271: 2023's Biggest Public Relations Fiascos: A Year in Review

Prepare to step back in time to revisit the top PR fiascos of 2023. Diving into the recent and semi-recent mishaps of the year and their enduring impacts. Joining Molly this week to breakdown the top crises of the year are two seasoned media and PR pros - John Perenack and Warren Weeks. This episode covers everything from significant advertising blunders to historical corporate crises. It's a mix of the obvious stories you'd expect on this list as well as some surprises. We're discussing what went down, who got hit the hardest, and what it all means for their reputation and bottom line. This episode really digs into the nitty-gritty of PR and crisis management.

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Transcript

Molly McPherson [00:00:00]:

Right, so here's my thought. It's that we each do three, but then in the end, we have a little bit of a scrum here and we decide, really, what is number one? Is it from our list or something that we and how are you going.

John Perenack [00:00:22]:

To run them all? Are you going to turn it just, like, give a quick description and then.

Molly McPherson [00:00:29]:

Yeah, I'm going to do an intro before I come to you guys that'll record separately. And it's just going to be like, all right, John, Warren, here we are. We're coming up with our list. There's been a million other lists, so I thought we could do a round round.

John Perenack [00:00:44]:

I like.

Molly McPherson [00:00:51]:

Oh, you know what? My other I i did this whole thing before, and now I lost my notes on it. So warren john. Molly so that's how we'll do. We'll we'll start at 01:00 and go around and we'll keep we'll I'll have editing and everything, so I'll be good. All right, take a sip. We're ready to go. But thank you for your patience in this, too, like, scheduling with me. It's been crazy.

Molly McPherson [00:01:21]:

I'm really excited to have you guys here. Okay. All right. Three. John and Warren, I think two of my favorite crisis guides, at least my favorite crisis duo. Welcome to an end of the year wrap up. I couldn't think of two better people to talk about the top crises.

John Perenack [00:01:44]:

Thanks for having us.

Molly McPherson [00:01:46]:

Fantastic. I'm doing great. Okay, so Warren, can you just give a brief blurb? Before we started recording, you told me how busy you were doing the training. Give us the quick and easy all.

Warren Weeks [00:01:59]:

Media training all the time. A little bit of crisis stuff, but it's basically, thank God, back in person. So a lot of traveling, but the in person sessions are so much better than Zoom, but helping people to do better interviews one boardroom at a time.

Molly McPherson [00:02:14]:

Oh, I love that. That sounds like a little bit of a slogan there.

John Perenack [00:02:18]:

Warren.

Molly McPherson [00:02:21]:

On the fly. Did you just make that up? Oh, you're the best. Hey, Warren, I have a real quick question for you that relates to this. So when you're doing these media training sessions, are they hiring you because there is an emerging crisis or they just want to be trained?

Warren Weeks [00:02:37]:

I'd say the vast trying to get ready for the future. Not a lot of sometimes it's a crisis or they've had one in the past, but it's usually they're trying to prep, which is the best.

Molly McPherson [00:02:48]:

Okay, wonderful. Okay. John Perineck. Welcome back. Wait a minute. You guys have both been on this podcast before. Haven't my welcome to America. Welcome to the podcast, John.

Molly McPherson [00:03:05]:

Okay, so I've been a guest on Warren and John's Reputation Town podcast. I'm sure everyone's heard it.

John Perenack [00:03:12]:

Oh, thank a I'm with a crisis firm called Strategy Corp in Toronto, and we help clients across Canada and the US. Around the world sometimes manage crises fantastic.

Molly McPherson [00:03:26]:

And why I love speaking with the two of you. You're both critical thinkers on this. You both have the experience, but you're coming from different love because you two think alike. I mean, you're almost like two as one. But John, you're working at a firm. Warren, you're out there on the street working with everyone. So this idea so many people have the top ten Craigsliters firms, everybody does it. But I want our list to be the best list because we're not just going to look at the same top ten that everyone else is talking about.

Molly McPherson [00:04:05]:

We want to delve into, yes, the crisis that happened, but we're going to each probably bring up a big brand, but we want to look into the why it happened or what made it an outlier. I'm looking for those damaged financial loss. It could be reputational loss. It could be something with employees morale. Someone could have lost a job. Whatever it is, you all had the assignment, and we're all coming together, and we're going to do a round robin to bring up our top ten. We each pick three, and then in the end, we're going to determine what we think is the biggest crisis of the year based on what we think the biggest damage marker hit was. Okay, so we're going to start with Warren and what happened.

Warren Weeks [00:04:58]:

So I'm going to start by attacking the House of the Mouse. I'm going after Disney, and this kind of hurts me because I love the Disney stories and watched them as a kid and read the stories to my daughters, but from a business perspective, and a lot of people are like, oh, my God, what's the crisis? This isn't a moment in time, but to me, it's a bit of a process. And over the last several years, the Disney Company has been in a bit of a downward spiral, and a lot of people are attributing it to the whole get woke, go broke kind of thing. And so their last eight movies have underperformed. And you can say that's for a whole bunch of different reasons. They've had a lot of executives coming in, a lot of the storytellers are gone. And we'll talk about some of the different characters and the different elements. Like, they had the Buzz Lightyear movie, they had let's make one of the toys gay.

