To apologize, or to set record straight?

By Angelo Fernando on October 23rd, 2009 In Best Practices

There are times when an apology is necessary, and there are times to  respond to criticism. There is possibly another large gray area that involves shutting up, or not unleashing your spin machine when you clearly know you’ve screwed up.

So I thought these two examples were enlightening. One a government institution, and the other a big brand.

Exhibit One: “TSA Agents took my son.”

A woman going through an airport complained that she had been ’separated’ from her child at a security checkpoint. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) must face hundreds of complaints like this, from people losing their whatevers, to the indignity of being patted down.

So I thought this use of video in their blog  to quickly respond to the lady’s complaint, was a perfect way to diffuse the situation. In fact they posted nine videos to support their response -and these were also posted to YouTube.

Exhibit 2: “Yahoo hired lap dancers!”

Nothing is more toxic to a brand than a story that involves sex being used to motivate or influence others. That’s what happened to Yahoo this week. I don’t think the story got much play here (read about it here).

Without attempting to dance around the facts, Chris Yeh, the head of the group addressed it head on in their developer blog, saying: “I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend.”

If you Google Yahoo (or Yahoo them for that matter) you’ll see that most of it is about the apology, not the dumb move. (And in case your mind is going in this direction no,they didn’t post videos in this case!)

To apologize, or to set record straight?

Comments

There are no comments for this article.

Add your Comment


Want Your Picture Icon? Go to gravatar.com and set a picture up to your email address for free. It also works on thousands of other websites, too!