The Death of Shame: One Last Lesson from Ryan Lochte

By Felicia Knight

Shame is an old fashioned word, whose power nowadays is greater in private than in public. It’s far easier to shame a four-year-old for lying than it is an adult celebrity. And believe it or not, that makes the work of public relations professionals more difficult.

What to do with the unrepentant? Those who offer non-apology apologies? Those who don’t lie, but who “over-exaggerated”? Those public titans who say one thing and do another?

If one is guilty and caught red-handed, the best advice is always:

• Take responsibility

• Tell the whole truth all at once

• Take your punishment

• Work hard to regain trust

When the party in question refuses that route—which, we admit is the most difficult—what then? Do we stick to our guns and quit or stick around and do the wordsmithing? As we discussed last week, words matter, so do we try to be the person offering the best possible words or do we walk away? (Based on Lochte’s words, we’re hoping those are not the work of a PR professional.)

Lochte has lost all his endorsements, something that likely would have happened even if he’d immediately come clean about getting drunk and vandalizing the gas station restroom. That’s not exactly the elite Olympian ethic the sponsors are looking for.

In a matter of hours he went from Gold Medalist to solid gold punchline. But the bacchanal in Brazil wasn’t Lochte’s debut in late-night TV monologues. No, that came three years ago with his stunningly misguided foray into reality television called What Would Ryan Lochte Do?

At the time, we believed that the derisive, dismissive reviews would damage his reputation and possibly cost him endorsements. We also thought he might learn a lesson in reputation management, crisis management, and public relations.

Well, none of that happened. Yes, he was a laughing stock, but he didn’t seem to notice. If he did, he learned nothing from it. And so, here we are, another bone-headed move, and this time it cost him more than a million dollars, at least.

More recent reports that suggest culpability on the part of the “security guards” do little to mitigate the overall behavior unbecoming an Olympic athlete.

Lochte has publicly copped to “immaturity,” but not to lying. He takes “full responsibility” for over-exaggerating—in other words, no responsibility at all. As Stephen Colbert so eloquently put it: #fratboytragic.

Teammate Michael Phelps has faced the twin demons of depression and substance use and exhibited his own disappointing behavior. But Phelps disappointment in himself sent him to rehab and made him publicly embrace identifying “areas of need for long-term personal growth and development.” Also a cop to immaturity, but with recognition that it’s time to grow up.

The lesson here from a public relations perspective is that shame can be a powerful motivator for those who recognize it as the first step in true reputation redemption, not the last thing on the bucket list.

For Lack of Sense, Automotive Companies Pay Billions

By Felicia Knight

This week was a bad one for overseas automotive companies. The CEO of Takata announced his resignation, and Volkswagen agreed to shell out as much as $14.7 billion.

Shigehisa Takada was caught up in his company’s defective-airbag crisis that engulfed more than a dozen automakers and resulted in the recall of 60 million vehicles in the U.S. and millions around the globe. Fourteen deaths and more than 100 injuries have been linked to those faulty airbags.

Scarier still is that last month the Senate Commerce Committee reported that Fiat Chrysler, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and Volkswagen were still selling new vehicles equipped with defective Takata airbags – airbags that will eventually need to be recalled.

Takata and its car-company customers are arguing over who will pay the costs of the recalls and the lawsuits. As one of only three major airbag manufacturers, Takata controls about a quarter of the market. If it is forced to repay the entire expense, not only will the company be bankrupt, carmakers will lose a key supplier.

Takata’s lack of crisis management is a textbook example of what not to do. According to industry observers:

• Shigehisa Takada never personally addressed the crisis head-on during its almost two-year span

• He instead instructed his underlings to deal with regulators and journalists

• The company issued no public statements for almost a year

Then there’s Volkswagen.

It agreed this week to pay up to $14.7 billion to settle diesel-emissions claims in the U.S. That tab will chew up most of the $18 billion that it had set aside to resolve the scandal over 11 million so-called “clean diesel” vehicles that had been engineered to purposely cheat on air-quality tests.

But that’s not the end of Volkswagen’s woes. The U.S. and other countries – notably Germany– are weighing criminal probes and additional fines. As U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates said, “The settlements do not address any potential criminal liability, though I can assure you our criminal investigation is active and ongoing.”

So… what about Volkswagen’s crisis management?

John Voelcker, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, noted that “there’s a known crisis management playbook; VW has ignored it.

• “Volkswagen’s PR and communications tactics during the crisis may go down as a case study in crisis communications that equals the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in wrong-footedness.

• “Denials by executives that the company did anything wrong or illegal – after its own engineers had admitted to the EPA that VW deliberately lied and deceived regulators and the public for eight years – haven’t helped.

• “Nor has the paucity of customer and public outreach, which contrasts with that demonstrated by Johnson & Johnson during the 1982 Tylenol poisoning scare, considered a model of crisis response and communications.”

Takata, Volkswagen, Exxon Valdez, and Tylenol: Three wrong ways and one right way to deal with a crisis.

We’ve said it before, but since we know that Takata and Volkswagen never took our advice, here it is again. When dealing with a crisis:

1. Utilize an internal or an external crisis management team

2. Communicate often with the public and your customers

3. Always be honest and transparent about the problem

One more tip: Drive your Takata-airbag-equipped Volkswagen Jetta diesel safely, and fill up often.