Warren Weeks [00:05:54]:

Right? And they have Snow White and the seven dwarves. We're not going to have any Dwarves anymore. So there's a lot of that stuff going on now. Just looking at the metrics, 7000 employees in the last year, and I know a lot of companies are laying people off, but the biggest one to me is if you look at well, there's two. If you look at their market cap, which in 2021 was $357,000,000,000, today it is about half of that. $168,000,000,000 is the market cap. So from a financial perspective, they've taken a bit of a beating and then from a reputational perspective, there's a 2023 Axios Harris Poll reputational rankings. You might be familiar with this list.

Warren Weeks [00:06:35]:

Every year they come out with the top hundred companies in terms of reputation in the United States. In 2019, Disney was number five of 100. That's about as high as you can get. Their score was 80, which is just excellent. Does anybody want to guess what number they are on that list this year? They were number five a couple of years ago.

John Perenack [00:06:55]:

I'm going to say like 20th.

Molly McPherson [00:06:59]:

I'm going to say more than as price is right. I'm just 50.

Warren Weeks [00:07:04]:

77. Number 77. So I think a lot of this is and this is something we saw with the Bud Light that may or may not come up later in the show. But to me, it's not about diversity. It's not about equity. It's about pandering. Does it feel genuine? Does it feel like it belongs there? Or is this just something that you're slapping on the brand to try to cash in on a trend or to try to tick a box? And I think the ultimate story here is Americans or any public doors, because John and I are Canadian. They're not stupid.

Warren Weeks [00:07:40]:

And I think this has been something transparent. And what you've seen is a very slow burn in Disney. And it's going to take, I would just say, to create these movies and these shows and these productions and multimillion dollars, in some cases, it takes two, three, four years. And so Disney is in the toilet. And they will be, I think, for the next couple of years. That's my number one pick.

Molly McPherson [00:08:01]:

So, Warren, quick question on that one. You talked about the pandering, but what is one person's pandering, but another person having representation? Like, what could they have done to do it better?

Warren Weeks [00:08:18]:

Is there anything you're asking a middle aged white guy? So this is probably a little bit sensitive.

Molly McPherson [00:08:23]:

But you like Disney, though. But you like Disney.

Warren Weeks [00:08:26]:

Disney files and ten different people could have ten different answers. But if you look at all these metrics, financial, reputation, staff wise sentiment, it just seems that across the board, on the whole, this is not really working with people. And to me, it's something you watch in the movie and it's a gut feeling. Is this done in a spirit of storytelling? Is this done in a genuine, authentic way? Are they trying to do the right thing or are they just trying to slap a sticker on something and trying to cash in? And I think that a lot of people based again, based on these metrics, I think a lot of people think.

Molly McPherson [00:09:01]:

That, yeah, I like that sacrifice storytelling for trying to do the right thing. And if you've lost the story, you've lost everything at this point, okay, we'll.

Warren Weeks [00:09:13]:

Make one of them trans. But why?

Molly McPherson [00:09:20]:

But why exactly? It's not about just doing it, but why are you doing it? Yeah, that's a really good point, John.

John Perenack [00:09:27]:

I think it's well said. This is actually also pressure because Disney had a lot of pressure coming from Employees to Take political positions or other sort of socially notable positions that Were Very topical in the News. And, I'm sure, amongst employees. And I Think This May have been to the company's sort of March in that direction where they Were leading The Company down that road, following what employees Were asking Them To do. And I Think that's also taking the rock of the ball. I think you can certainly Be Sensitive To those things without Letting it Drive The business in Ways that may not be the best for at the end of the day.

Molly McPherson [00:10:09]:

Yeah, okay. All right, John, what's your first?

John Perenack [00:10:13]:

All right, so interestingly, I'm Not A consumer of this, but there's a brand of clothes from A company in China called Xian. And Xian Uses social media quite A lot to sell their clothes. This is actually a huge company. I was doing some research on it ahead of us, having this conversation. And company went from a $5 billion company in $2019 to $66 billion in May. Super fast growth. A lot of that, as I Said, has been through social Media. However, the company has also sort of saddled this.

John Perenack [00:10:50]:

US. Congress has done a report that highlighted this and other human rights organizations have noted that the company is taking advantage of forced labor and in particular groups of ethnic minorities in China that are know in the case of the Uighurs being persecuted and, as I guess, a mechanism to try and combat this, they invited a Number Of Western influencers to China to visit One Of The Manufacturing facilities. And Those Influencers sort of, as you can Imagine, delivered What Xin Was Hoping For, which was a lot of having a good time in factories and whatnot. Of course, when all this content hit social media in the west, it was Huge Backlash. Comments know they showed you what you wanted to see. I love this one. Somebody wrote, I tip my hat to the marketing Villain that came up with this idea. One of the things like says it feels like they use you for damage control, and it's disturbing.

John Perenack [00:12:00]:

And others pointed out that a lot of the abuses this company is alleged to engage in are not at the factories but other points in the distribution chain that Runs. At any rate, obviously not a good day from a reputation standpoint for the company, but it's an example I drew because from a textbook standpoint, you could have a conversation amongst us, amongst our peers, about is this end of the day, it hasn't really impacted them selling clothes and they're on track to do a $90 billion IPO in the US. Probably early in 2024. And So while I would put it in the category of sort of a self manufactured crisis because their own tactic led to the backlash. It didn't actually address the thing they were trying to address. But it also shows that sometimes what we see as a crisis ultimately doesn't turn into the thing that severely impacts.

