'We boobed' - why 'sorry' is a great Public Relations word!
Did you see the apology by Marks & Spencer? It was hard to miss! ''We boobed' screamed the caption across a photograph of just the kind of sized bras that they had been trying to charge more for. And so screamed lots of more headlines as they reported the apology.
The savvy PR guru within wonders what such contrition has done to M&S's bra sales?
Absolutely they were in the wrong to be charging £2 more for larger bras and equally it was understandably that they were going to try and defend it on 'engineering costs', but the second that the whirl of social media began to spin, rapidly followed by the traditional media, it was only going to end one way: saying 'Sorry'.
In the event it was a master stroke to announce 'We boobed' and to promote the offending bra size in the process - throw in a 25% sale on ALL bras online and the store is set for an influx of sales as the public feel rightly satisfied that such a mighty store had been brought to book by the power of the people. For while it was a mass protest, it is a victory for the each of the protesters.
Admittedly, with a passionate group on facebook calling themselves 'Busts 4 Justice' and the opportunity to print pictures of larger breasts, this was a campaign better tailored to the tabloid press than many bras are for their wearers. It was destined to be a 'Storm in a G-Cup' extravaganza - and the more publicity it got, the more people joined the group on facebook and the more publicity it got.
Saying sorry often pays dividends in this way - but only if done with sincerity, humility and in such a way that the victors get to feel damned pleased with themselves - or at the very least vindicated. This approach to crisis management takes real courage as it can often seem more prudent to pull up the drawbridge and try and sit out the problem.
When I worked for Thames Valley Police, often all that stood between a formal complaints investigation by the Professional Standards Department and an informal resolution (the former of which features on painful statistics and the latter of which is soon forgotten) is that elusive apology. Often it could even be qualified: 'I'm sorry if you felt that I was rude', for example, isn't actually saying you are sorry for being rude! Of course, unqualified is best if you can manage that.
Look how Gordon Brown was harangued to actually say sorry over the Damien McBride sleaze emails. Simply saying he was 'sorry about the behaviour' was not enough. Even the arrogant London Evening Standard, wallowing in declining sales, has launched a campaign of apologising to Londoners for all its misdeeds.
Knowing what to apologise for, when to say sorry and indeed how to say sorry are all big challenges and by definition of crisis management, they come at the worst possible time. This can be mitigated to some extent by planning in advance how a company will behave when things go wrong - and figure that one day they will.
As a police press officer I invested every day in the relationships we had with the media. It meant that when something went wrong, or when a little slack was needed to properly respond, it was forthcoming. When you see the police, or any organisation getting thrashed in the media it is because they neglected to protect their reputation when there wasn't a crisis.