A former colleague was talking to me the other night about a situation he had that day, namely a big mistake his team was trying to rectify before he had to tell the client. It is too complicated and delicate to elaborate on here but it was reinforced by the story about the American author, Jonathan Franzen, finding out that the English version had printed from an earlier draft and not from the final approved version.
Franzen found this out last week as he was being interviewed and after he had been asked to read a passage from the book. This quite serious author, a contender for the mantle of successor to Updike etc, was not happy – understandably so as he had spent the last 8 years getting it just right. This version of the novel has now been pulped and a partial recall has been made. The Saturday press was full of publishers saying that they were glad that it had not happened on their watch and how sorry for the person who had pushed the button on the wrong version.
In reality I wonder whether in this exceptional case – as within days English readers already have the right version on the shelves – whether this added publicity will not but work in Franzen’s favour. However it reminds us all, in our world of quality checks, version control, and potential nightmare scenarios, that we live in a very fragile world.
We are being told by our crisis management experts in PR that we should expect the worst, plan for the eventuality and be as transparent as possible when it happens. If I were a client and my agency had messed up in some way, I would expect honesty, contrition and fast thinking which could lead to a potential resolution. I would want my agency to stand up and do whatever it took to sort it out. I would not want to find out initially from my colleagues or suppliers. I would not want information withheld – I would need it all in order to manage communications to my colleagues.
So honesty and speed are key. There are times when things are withheld because issues are resolved without having to involve the client; to some extent, that’s why the client pays us to manage a project or campaign – we can take a lot of the pain away in this respect. Yet you have to be sure that it will be not detrimental to the relationship if the client finds out.
Speed is an obvious factor but things become slower when it is not clear whether the fault lies and there are large financial implications in the potential resolution. This is where you will have to involve the client and your MD.
Unfortunately I don’t think my friend’s situation will turn out as successful as Jonathan Franzen’s. All disasters will be different according to the specific circumstances so it is difficult to comment further. Nevertheless what is clear to me from the advice from crisis management experts is that any managers of agency businesses should be scenario planning already – particularly in the areas of data security, client campaign implementation and actions from ex-employees.
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