Molly McPherson [00:13:10]:

The company that brings it down. This one. Because, yes, this is a great example of one of those just flash crises that happen. And it happened, like, in one day. It was all over social media. It was on TikTok. I ended up making a post about it as mean because Sheen fast fashion. People have an issue with fast fashion anyway.

Molly McPherson [00:13:32]:

But yes, utilizing influencers financially. I love that one. So my example for our first round, I had to snag it is definitely Bud Light. The reason why I chose them, other than being the obvious one. But you can't have a list without having Bud Light because I think their spectacular fail in 2023 really set now the bar for crisis communication response, at least for a call today, it's a national client. And that's one of the first things they said. We cannot be a Bud Light. And how they tried to recover from a partnership with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which should have just not necessarily fallen under the radar.

Molly McPherson [00:14:27]:

But I think the whole thing happened not because of the partnership, but because the VP of marketing went on a podcast, unscripted recorded, and she made a flippant, almost snarky remark how she didn't want to just only appeal to the Bro culture and their typical brand. Well, once that got out, that is what started the negative momentum that they still have not recovered from now. I think they've done some smart things. I do think pairing with UFC was brilliant. I really do. UFC is getting behind that. Dana White's getting behind it. And then also now they've just partnered with Peyton Manning, who seems like he's done every ad.

Molly McPherson [00:15:13]:

I mean, he's had a partner deal with everyone and Emmett Smith. So I think eventually of Crisis Community, they might be our new Tylenol, which that's the one silver lining. We don't have to hear about Tylenol anymore.

John Perenack [00:15:25]:

Has there ever been a more expensive mistake in public relations? Because when you think about the lost sales from the brand and the dump truck loads of money they're having to fork out as a mixture of metaphors for getting UFC on board and getting these other spokespeople on board, I have trouble thinking of a bigger self. They're still in a slump.

Molly McPherson [00:15:54]:

They're reporting a 13.5% slump in sales at the end of last quarter, so they haven't come around. Warren, do you have any thoughts on buds?

Warren Weeks [00:16:03]:

Well, the UFC thing I thought was interesting, john and I chatted about that a couple of weeks ago on our podcast. I looked at the stock chart today, and I think that deal was announced, like, October 23 or something around there. And if you look at the stock price, it starts going up dramatically on that day. So I don't know about beer drinkers. The market certainly liked it. In March of this year, their stock price was $66. In October it was 52 and now it is 62. So it's kind of coming back a little bit.

Molly McPherson [00:16:37]:

And I think the USC yeah, you know, there's a lot of money. That was a transactional crisis response move, definitely. Okay. All right. So now next round two, let's start with Joe.

John Perenack [00:16:50]:

I'm going to have a heavy one, and that is I'm going to take the governor of Israel because they had a terrorist attack, which we all seen on the news on October 7. And I don't want to focus on that so much. I want to focus on how they've been very adept, the government has been, in using the news media, the earn media and also social media to really define and define and provide themselves the permission space to act, to sort of respond to this terrorist attack. And so they've used Western spokespeople, very clear and deliberate in sharing information. They've had those spokespeople embedded in units right on the ground to bring the visuals right to the TV sets. And really the audience for that is in Europe and the west, in the United States and Canada and other places so people can see up front what the reason why they're active. They are. And I think this use of traditional and social media is buying them additional time to execute on their strategy to respond to the attack, which would otherwise be much shorter.

John Perenack [00:18:04]:

If you look at the way that in instances in the past where there's been conflict in the Middle East, israel has usually a short period of sympathy people have for them and then clouded. And so I think this is good use of social media. Otherwise crisis management is providing them with more space and time to really respond to an attack that is on par with 911 in the US. So certainly there's a lot of obviously very emotional opinions about this topic around the world. But if you look at it from sort of just a communications lens, I think that the tactics that Israel is.

Molly McPherson [00:18:50]:

Using are very may I ask you, do you have in your work people asking you about responding or not responding? Are there any guidelines that you have about people chiming in on this war?

John Perenack [00:19:04]:

So this is a great question and I think we've even had that discussion as the leadership team ourselves at our own firm. Is this the thing we need to speak about? And the focus has been not so much on the broader issue of what should happen in the Middle East, but more so around the very specific question of the terrorist attack that was launched against Israel on October 7. And I think that's very clear and easy thing to feel like they need to respond to that. That's the place where we recommend focusing and the other place is, frankly, as a student of history, it's actually quite alarming to see the level of anti Semitism that is very on par with 1930s Europe emerging in the west. And that's been another topic where it's really easy to speak out on. Where things get tricky, is when you start thinking that maybe this is a good time for us to comment on what should happen in the Middle East over the long term. That's very lightly anyway.

Molly McPherson [00:20:13]:

Yeah. Warren, how about you add on that one?

Warren Weeks [00:20:16]:

John Carter? Great.

Molly McPherson [00:20:18]:

Yeah, he did. But do you hear anyone, like, when you're doing media training, does any ask you, okay, what do you say? What do you say?

