As the Volkswagen emissions scandal continues to unfold I have, over the past couple of weeks, been asking a number of industry public and media relations people, along with some senior car company executives – off the record – how they would handle such a crisis, and indeed, how did they rate VW’s handling of the affair.
The questions have been met with looks of horror at the prospect of having to deal with such a crisis with the general consensus being that the situation had not been handled at all well in PR terms. Maybe a large part of this is due to the fact that the press and PR function has been somewhat neutered within car companies over the past 20 years.
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In a digital age where the internet can spread the word like wildfire, this is extremely dangerous. News now, perhaps more than ever, needs to be managed – especially bad news. When I first came into the industry, the top PR was often regarded as the ‘face’ of the company. The go-to person for information, on or off the record.
With the spectre of a scandal looming, the PR chief would likely telephone key media players and invite them out for a five Martini lunch where the situation would be explained (off the record, of course) and the story would unfold in a measured and informed way – not bursting out into the world on a wave of mass hysteria.
Unfortunately now, PRs are more likely to be seen a gatekeepers, doing all they can to hold information back while carefully treading in the footsteps of whichever exec they are guarding. Trying to actually speak to a PR in some companies is almost impossible. Telephones are unanswered, voice mail and email ignored.
The upshot is that when a story breaks there is no control: Why would a journalist bother to try and contact a PR department which had ignored all previous calls?
The VW drama is a case in point. Let’s unpick it: The German car company has basically cheated the system by having a clever piece of software that could detect when the vehicle is being tested and then make the necessary adjustments to enable the engine to pass emissions tests.
Well, cheating in exams is nothing new. Indeed working out the best way to pass a test is a perfectly legitimate pastime: You do exactly what is necessary to pass a school exam, a driving test or even a job interview – then you forget most of it and get on with life in the real world. Testing procedures for emissions, CO2 and fuel economy are so far out of kilter with the real world they are off the scale.
Anyway, the boss of VW of America is on record as saying the company knew it had been rumbled in May 2014 when a university in Virginia discovered something was wrong. So what has been going on in those past 16 months? This is a classic example of a story that needed to be managed. A PR with clout would have said back in May 2014 “Is this real, have we really been cheating?.” What they should have advised is that the company ‘fesses up – kind of. “Oh, we have discovered a malfunction in the software which may have screwed up the emissions test, but we’re on it. We’ll get the cars back and work on the issue.”
Now, I can see the management board saying at the time that it was concerned about losing face and not to mention the cost of a recall. The cost?? It would have been nowhere close to the $11bn VW is now into and that’s without the numerous class actions being brought by lawyers worldwide.
Back in May last year, the genie was out of the bottle and I guess I am sort of impressed VW managed to keep a lid on it for so long. But it was always going to get out and that’s when you need good PR – someone to manage the news not suppress it.
After all, VW is now taking out huge media advertisements saying how concerned the company is about losing the trust of its customers. Had it trusted its customers with the news earlier it may not be in the predicament it is in now.
