences.
If you ever find that you or your organization has abrogated the trust of its target audiences (clients, customers, shareholders, etc.), do NOT prevaricate. Come clean right away, so that you can salvage your image and reputation, and move on to bigger and better things.
Filed under: Economic, Political, reputation management | Tags: bailout, Neel Kashkari, public relations, public relations ethics, Treasury Department
To some, ethical public relations is an oxymoron, and this story about accountability for bailout funding fuels this perception. The story relates how the Treasury Department is releasing documents about the bailout with huge chunks blacked out. What chunks, you might ask? The parts that delineate how our money is being spent, of course!
This is transparency?
Assuming that the primary information taxpayers are interested in is where their money is going, this release of documents is sure to disappoint. Nonetheless, here’s the quote from the Treasury Department describing how they see themselves:
Neel Kashkari, an interim assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, sought to ease concerns about how the just-enacted $700 billion financial bailout plan would be implemented. “We are committed to transparency and oversight in all aspects of the program,” Kashkari said, “and have already taken several important steps in this area.”
Predicated on the notion that people in general are not idiots – especially people who are concerned about huge amounts of their money – my judgement as a PR professional is that Mr. Kashkari committed PR sin number one: he lied. Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t think of another way to describe the juxtaposition of his quote with the release of such redacted documentation.
Today’s obvious lesson: don’t lie; it looks bad.
Filed under: Business columns | Tags: bad pr, Nemeroff, PR, pr ethics, public relations, public relations ethics, spin, spin control
Business communicators (as we public relations people sometimes call ourselves) have to face the facts: PR is often associated with “spin control” and obscuring facts. You would think that folks who practice public relations would be the ones least likely to have a bad reputation, since image and reputation management is what they’re all about. But, like any profession, there are those who adopt an unethical approach to what they do, and give everyone else a bad name in the process.
The bad ones use their talents to “spin” the facts to cover up reality and create the wrong impression. There are some very nasty folks out there who will represent clients like the murderous ruling junta of Myanmar or an oil company subsidiary that is exploiting and abusing indigenous people of developing nations. They use their talent with words and the knowledge they have about how to convey messages with impact in order to spread one-sided, misleading information that obscures the truth. In such cases, it’s important for ethical PR folks to take a hard line and call this what it is: lying.
The chief bulwark against this type of activity is to simply adhere to the motto: tell only the truth. That’s what the vast majority of PR folks do, because they’re ethical people, and they know they can get burned if they do otherwise. Journalists have a sixth sense that allows them to sniff out untruth, and even half-truths, and they’ll expose them. Similarly, the public at-large will not tolerate “spin,” and nor should they.
So what does this mean for your business? It means that you must be rigorously ethical from the ground up. A good PR plan can’t cover up flaws in your organization; it can only make sure the positive attributes are highlighted. So if you are having problems with your employees because you took away key benefits without telling them why, and your management browbeats them and plays favorites, no amount of communication is going to help unless you fix the underlying problems first.
Similarly, if your products or services are sub-par compared to your competitors, people aren’t clueless enough to be duped by a slick communications campaign. Quality shortfalls are always going to trump other considerations, and if you’re the one saying something is great when everyone can see it isn’t, your credibility is shot.
So to avoid the pitfalls associated with bad public relations that will ruin your reputation, the main rule to follow is:
Always tell the truth, and be the first to tell it
This is sometimes a tough rule to follow, but it’s the most important. Let’s say you’re a healthcare practitioner and an inspection found shortcomings in your procedures that have led to higher-than-normal rates of infection among patients. Let’s also say you decide to say nothing about it, or worse, you decide to continue with your core messaging that portrays your facility as top-notch in all regards.
In addition to the fact that this is an unethical approach, there are simply too many ways for this to backfire. There are employees who are going to know the inspection outcomes. There are members of management who will know. There will be internal memos and changes to address the problem. And certainly there are concerned family members of patients who might put two and two together if their son got an infection at the hospital just like two other friends they heard of. And, it’s more than likely that the results of the inspection are available for public review at one point or another. So the best option is to be the first one to talk about the negative results. That way, you are the one starting — and thereby framing — the discussion. A statement in such a situation would not try to cover the negative, but rather ensure that the organization’s response is accentuated. Something like:
Mid-State Clinic administrator Josephine Smith today announced an aggressive campaign to address a recent inspection finding that Mid-State Clinic’s disinfection practices need improvement. “We have found that our procedures are adequate, but that we need to focus more on rigorous adherence to them,” said Smith. “Because the quality of patient care is our absolute top priority, I will chair a committee of top management that will oversee this effort on a daily basis.”
That type of response is a good first step, and would need to be followed up with continuous updates that show progress. The organization would also do well to offer tours and presentations to key stakeholders — like reporters, hospital board members, regulators, patient advocacy groups, etc. — to showcase how they are addressing the situation.
The unethical approach taken by so many organizations would be to ignore such bad news and stick to core messages that are obviously no longer true. One terrible example of this unfortunate tendency is a nationally-respected psychiatrist Dr. Charles Nemeroff, who is being investigated by a Congressional committee for taking money from pharmaceutical companies without properly disclosing his relationship to them. He signed an agreement with his employer — Emory University, where he is a professor — saying he would accept no more than $10,000 from a pharmaceutical company, and then accepted $170,000 from that company. This episode was reportedly just one of several such missteps by Dr. Nemeroff. Nonetheless, his response to the flap — conveyed through an Emory University spokesperson — has been, “To the best of my knowledge, I have followed the appropriate university regulations concerning financial disclosures.”
The reputational damage to Dr. Nemeroff is considerable. He now stands to become the poster-child for improper relationships with corporations, and all his clinical work will be seen through a filter: “Are all his research results skewed by huge amounts of pharmaceutical company dollars? Are these essentially paid ads for Eli Lilly or Glaxo?” The important point here is that it’s because of his actions, and that no amount of PR is going to change it.
During an economic downturn, it’s especially important for your business, your non-profit, your sole-proprietorship to keep well-planned communications open with your stakeholders — clients, customers, neighbors, suppliers, etc. The most important thing to keep in mind is the old saying that actions speak louder than words. If you keep your actions on the up-and-up, they’ll serve to reinforce your communications plan and make sure your reputation stands above that of your competitors. As the economy forces people to make tough choices with their dollars, the competitive advantage that comes with being truthful and open can make a big difference.