Warren Weeks [00:20:27]:

Again, I think John covered pretty well in most cases. I'm like, Is this your issue to deal with just because something is in the news? Do you need to have an opinion on it? I think everyone in this kind of culture, Twitter, X, TikTok, everyone feels like they have to have a take on something. And I don't necessarily think that's the case. A lot of people will end up sticking their foot in their mouth for no reason when you could just keep your head down, stick to your knitting, so to speak, and avoid anything like that.

Molly McPherson [00:21:01]:

Yeah. I'm noticing in the celebrity realm, that's where I think there's a lot of pressure, and that's where you see a lot of the backlash against. What I'm telling them is look inward first before you have to externally communicate on it. Look at your staff. What do they want you to do? I mean, are they suffering? Do you have people, Jewish or Palestinian people, on your staff? And maybe take it as an internal issue, but, yeah, it's definitely changed response for the social realm and social issues, I think, moving forward, the sensitive. So that's a great one. Okay. And my crisis, I'm going to call it a lingering crisis itch is Oprah Winfrey.

Molly McPherson [00:21:52]:

And where that started is with the Maui fires in Hawaii that happened late summer. And Oprah Winfrey is one of many people, large landowners on the island. She lives in Maui, but she got dragged into it because she put herself in the spotlight, so to speak. There were other people behind the scenes, landowners. There some donated money, but Oprah was seen at a shelter, and she was being filmed by local television wearing an outfit and know, just know, plumping up pillows and passing things out. And she looked very awkward, like she had never been in there before. And coming away from that, she felt like, what Oprah does, that she has to do something. The mistake I think that she made is I felt it was a distraction because she has received so much grief.

Molly McPherson [00:22:52]:

The land that she has, she has a road that actually leads up to her home in Maui that she had to open up for people to be able to flee in the fire. But the bigger misstep and I had interviewed someone who worked in fundraising. That what Oprah was doing by being filmed in this shelter. They call it like fundraising. They they want to be know where they're helping people. But then she decided, or someone on her team decided to pair up with the and the other part of the misstep certainly was doing this big publicity push, social media, hitting the morning shows, going to her best friend Gail, CBS Morning, and talking about this People Fund. Two aspects to it. One, the branding, the colors, everything was nearly identical to a local Maui People's Fund.

Molly McPherson [00:23:48]:

And then also that both The Rock and Oprah Winfrey, of course, everyone else in a very tight market to be able to contribute. And the reason why I say it starts with her is that now that she has a stake in Weight Watchers, oprah Winfrey's lost a lot of weight lately. And a couple of weeks ago, she did kind of a push argument with weight loss. And certainly when she was on television in the 90s, everybody talked about her weight. She was 100% dead on with what she was doing. If that was it, it would have been spectacular. But right around the corner is the weight loss drugs like Ozempic, that Weight Watchers is going to affiliate with. And she's claiming now that her weight loss I mean, this is a woman who struggled with weight.

Molly McPherson [00:24:44]:

The weight has dropped naturally, and I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop when it comes out that someone they'll put her on full blast, too. But for 2023, I have Oprah on my bingo car. Thank you. Well, Warren, you're a TV guy. Any thoughts on Oprah?

Warren Weeks [00:25:04]:

I think she should just give everybody a rock. I found that interesting because they both did this video and like The Rock, this big menacing guy. It was interesting because they both been trying to backpedal from that publicly. And The Rock, I'm not sure how many of your listeners listen to the Joe Rogan podcast, but The Rock was on there. I think it's probably the highest profile guest that's ever been on that show. And I think they talked for something like 3 hours and didn't bring it up once. So it was clear to me that that was ahead of time. These are the rules.

Warren Weeks [00:25:44]:

You're not talking about this or this. And a lot of people are complaining, saying it was one of the most boring shows because they didn't talk about anything interesting. And I think he was told, you want to talk to The Rock. You're not talking about.

Molly McPherson [00:25:57]:

Do a he did do an instagram and TikTok post where he admitted that he was wrong. And I thought, how did he do that with Miss Oprah? How did he get that by her? So that was the other thing. John, did you have a thought on Oprah?

John Perenack [00:26:11]:

You know, it's funny. I forgot about Oprah because she was on TV for so long and it's so ubiquitous. Know, you forget when you don't see someone for a while. She still commands the media, though, right? It's amazing how much influence she has whenever she does something. And she has the power to draw attention and ire maybe an equal.

Molly McPherson [00:26:36]:

Yes, yes. She still definitely has the power, but no longer quite as big as she see. So that's another reason why I chose Oprah. All right, ending up round two. Warren, what do you I'm going for.

Warren Weeks [00:26:49]:

Something a little niche. And you said you wanted not the big headlines. And this is a situation that I find this one just kind of confusing and I find it sad. There's no real resolution to it, but it's just a bit of a weird one. And I think we're going to start seeing more of this kind of stuff. It's buffy st. Marie. So anyone of our vintage is going to be familiar with Sesame Street.

Warren Weeks [00:27:11]:

And this is an individual, she's an Indigenous well, I guess I don't know. She said she's an Indigenous singer and would come on the show and had a prolific career. She won an Oscar in 1983. Her songs were covered by people like Elvis and Barbara Streisand and Glenn Campbell. A really amazing career. And now, 50 years after her first appearance on Sesame Street, her family has come out, family members basically saying that she is not being truthful about her Indigenous heritage and that she's actually of European descent. I think they said she's Italian. Like, their family name was like Santa Maria.

