Fishburn Hedges

11.02.2010

One week.  Two crises.  Different approaches. Here, John Williams, one of Fishburn Hedges' founders, gives a perspective.

There’s a case still in reputation management that sometimes, perhaps only rarely, less is more.  The lesson from the one training course I ever attended that involved the legendary Harvard Business School marketing case studies was that sometimes the most profitable strategy, when faced with market disruption and new competitors, is to do nothing and simply compete as before.  Same budgets, same products. 

The received communications wisdom in a crisis is that you have to act fast.  Get your retaliation, or apology, in early.  It’s a hungry 24/7 news cycle.  You need to seize the initiative.  And that certainly is the lesson from Akio Toyoda, the chief executive of Toyota who went missing for several days, and still hasn’t bowed deeply enough. 

But for me it was less an issue of speed than culture; I have worked with the local managers of more than one US company struggling to cope with demanding commentators, critics and consumers in Europe while head office in the US simply does not understand the fuss - “Who are these Guardian guys anyway?”  I recognise the same culture gap here in Toyota City.  But there’s no excuse any more. 

These global lessons have been out there a long time.  Toyota should wake up and smell the coffee.

As a Prius-driving Chelsea season ticket holder, it’s been a worrying few days. 

Manager of the month

But the reputation manager of the month has to be Fabio Capello.  Because for days he said and did nothing.  Indeed, there was little to say:  either, “you’re hired”, or “you’re fired”.  There’s an old Civil Service saying: don’t make a decision until you have to.  So Fabio took his time. 

It allowed him to read the mood.  See if the storm abated.  There were indeed strong arguments for either decision. 

It seemed as if everyone was calling for John Terry’s head but the comment was in fact far more mixed and two polls had 46% of the public saying he should resign, versus 40% saying he should stay (women were more forgiving).

It helped that Capello was in Switzerland recovering from knee surgery so he could legitimately keep out of the way (shades of John Major who disappeared to have his wisdom teeth fixed at the height of the battle to succeed Margaret Thatcher).

Then he delivered his decision, with a short, sharp and unequivocal meeting with Terry.  How confidently Capello did that did much to kill any debate about whether it was the right decision.  As Tony Blair said recently to Chilcot, it was a decision.   
 
Coming from the country that started the Slow Food movement, maybe Capello has started the Slow PR movement.