In an age of mistrust, even the smallest slipup can destroy a well-cultivated corporate image. So it’s no wonder that Toyota is scrambling to control the fallout from their latest recalls. The acceleration problems that have led to a recall of more than two million cars aren’t simply a quality-control issue – they strike at the heart of the company’s value proposition: reliable cars that keep your family safe.
Much has already been written about Toyota’s response to this corporate crisis, and especially their failure to act more quickly. I want to focus on a specific event,Akio Toyoda’s February 9 Op-Ed in the Washington Post. The point is not to assess Toyota’s overall approach to this crisis or to predict its effectiveness. Continue reading →
The economic climate hasn’t just affected bank accounts and business prospects. One leading communications strategist says it has actually changed how we’retalking—and this means huge opportunities for PR professionals who can tap into the right kind of messaging to lead their brands and clients out of recession and into recovery. READ THE ARTICLE
This was originally published on April 29, 2009 on:
Multimillion-dollar compensation packages.Private jets.Hormones in milk.Plastic water bottles.Chemicals in baby products.High credit card rates.Retention bonuses.
What do these things have in common?They come from different industries but each represents a common set of challenges that corporations now face.Each is a symbol
– a shorthand representation
of a much larger ideological perspective.Each tells a story without having to say a word.
For better or worse, symbols now dominate the debate:
Congressmen try to embarrass executives by asking them why they took private jets to their hearing on Capitol Hill rather than trying to grapple with the real issues at hand as a means toward a positive end. Continue reading →
This was originally published on March 19, 2009 on the CNBC Guest Blog
The reasons to envy Edward Liddy, AIG Chairman and CEO[AIG1.510.13(+9.42%)], are few and far between these days.
It’s bad enough he has to defend $165 million in bonuses to senior AIG staff when the company just received more than $170 billion in federal taxpayer dollars. And in his defense, he did say he found the current bonus arrangements to be both “distasteful” and “difficult to recommend” given the current economic climate. But the fact that he did so with such cold, dispassionate language only adds salty insult to an already bloody injury.
But this isn’t meant to be another attack on AIG or the bonuses themselves, however “distasteful” they might be. Rather, there are some communication lessons to be learned from AIG’s fetid response that cut across every business or industry, both in good times and in bad.
The fallacy of fatal facts. Aside from the obviously painful position of being at the helm when that kind of money is going out in executive bonuses, Liddy makes one of the biggest (and most common) communication blunders possible: clinging to fatal facts. Continue reading →
It didn’t take long for Obama’s anti-Wall Street rhetoric to start to come back to haunt him. Already the New York Times is reporting that anger at the financial services industry is threatening to put a wrench in Obama’s agenda.
I never understood why the President decided to switch from “Yes, We Can” to “Look at what they did.” It was so off-brand for Obama. And given Bush’s horrendous approval ratings and the nonstop news coverage of the evil done by Wall Street, Obama would have been better off focusing on the future and not on the past. Why further drive people against Wall Street? Was that really necessary to get the stimulus passed? Always seemed like gratuitous populism to me. And it seemed potentially very dangerous to amp up the anti-business hatred. Continue reading →
President Obama’s opening statement for the budget he released yesterday declared: “We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington.”
What do you think? Please answer the following five questions. Results are available in real-time. Thanks.
The post below was originally posted today on the CNBC Guest Blog
Obama won the hearts of his base but Republicans remain skeptical.
Tuesday night, my firm, Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research conducted an Instant Response session with 29 voters from the suburban Virginia area. Just over half voted for Obama while the rest voted for McCain. In other respects, the group reflected the area’s population, with a mix of ages, occupations and incomes. All were highly news-engaged people meaning that they each said they pay close attention to national and international news.
Strong partisan divides. The view from this group was not quite as gushy about the speech as most of the cable networks would suggest. While Americans continue to root for the President to succeed, the first few weeks of the Obama Administration have done little to erase the partisan skepticism so prevalent of the past eight years. What we witnessed was a group of people polarized by Obama’s message even while they ended up giving him reasonably high marks for his performance overall. In fact, we saw huge partisan divides in nearly every area of Obama’s speech.
A new divide is forming. As significant as the partisan divide, we also saw a new philosophical split emerging: the responsible vs. the irresponsible. Many participants – Democrats and Republicans alike – believe that the stimulus package and the housing bill are doing too much to reward the bad behavior of others. They resent neighbors who never should have purchased homes they couldn’t afford and they are angry that they will now be forced to carry the burden for what they see as reckless behavior. They reject Obama’s recent policy victories as the wrong approach to solving the financial crisis and want to ensure that they will not be asked to sacrifice more to support others.
With that said, here is a rundown of what worked for both parties and what didn’t work for Republicans in Obama’s speech. Also included are some of the clips from the groups.
WHAT WORKED:
Hope and optimism. Before the speech, most of our participants from both parties said that Obama’s “gloom and doom” over the past few weeks had not served him well. They said they wanted Obama to return to the tone of his campaign. And according to them, he did so. Though his rhetoric around hope and optimism did not test as strongly in this context as it did during much of the campaign, our group overwhelmingly agreed that he has successfully communicated a more optimistic view of American’s future.
People and Personal responsibility. For all of the large reform proposals outlined in Obama’s speech, the messages that resonated most were not about government at all. They were about people and personal responsibility. Talk about “the hardest-working people on Earth” or the parent who must take responsibility for her children or the “men and women in uniform” received uniformly positive responses. For Republicans and Democrats, there is agreement that now is a time for greater personal responsibility. And for a former community organizer it is ironic that the messages that did best were those that spoke of giving Americans the power to achieve a better future.
Sacrifice: There was only one line in the speech that used the word, but it was a powerful one. It resonated with people on both sides of the aisle because they recognize that there are not endless resources and that trade-offs must be made. They expect their elected officials to lead the way. Continue reading →
