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Bridgestone's
Firestorm, Dr. Laura, Unilever's Rocky Road, FOX TV Top List Of 10 Worst 2000
PR Gaffes
Sixth Annual PR Blunders List Unveiled
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Recalled tires, "a badly informed
physiologist," messin' with Ben and Jerry, and a TV marriage gone awry topped
this year's list of PR blunders, compiled by Fineman Associates Public
Relations (FAPR). The list is a collection of some of the year's worst public
relations gaffes. And the "winners" are:
1) Bridgestone's firestorm. When Bridgestone Corp. ordered a voluntary
recall of 6.5 million potentially defective tires on August 9, the wheels were
set in motion for a product safety PR crash of global proportions. For a
month, the Japanese-owned company's CEO did not make public appearances to
apologize. Instead, the company, according to the Washington Post and
newspapers throughout the country, tried to deflect blame to drivers for their
driving habits and to its customer, Ford, for its under-inflation tire
maintenance recommendations. The tire defects purportedly caused well over
100 deaths and resulted in at least 200 personal injury lawsuits, according to
the Wall Street Journal. "Bridgestone, Firestone's parent has behaved much
like Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and other Japanese corporations by publicly
denying product problems and customer complaints while trying quietly to solve
the trouble," editorialized Business Week.
2) Dr. Laura's gay bashing. Dr. Laura Schlessinger's gay bashing comments
on her radio talk show stirred controversy, but her lukewarm "clinical
context" apology only stoked it. Protestors took ads in the New York Times and
Los Angeles Times attacking her for using outdated words to describe
homosexuality as "deviant" and "a biological error."
A Brandweek magazine columnist called her a "bully" and "an undertrained,
badly informed physiologist with pretensions of being a counselor." Groups
such as San Francisco's Horizons Foundation pressured advertisers to pull
their support and many did. When Dr. Laura's syndicated television show
debuted, the controversy was reignited with hate mail and advertiser boycotts.
Gun-shy by all the negative publicity, Schlessinger seemed to then avoid
controversy, leading to TV ratings so abysmal, the show temporarily shut down.
3) FOX TV left at the altar. Eager to recoup ratings lost to ABC's
"Millionaire" success, FOX aired "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire."
Unfortunately FOX failed to do a thorough background check on its debut show's
star, Rick Rockwell, who selected blond Darva Conger from 49 other wife
wannabes. The show drew smash ratings, but even before the marriage was not
consummated Fox was divorcing the show as its credibility began plummeting.
The blond was reneging. Rockwell was exposed by an online news service for
allegedly threatening and hitting a girlfriend. The San Francisco Chronicle
quoted him as saying, "Don't screw up on a slow news day." Not a pretty
picture, as FOX pulled the plug on future episodes.
4) Unilever's Rocky Road with Ben and Jerry. Unilever bought ice cream
icon Ben & Jerry's for $326 million but infuriated the most important
ingredients, founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. After Unilever installed
its own president, Yves Couette, without so much as a "by your leave" to
Ben and Jerry, the founders who are known as much for their social causes as
their ice cream, said they might quit their ceremonial posts because the
values upon which the company was founded were essentially no longer a part of
the branded mix. "Ben & Jerry's will become just another brand like any other
soulless, heartless, spiritless brand out there -- that's my concern," Cohen
told the AP.
5) "The Donald" gets trumped. Donald Trump's motives are usually clear as
day, but his clandestine support of a PR and advertising campaign against the
St. Regis Mohawk Indians drew the ire of New York State regulators, according
to articles in the NY Post and wire service stories. In an effort to protect
his gaming interests, Trump allegedly financed a seemingly grass roots group,
The New York Institute for Law and Society, in its radio and TV ads against a
Mohawk casino in the Catskills. The campaign accused the Mohawks "of habitual
violence and illegality," according to a Knight Ridder story. New York State
fined Trump $50,000 and the Institute $100,000 for violating lobbying
regulations.
