As we look ahead to 2020, it pays to look back at some of the PR disasters of 2019, to glean lessons from the mistakes others made. Some massive, worldwide brands and household names found themselves in need of crisis PR help.
Nike Scrambles to Save Face
For decades now, a large focus of Nike’s consumer PR approach has been influencer marketing. From Michael Jordan to LeBron James to Tiger Woods, Nike always goes after the biggest names, often gaining their endorsement of swoosh-embossed products. Sometimes, though, this kind of consumer PR can come back and bite you.
Nike courted controversy in both 2018 and 2019 by choosing embattled former quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a face of the company. Social media users fought each other, but for the most part, this controversy was all smoke and little fire. What did end up costing Nike, though, was the allegation that the company “reduced endorsement compensation” for some influencer athletes during their maternity leave.
When this news hit, fans were outraged and many immediately voted with their wallets. Nike scrambled, clearly under-prepared to deal with the blowback, promising to make changes while watching its market cap plummet more than a billion dollars.
Apple Faces Public Security Problems
There was a time when nearly everything Apple did came up roses. The company just couldn’t seem to lose. Lately, though, their track record has been more hit and miss. In 2019, the company kicked off the year with another major PR disaster.
Nearly a year to the day after the 2018 “throttling” controversy, media reports revealed that a “bug” in the Facetime app allowed callers to “secretly eavesdrop” on people they wanted to call. In response, Apple delayed. This allowed the story to churn, stretching across news cycles and enraging customers, who were outspoken in their criticism of a company that didn’t appear to understand how upset its customer base was.
Fraudulent College Moms
In perhaps one of the weirdest headline-grabbing PR scandals of 2019, dozens of people were implicated in a college-admissions fraud scandal. The story seemed pulled right out of a daytime soap opera: popular actresses manipulating the system, entitled teens getting by on their parents’ name and money, culpable school officials, and a bunch of people who didn’t seem one bit remorseful.
The general public responded with derision, and once-popular and well-regarded performers were lampooned as they waited to learn if they would face jail time. In response, some of the biggest names in the scandal, Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, clammed up, saying little to nothing as the negative news stories and brutal social media lambasting continued.
Boeing is Grounded
Boeing had a terrible 2019, not necessarily on financial sheets, but in the headlines. Following two deadly crashes that stayed in the news cycles for months, Boeing saw one of its best-selling commercial airliners grounded indefinitely. While the company is reportedly working round the clock to fix the problems that led to the crashes, that message is not nearly enough for regulators, who have been either denying or delaying Boeing’s requests to get their jets back in the air.
The more time this story remains high up in the headlines, the more consumers are going to get a negative impression of the company and the plane in question, the 737 Max. It’s not helping that the media, in support of the main narrative, is putting out continuous secondary stories relating the history of quality complaints targeted at Boeing in general and the factory where the 737 Max was manufactured in particular. To date, Boeing has tried many different ways to push back against the PR crisis, most recently ousting the CEO. None of their efforts have made much of a dent in the growing negative public impression.
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