Warren Weeks [00:27:44]:

So there was a CDC, which is the kind of national broadcaster here, who just announced they're firing like, 800 journalists. They came up with a story who is the real Buffy St. Marie. And so this pretty scathing expose and they're talking. They had birth certificates and interviews with people. Family members said that they had been sent cease and desist letters from her high powered lawyers. And so this story is just kind of up in the air and it's a feel bad story. She issued a statement that I thought was quite well worded, and I ended up feeling sorry for her.

Warren Weeks [00:28:18]:

There were people from the indigenous community who were very offended by this if she is, in fact, misrepresenting herself, and I felt sorry for them. And now there are elders from the indigenous community. I just saw a story today. They're coming out and asking her to take a DNA test. So that's the last that we've seen on this. And the reason I bring it up is from a reputational perspective, she has arthritis. She had retired. I think she's 82 years old now, and she's supposed to be enjoying her retirement.

Warren Weeks [00:28:50]:

And you have all this stuff getting dredged up. And if it's true, if it's not true, either way, this is a kind of tragic story, but just for kind of a different audience. And so we love to talk about the bud lights and the Chicago blackhawks, but these little stories sometimes slip through the cracks. And so that's why I wanted to talk about that. A lot of people who are younger than us, who is this? You're going to have to look it up. But fascinating story.

Molly McPherson [00:29:15]:

Well, I think a lot of people know because I base sometimes the level of a crisis on how many people take me on this story. A lot of people take me on this story on social media. Maybe it was all the Gen Xers in the world watching Sesame Street, but a lot of people were aware there's.

John Perenack [00:29:31]:

A long history of people who have adopted indigenous personas and it's a complicated area. We actually acted for an author who was an indigenous author, but it ends up he maybe wasn't indigenous and he won multiple prizes in Canada. And it's interesting because on one hand, he spent his entire lifetime in and around indigenous communities and have been adopted by indigenous community. But on the other hand, he couldn't necessarily trace his ancestry directly to indigenous community. And I guess it becomes controversial because indigenous, many indigenous people say we've had a hard enough go as it is. And it's tough when people from outside the community come and sort of adopt our persona and then become successful with.

Molly McPherson [00:30:29]:

It.

John Perenack [00:30:31]:

Instead of actually one of our own. It's funny, there was a guy back, I'm going to say it was in the 19th or animal preservation, and he went by the name of Gray Owl. And if you Google this guy, he's got Joseph Karsh took his picture. He was like a very famous international celebrity. It ends up he was from like, Yorkshire and his name was Archer Bald Stansfield or something like that. Archerwald Bellaney. There's a long history of people doing this. I don't know what the case is with Fluffy St.

John Perenack [00:31:06]:

Marie. I have no idea what the news value was. And CBC deciding it's time to do a takedown piece on an 80 year old woman who had a successful career. But it certainly is a messy, messy area and it's not easy to manage a crisis and emotional elements.

Molly McPherson [00:31:27]:

Yeah, no, that's a great one. Okay, so now we're coming up to round three, the last three choices for our 2023 crisis of the Earth. So I'll start this one. Mine is, again, not a big one, but it's adjacent to a lot of other people. But I'll start here in August 2023. Michael or never actually adopted him, but instead created conservatorship that led them to quite a prosperous relationship or building off of that relationship. Of course, there's the movie The Blind Sides starring Sandra Bullock. She won an Oscar for it.

Molly McPherson [00:32:13]:

And everybody know all these warm fuzzies about the blindside story, the story written by Michael Lewis's and bankrupt Freed. But what was interesting when this story came out is one. The polarization of it. Leanne Tui, a born again Christian. So they had a lot of support in the deep, conservative south, the Ole Miss South. But Michael Or, he's tied into that movie, also played on Super Bowl team. But what I found interesting was the strategy of the two is to hire Marty Singer and Entertainment, who've really been in challenging situations bill Cosby, Charlie Sheen, but also Lizzo, who would definitely be on this list. But I find these more of the outlier, because the Know hired this pit bull to fight against someone who they were claiming was really their adopted son.

Molly McPherson [00:33:13]:

So it was this kind of discordance that was happening in this crisis that I thought made it quite unique, and they're still trying to come out of it. Michael Orr tried to extort them. But if you look at any of the social media and the news articles, the Tuis have absolutely enjoyed quite a ride by adopting a football player who's already an all American player when he was, I believe, 1718 years old and certainly rung with it. So that would be my 2023 crisis. All right.

John Perenack [00:33:48]:

That's fascinating. This is an example of, you know what? All those feel good stories, there's another dimension to them quite often.

Molly McPherson [00:33:59]:

You're absolutely right. Warren, how about you?

Warren Weeks [00:34:01]:

Your credibility was lost when you said three words bill Cosby's, lawyer.

John Perenack [00:34:10]:

Yeah.

Molly McPherson [00:34:13]:

But, you know, I talk about him a lot because he's using a playbook that worked for decades where you threaten people and you go to editors and say, no, you got to kill this story, and you got to pick up I'll give you this puts you in a corner, which is exactly what's happening to Lisso. Okay, Warren, what's your number three.

