Bud Light, Target, The Dodgers, and Corporate Best Practices

I kept thinking about the basic principles of corporate crisis management and contingency planning that I outlined in yesterday's post for the rest of the day, and I came to some non-obvious conclusions. Let's start with the first principle that was in my link, but which I didn't quote yesterday:

Develop a crisis plan. Brainstorm potential crisis scenarios and use them to inform and regularly update your plan. . . . Simply having a plan is not enough when it comes to crisis management; you have to practice it. Everyone who would play a role should a crisis arise needs to know what the plan is and exactly what their role is.

Actually, any public corporation with a board of directors is required to show such a plan to its auditors, and show the auditors that it tests it. Banks, utilities, and other companies that are separately regulated need to account for this with their regulatory bodies as well. At least when I was writing such plans, they focused mainly on natural disasters, civil unrest, and terrorist attacks, but the principle was there, and in some companies that I consulted for, they also raised more basic questions of threats to the company's reputation.

But this raises an intriguing question: shouldn't someone on the staff at Bud Light, Target, or the Dodgers have been saying something like, "What about this scenario: the company picks a brand partner who immediately gets involved in an embarrassing scandal, and all of a sudden, there are videos and memes that go viral and make our brand look silly. What should we be doing? Should we be rehearsing this?"

This actually isn't all that different from the marketing experts who've been saying all along, especially about Bud Light, that in an effort to be inclusive, they excluded their customer base. In one way or another, Target and the Dodgers violated this marketing best practice as well. So, why didn't someone on the marketing teams at any of those companies raise a question about this: Why are we endorsing radical queers, when our customer base is middle America?

The answer is simple enough. Even if people in marketing at any of those places were familiar enough with best practices in the field, or for that matter in crisis management or contingency planning, they were smart enough to know they'd be sent to HR for counseling if they questioned anything related to inclusive. They weren't going to die on that hill, especially when nobody was going to listen no matter what they said. The only practical strategy would be to keep their heads down and let it all be resolved at levels well above their pay grade when the whole thing played out.

This actually goes to the little joke that a good corporate contingency planner keeps an updated resume off site at all times, as I certainly did. But even in a worst-case scenario where the company goes belly-up due to management miscalculation over a crisis, the one thing you can't do when you interview with a prospective new employer is claim credit for trying to tell them theyl were making a mistake -- that would simply identify you as a troublemaker.

Let'd go to another crisis management best practice that was also in yesterday's link, but that I didn't quote:

As any situation begins to get heated, remember to stay cool and think twice before acting.

I can only surmise what went on in the Dodgers' front office when, first, they discovered that they'd offended their customer base by announcing they'd give the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence a hero award during Pride Night, only then to find they'd offended a bunch of radical queers and others who aren't in their customer base by withdrawing the invitation. The result has been a panic of apologies, counterapologies, disinvites, and undisinvites. It's left the Dodgers with no credible strategy to end the controversy.

The basic question someone there should have posed, much earlier, should have beenm "Pride Night? What problem are we trying to solve?" On one hand, that would have avoided what could well now become an existential crisis for the Dodgers brand. On the other hand, the guy who posed that question would probably have been sent to HR for counseling on the spot.

There are probably a few people at the Dodgers who had the sense to keep their mouths shut and wait for the problem to be resolved at a level much higher than their own pay grade. But whether any other corporations learn anything from Bud Light, Target, and the Dodgers strikes me as doubtful indeed.