6) Got beer? PETA's milk mistake. Milk is up there with motherhood and
apple pie, but the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals thought college
students should be imbibing beer instead. PETA's reasoning was that milk
promotes cruelty to cows and its campaign targeted college kids on the
Internet and in brochures. It also included a free keychain that doubled as a
bottle opener. Not surprisingly, the campaign was deemed "irresponsible."
"Alcohol is the No. 1 drug problem for our youth," Millie Webb, president of
Mothers Against Drunk Driving told USA Today. PETA's phones and Web site were
besieged by complaints, and the campaign along with the group's image fell
flat.
7) NRA shoots itself in the foot. Time Magazine suggested the NRA find a
safety lock for Wayne LaPierre's mouth. The outspoken National Rifle
Association's executive vice president blasted President Clinton charging in
Time that he is "willing to accept a certain level of killing to further his
political agenda," and, in a separate interview, accusing the president of
having "blood on his hands." The upshot spilled over to the presidential
campaign where Republican George W. Bush defended Clinton, saying, "There are
ways to debate the issue without casting aspersions on the President like
that. I just think they've gone too far."
8) DoubleClick's invasion of privacy. New York-based DoubleClick became
the media's Internet bad boy by appearing to compromise websurfer anonymity.
By planning to tie real names and addresses from its 90 million user profiles
to its own direct marketing firm, DoubleClick created negative press that its
crisis management campaign couldn't dampen. "DoubleClick is at the center of a
growing storm over Internet privacy that has attracted the interest of the
FTC, class-action lawyers and outraged consumers," the Wall Street Journal
wrote. DoubleClick's CEO Kevin O'Connor tried to put out the fire with a plan
that put the onus on users to opt out of having their personal data used for
online marketing. More unfavorable coverage resulted with the San Jose Mercury
News calling DoubleClick a "hypocrite."
9) Wisconsin throws cold spring water on Perrier. Perrier wanted
Wisconsin's pure spring water, but its citizens didn't think new jobs and
increased tax revenues from its bottling plants were worth the accompanying
"noise, traffic, construction, uncertainty or divisiveness." "Protesters with
'Boycott Perrier' and 'Keep Your Greedy Hands off our Water'" appeared atop a
full-page story in Time. The protests didn't stop Connecticut-based Perrier
from obtaining a permit for a well in the town of New Haven, but by November,
local farmers complained in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Perrier's
tests had dropped the water levels in their artesian wells. "We'll fight till
we drop," said one resident. Time summarized Perrier's plight: "Never
underestimate the will or resourcefulness of people who are snowed in half the
year."
10) Law firm "kinda" lays a grenade. Lawyers are by nature cautious, by
profession measured, so what was business litigation firm Quinn Emanuel
thinking when it allowed a "Business is war" technology-targeted marketing
campaign which sent faux hand grenade paperweights through the mail? "Our
marketing consultant told us this is Silicon Valley, they're youthful, kind of
aggressive, edgy, this is an effective promotion to do," a senior partner told
the San Francisco Chronicle. When the Santa Clara County bomb squad was called
in at two locations it turned out to be a dud of an idea. Luckily for
Quinn Emanuel the U.S. Postal Service didn't prosecute because there wasn't a
malicious intent. "I guess their ad guy is going to be selling refrigerators
in Guam," a bomb squad member quipped in Adweek.
The annual PR Blunders List is assembled by FAPR as a reminder of how
critical public relations is to businesses and organizations. Selections are
limited to Americans, American companies, or offenses that occurred in
America. Selections are limited to avoidable acts or omissions that cause
adverse publicity; image damage was done to self, company, society, others;
and was widely reported in 2000.
San Francisco-based Fineman Associates Public Relations, founded in 1988,
is an award-winning, full-service public relations agency specializing in
"Brand PR" and crisis management services. The agency has been named one of
the "top hot creative" public relations agencies in the nation over the last
six years by Inside PR magazine.
SOURCE Fineman Associates Public Relations