Warren Weeks [00:34:33]:

Okay. My last one is kind of late breaking. This is in the last little while, sports Illustrated, the AI scandal. So this is not new. Organizations have been writing AI stories for years. AP has been doing a lot of their baseball. Stories have been written by computers. That's not really the big issue here.

Warren Weeks [00:34:53]:

The issue is Sports Illustrated was publishing stories with AI, but they had actually come up with fake personas for the reporters. So at the bottom of the story, you would see a little photo, and you'd see a little bio. And Chad likes playing Frisbee and playing with his dog on weekends. And they had these names, like one of the guys they wrote down, Drew Ortiz. This is one of their guys, if you could look it up. And it's one of these artificial intelligence images you can just go and buy online. And I think the descriptor is, know, average looking male with blonde hair and blue eyes, and that's with this guy. And so Sports Illustrated, someone blew the whistle on someone, some good journalist.

Molly McPherson [00:35:34]:

Journalist.

Warren Weeks [00:35:37]:

One of the ones that are left. And immediately Sports Illustrated deleted all the articles that had those little things on. So they pulled them off and then they went on to blame third party suppliers. So there's a company called Advon that they had hired and again talks about how far Sports Illustrated has fallen from what it used to be to what it is today. Third party suppliers making up fake stories of fake people and finger pointing and blame again, another sad one because I'm a huge sports fan and I used to love that magazine, but there's a whole bunch of stuff going on here. To me, it's not about the AI that's not going anywhere. Everything's going to be written by AI shortly. It was the deception.

Warren Weeks [00:36:20]:

It was taking these personas and whether they knew about it or they didn't, I guess maybe that will come out in the wash. But it was about the deception, that extra level. But to have the little face and the little bio and his little hobbies, that was a little dirty. So people will forgive anything, as we've seen in our business, the Tylenol scandal, maple Leaf Foods, all these different issues, when it's handled properly, the one thing people won't forgive is being deceived by a company. And that's what happened here.

Molly McPherson [00:36:52]:

Yes, but Warren, I did tell you to never bring up Tylenol again. Okay? We're putting Tylenol away in 2023. Okay. No, you're absolutely right. Because not just not only do you lose the trust Know readers, it's the ethics in Know. It still had to have been another journalist or someone who was let go. Yeah. John, what about you? Do you have any thoughts on that one?

John Perenack [00:37:23]:

I thought the same thing as Warren did. It's really you don't need to trick people into thinking some person is actually writing it. It's good enough. There are a lot of magazines that have no bylines and so just provide the content, don't make up a big story around it. It just was an unnecessary and foolish thing to do.

Molly McPherson [00:37:42]:

Yes. Okay. That's a good one. I like that one. I like that one. Okay, John, round us.

John Perenack [00:37:47]:

Right. Last one I'll bring. I had a lot of very heavy things I brought to the table anyway, whatever it is. So earlier this year, there was an international embarrassment as a Canadian and massive controversy when President Zelensky of Ukraine made a tour to Canada and he was going to speak to Parliament, kind of the equivalent of speaking House representatives to a combined session of Congress. And one of the people they invited in the gallery of the legislature was a 98 year old Ukrainian guy, and they called him out during just ahead of the President's speech and noted that he was originally from Ukraine and fought in World War II. And everyone applauded him and sort of fetted him as a hero, except that he was in a division, the 14th waste of SS division. So that was highly embarrassing and on a number of levels, politically, personally, Canadians thought, like, good God, can't we even put together an event where we don't invite? And on top of that, it sort of just completely aligns with the narrative that Russia is trying to use for a pretext for attacking Ukraine, that they're fighting Nazis in Ukraine. And here we go.

John Perenack [00:39:14]:

Canada is serving one up. The House of the speaker of Parliament had to resign because of it. The Prime Minister had to issue an apology. And it was kind of like one of those things where they didn't actually act initially. Very quickly, they kind of demurred and tried to find a way out of the issue without apologizing. And that, of course, just made it worse because it's dragged on and on and on. So they eventually did a bit of an apology tour. And of course, it was global headlines.

John Perenack [00:39:46]:

Very embarrassing. And I guess rule number one is don't invite Nazis. Rule number two is if you do invite one, you apologize right away. You don't win a long time betting.

Molly McPherson [00:39:57]:

Would have figured that one out. But he looks nice enough. That's the thing. Maybe that's what they do.

John Perenack [00:40:04]:

He was an old dude who knows what his real story is. But in this world, people don't take time to dig into the facts and understand a lot of detail.

Molly McPherson [00:40:20]:

That's a great example, and I love the thick of this story.

Warren Weeks [00:40:25]:

Well, if you look at that in the larger lens of Justin Trudeau over the past year, he's had a really bad year. There are people with bumper stickers f trudeau all over the place. I think that was the same couple of weeks where he announced that he was separating his wife, which is very tough on a personal level. And he's got the Nazi and Parliament thing. So he's had a bit of a bad run. He's probably due for some good luck. And then they did a poll shortly after that of Canadians, and it said nearly one in two Canadians, almost 50% of them, thought that that incident had a major impact on Canada's reputation abroad. In a negative, that's a pretty high number, almost half of people.

Warren Weeks [00:41:05]:

So it turned out to be, at the end of the year, one of those unfortunate little stories. We're talking, John and I, there's about 14 people whose job it is to vet stuff like this. And it's amazing to think that that actually ended up happening. Or is it that people were too young, not enough staff? They just war hero. We'll take any war hero or they just assume which side he was on. But this is, again, under the category.

