Bad Publicity: 5 Steps to Beat Down the Heat

Before social media, bad publicity could still damage your business reputation, endangering your business, but with the ease of spreading bad reviews through tweets, reviews, and negative comments on these platforms, you can’t ignore bad publicity by hoping it will simply go away. Even when the negative comments aren’t real, maybe even spread maliciously by a competitor, the potential for damage is enormous. Today, we’ll take you through a five-step process for handling bad publicity and limiting its ability to inflict permanent damage.

It’s often said that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. They may be saying terrible things about you, but at least your name is on everyone’s mind. The truth is that bad publicity can ruin your reputation if you don’t get it under control.

For instance, in 2016, sales of Ferrero’s popular spread Nutella dropped off after accusations that the palm oil used in its ingredients might be carcinogenic. To counter this, Ferrero launched a campaign to explain that Nutella was a safe product. As a result, Nutella sales began to recover by the end of the year. Of course, today, even scientific evidence is often insufficient to counter conspiracy theories, especially among those with little interest in science or those who get all their information from biased sources.

Where does bad publicity come from?

Actual mistakes

Mistakes do happen. Even professionals in advertising, PR, and social media can make gaffes that shock customers. This might be publishing embarrassing personal posts on a business account, using awkward hashtags, or posting inappropriate images. For instance, a Chrysler executive posted this to the official Twitter (now X) account:

The comment devalues its customers, showing a break with company values. The damage went far beyond Detroit and Twitter, as it was picked up by others, including media sources.

This also happened to some big organizations, including the Red Cross, US Airlines, and American Apparel, who in 2014 posted a photo of the Challenger space shuttle explosion as “fireworks”. Generally, the best response is to own up to it, apologize, and deflate the tension with a little humor, if possible.

It also helps to remind customers that they are dealing with ordinary human beings. It could even make your brand more relatable. Relatively minor issues in production, vendors, or fulfillment can create issues that prove embarrassing if they aren’t caught in time.

For example, Lulumon, a highly successful maker of yoga pants, sold pants that were see-through in 2013 – the humiliating result of a supply issue. Lulumon publicly acknowledged the mistake. A quick recall and replacement of the bad product helped to reinforce their reputation as a responsible and fair company.

Security breaches

Network breaches and a loss of customer data are a serious concern for every organization today and create really bad publicity. Big names like Target, Sony, and PayPal have all made headlines as victims when customers relied on them for the protection of their personal information, only to have that trust violated when hackers breached security. The notoriety that comes with a data breach can lead to a loss of public trust and millions of dollars in revenue.

If your customers’ personal data gets stolen, they could become victims of identity theft. It is extremely important that you know how to prevent that from happening. To safeguard against hackers, you need to update data and security systems regularly. You need the latest anti-malware applications and hardware options. Safeguards like firewalls, data encryption, spam filtering, threat detection, and more provide added layers of protection without serious loss of network performance.

When a disaster happens and data breaches occur, it’s important to react immediately and call in a digital security expert to assess and correct the problem. The worst response is trying to conceal the breach. Notify customers right away, let them know if their information may be at risk, and what steps they can take to further protect themselves. Offering to pay for monitoring to detect unauthorized use of personal information goes a long way to healing the breach. Customers also appreciate an email explaining what happened and what steps you’ll take to prevent further breaches, along with a brief note of apology, as well as follow-ups to let them know how things are progressing.

Ethical failures

As you can see from the image above, not only will customers worldwide reward companies driven by shared values, they’re even more likely to punish brands that don’t live by their values. For instance, Volkswagen is still trying to recover from the bad publicity it earned by attempting to circumvent emission standards in its vehicles by “faking” test results. More recently, ChatGPT has been suffering a loss of customers (295%) after making a deal with the US Department of Defense, one rejected by Anthropic (which led to a surge in customers).

Poor decision

Creative advertising is important, but some ideas just don’t click with consumers. In today’s increasingly diverse marketplace, it’s even easier to find someone who took something you said the wrong way. For instance, Starbucks got a lot of pushback after announcing it would hire immigrants in support of protests against Trump’s immigration ban. Some took that to mean they were hiring immigrants over other disadvantaged groups, like veterans.

If you find you’re getting negative feedback because people find a new campaign annoying or take what you said the wrong way, try using humor.

Go Compare’s marketing campaign is a perfect example of bad publicity from advertising. The UK company used an opera singer in a series of commercials and received negative feedback from their audience. The company reacted by releasing several billboards that mocked the singer and eventually released a commercial in which they killed him off. Even bad decisions can provide a means to connect with audiences.

Repetition can ruin even a good ad; if the audience sees it too many times, they become bored and irritated. Ads that are too vague are associated with your company later on. But dramatic change can also be bad. Many people remember the 1985 “New Coke” fiasco that had customers outraged when Coca-Cola suddenly replaced its classic best seller. The soft drink giant had no choice but to reintroduce the original recipe.

Brand failure

Likely, this is one of the biggest sources of negative comments. Either your products failed or your customer service was bad. Both of these are fixable with proper quality assurance procedures, such as ISO 9000 for products and a service audit to ensure good customer service.

Proper employee hiring, training, and management are also cornerstones of good customer service, especially for frontline employees who interact with your customers virtually or in person.

How to handle bad publicity

It’s never a good idea to ignore a negative post about your brand or try to delete it. The reality of the internet is that nothing ever truly goes away, so trying to delete a negative comment makes you look worse and appears to confirm the negative comment.

Similarly, you have to hear the negative comments before you can fix the problem, turning bad publicity into an opportunity. That means you must have an active listening program to detect negative comments, even when customers choose to make them on their own sites rather than on one you manage.

You can improve your brand image by following these five steps.

1. Assess the problem

While a fast response reduces the impact of negative comments, take time to assess the problem. Pointing fingers does nothing to make the customer whole nor does it reduce the potential for another service failure. Instead, focus on fixing the problem, then go back to determine what changes can help you avoid another failure in the future. Often, that means empowering employees to fix a problem immediately, without forcing them to get approval from managers.

For instance, some hotels empower front desk staff to reduce a customer’s bill or offer a gift basket to reduce the negative consequences for a traveller. You can even use the failure to gain valuable information to help improve your service. For instance, a concrete company allowed customers to reduce their bill if they offered a rationale for the reduction. This helped them discover that often deliveries were late because the project involved new construction that wasn’t easily discovered using mapping services. Hence, the order takers were trained to get navigational information when taking the order, so late deliveries dropped significantly.

2. Don’t make excuses

No one cares why the failure occurred; they just want you to fix it. