The Marketing Agency Talk

Kids love Thomas the Tank Engine. I found out from Marcie’s post that RC2 Corp have voluntarily recalled one of the latest Thomas’ ranges. The immediate thought was it could well be a public relations disaster if mishandled.

It seems that this latest range has enough lead content to cause lead poisoning. This is really scary as we won’t want our children, our nieces and nephews, our friends’ kids and in fact, any children around the world to be hurt. The fact that the company shouldered the responsibility by recalling all the toys demonstrates that it cares. In a situation like this, it is much better for the company to make a public announcement about how they are correcting the error. Keeping mum will be the worst approach as all the mums in the world will likely boycott the products for a substantial period of time. Suffice to say, revenue loss, confidence erosion and head rolling will follow suit. By admitting a mistake, making an apology and taking the appropriate actions to make amends will not only pacific the angry mums and dads, uncles and aunts and granddads and grandmas, the company will stand to gain from increased confidence and trust in the long run. Appropriate and effective crisis management will mitigate a disastrous situation and one will emerge stronger out of it.

Think about it this way, we were taught by parents and teachers to say “sorry” whenever we did something wrong. They would say very sternly, “Don’t do it again” and then gave us a hug. All is forgiven and eventually forgotten. This is how it would happen between a company and it’s consumers too. The company did something wrong and apologized for it; the customers might be angry but were willing to give it a second chance.

Say “sorry” and all is well again. It’s sad that some companies chose to keep mum and behave like an ostrich when a crisis occurs.

[tags]thomas the tank engine, crisis management