Molly McPherson [00:41:30]:

Yeah. And talk about bringing an old school villain in. It's like straight out of Raiders of the Lost Dark. So, yeah. Warren I agree. It's either some young know didn't vet it or I don't know. I always tend to go here sometimes I think people do things yeah. You never know.

Molly McPherson [00:41:52]:

Never know. Okay, so now for our last round. We are each going to throw one in for our will take our so I thought I would start out and then we'll go with John and then we'll end with Warren. Okay. So my argument for this last slot involves the strike. Of course, we all know about the WGA strike. They're the ones who won it. But it was the know had the struggle with that crisis.

Molly McPherson [00:42:30]:

The alliance of motion picture and television producers and alliance already sounds one of the markers, I felt, that caused this reputational downfall. It happened when Bob Iger, the head of Warren's aforementioned Disney, was doing an interview with Cnnbc. Backdrop the mountains, three quarter zip, I believe pullover when he's at the billionaires summer camp talking about the greedy, disruptive writers and to a viewing audience of people who are just like him, wealthy males. I thought it was so out of step with 2023 and that is my entry into the last slot.

John Perenack [00:43:15]:

John, what say, you know, they say when you're at crisis you find the endpoint to the crisis and get to it as quickly as possible. And in this case, Disney decided to find the thick mud that was going to get them in deeper, get the companies in deeper and waded through it and actually just get foddered to the union. And I found it also curious that their website looks like it's from 1995. It's very conservative, difficult to read, and not at all aimed at the way that unions were delivering messages. In short, sound bites, very accessible information, good use of social media, a lot of video. It was like night and day. Even though it's David and Goliath sort of fighting here, the union certainly had an upper hand that the way they were approaching.

Molly McPherson [00:44:19]:

Excellent. So John, who is your entry for the last slot of our top crises of 2020?

John Perenack [00:44:31]:

Well, the one that I think and Warren, I've talked about this one a bunch is just mind boggling, has got to be open AI in terms of how does a board blow itself up and not think through such an important decision as that? It blows my mind that they didn't think through even the next step beyond what was going to happen once they terminated their CEO. And there's a lot we could talk about at length, all the things they did wrong, but it's just one of those things where you just can't believe it's happening. Now. Mind you, they sort of rescued themselves thanks to Microsoft coming in and saying this is going to be fixed and fixing it for them. But I would put that sort of right up there with the things that were just mind boggling. Communications disaster.

Molly McPherson [00:45:42]:

That was a good one that a lot of people were talking about, definitely. Warren?

John Perenack [00:45:48]:

Yeah.

Molly McPherson [00:45:48]:

What is your entry?

Warren Weeks [00:45:50]:

My last one, I have to go with the Chicago Blackhawks situation. I know you covered this on your show recently, John, and I both talked way too much about hockey that people are complaining about it.

Molly McPherson [00:46:02]:

Wait, are they really? Has someone complain that you talk about hockey too much?

Warren Weeks [00:46:05]:

Yeah, in the comments.

Molly McPherson [00:46:06]:

Okay. I will say that I think every episode I've been on, it's evolved into hockey at some point.

Warren Weeks [00:46:15]:

What else does it talk about? For the reason if you don't know about it, I'm not going to bring it up because it's a horrible story about rumor and speculation. You can go and Google it. Although I would say that there's probably no one listening to this that isn't aware of it. So if you think back to a little over a year ago, chicago Blackhawks were in this situation with Kyle Beach and sexual allegations. It was a really ugly story. And again, it was deception, cover up, old school, old white boys club, just kind of trying to deflect and deny. And so I think in a way, what they were trying to do here was trying to correct that where they said, look, we're going to take decisive action, and this guy's off our team. So the action is part of it, but the lack of transparency was the Achilles heel here.

Warren Weeks [00:47:06]:

And I know it's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, although that's football analogy. So I'm not sure what the right hockey analogy is, but they took swift action, which in some cases, and we don't really know what happens, so they maybe should be applauded for that. But they left this gaping hole for rumor and speculation, and it was like three or four days before they closed that hole up, and all that stuff could have been done ahead of time. And he ends up sending out this note, and I'm sickened by this, and I apologize, and I'm going into rehab for alcohol. They could have said that at the beginning, and then all of this bullshit would have gone away and not happened because I feel so bad for Connor. Badard. This kid's 18 years old. I have a kid BS his family, Corey Perry's family, the team, and I have this guy in my hockey pool.

Warren Weeks [00:47:54]:

I need him to perform. I need him to get his head right. So the Blackhawks, I feel, in a way, they tried to do the right thing, but it's mind boggling to me because they could have gone to opening a chat GPT. How do you handle a crisis? And whatever was spat out of that thing would have been better than what.

Molly McPherson [00:48:15]:

They oh, my gosh, I totally agree with you. Yes, to put their franchise player at risk like that. But who my head goes to is mother who. And my big sticking point with their response was Kyle from Know. He's doing the job. He's was he was the perfect spokesperson to handle it. And what he did is I think they bopped it. They got the statement out there.

