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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Los Angeles Times attacking her for using outdated words to describe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