Molly McPherson [00:48:53]:

But in that press conference, he had an opportunity in a presser to really sell it. But there he is, he's reading it, you're watching him read it. And the worst part of it for me is, yes, you're right. Corey came out with going to be harassed for the rest of his life even though it's not true. But his poor mother, I felt they did not do a good enough job to wipe that clean. I mean, the rumor and speculation started with something happening with Corey Perry and the mother Melanie Bernard and that's the know, so this will stick with her forever. And mothers, I mean, I'm a hockey mom. I have a son the same know, and she's so beautiful players, but she is just such, you could tell like a really genuine hockey mom that just absolutely loves her son and she has to carry this forever because I think they did such a poor job.

Molly McPherson [00:49:50]:

Okay. Canadian, John. You must have two.

John Perenack [00:49:52]:

Why don't I talk about length? I agree with you that the mom is definitely going to bear the brunt of this and Conor berGARD himself as well. But it could have been avoided, as Warren said right at the very beginning. And I think it was because there's this bias towards, especially in sports bias towards really say nothing comments. Like we've seen them all the time, athletes use them all the time and they used a throwaway say nothing comment the first time, which just lets the rumor, like Warren said, the vacuum actually validated the rumor. If you read it, you read it one way, it validates the rumor. And it wasn't until the third statement when they finally inserted the line that said nothing to do with a player or their family, it's like, well, if you'd said that in the first place, you would have cut this right off at the beginning. So it was a completely cell phone. And the one thing I would say is that when Kyle Breach gave that news conference, he kind of gave this self righteous, this is disgusting, which they are sorry, what's that word?

Molly McPherson [00:51:00]:

Understandable Kyle.

John Perenack [00:51:01]:

The cows mixed up. He could have better to be a bit more contrite, a bit more recognizing that I'm trying to solve this unfortunate situation, not sort of have this righteous attitude. And I just felt like they're getting bad advice there. Obviously, I think they got to the right place eventually, but when it takes you like two weeks and three attempts to get the right answer, you could probably do better.

Molly McPherson [00:51:36]:

They probably did based on that response. Okay, so who do we think? Which one should be in that last slot or do we have an outlier? What do we think?

Warren Weeks [00:51:47]:

What do you guys think?

John Perenack [00:51:50]:

If I depict the one from all the ones we've talked about that stands out the most. You know, I'm going to say two. The fight between the actors and the studios because it got so much media attention I think was one that was like a marked TV studios fighting or Moose studios fighting. TV studios fighting. It's going to get a lot of media think it's kind of cliche, but I think Bud Light certainly stands, though, as probably a case study that will be in textbooks for an awful long time.

Molly McPherson [00:52:37]:

Yes, I'm with you. It is the contrarian tylenol response, right? We are always going to hear the horrible response. It wasn't a well thought out plan and the response was just as poorly thought out. So, yeah, I agree with you. My top slot, definitely for 2023 is Spotlight.

Warren Weeks [00:52:59]:

Across ten years from now, this will be the only one that when we think 2023 branding crisis, I think that's going to be the only one that stands out. Unless you're convert's mom.

Molly McPherson [00:53:14]:

I know, but I'm going to feel for this one.

Warren Weeks [00:53:18]:

Hopefully people. Again, it shouldn't have happened and it's unfortunate, but I think on a grand scale, like you think of New Coke, that was a big debacle. The tylenol thing, obviously, but this is a legendary screw up. Like billions of dollars of market cap, hundreds of millions of dollars lost. And again, this is going to be a defining one and how much digital.

John Perenack [00:53:45]:

Media will be preserved for decades to come that was spawned from the Bud Light. We're in an environment where all those other things, when they happen, we don't have all the record that was available for reaction, but now we have scores of people's responses and people exactly.

Molly McPherson [00:54:08]:

That's the meme that will last forever. Warren and John. Well, one, it's so great to speak to both of you again. It's been a long time and I'm glad I could wrap up my year with the two of you to really, I think, create the listicle of all listicles when we all look at those end of the year roundup.

Warren Weeks [00:54:28]:

So this is where we tell you that we're actually AI avatars you've been talking to the last hour.

Molly McPherson [00:54:33]:

You're drew Ortiz. Is that it? All right, you guys, thanks for any last words.

Warren Weeks [00:54:47]:

I love seeing what you're blowing up on TikTok. I've been talking it up to everybody. It's a case study. I think that people should always be tinkering and trying new things. You're a legit celebrity and I am super pumped every time I see you on a new show or on some interview and just very heartwarmed to see that.

Molly McPherson [00:55:10]:

Oh, that's a dicey, dicey place to be. But as I said to a client prior to that, it's not about the visibility. It's about the knowledge and the research and learning about public opinion and know where it all starts and certainly it starts there. But thank you so much, Warren. I mean, you're all over the place. You're constantly bouncing around. And John, I love your thinking in terms of how you and your firm approaches crisis management and strategy. You do an excellent job.

Molly McPherson [00:55:39]:

You two are really one of the best. And that's why I'm so happy that you're here.

John Perenack [00:55:43]:

Thanks.

Molly McPherson [00:55:44]:

I wanted you to be here to be a part wait, how do you end the year? What do you? Oh, no. We say Merry Christmas.

John Perenack [00:55:50]:

Happy holidays.

Molly McPherson [00:55:54]:

I'm cutting that part out. All right, you guys, so hold on. Stay there.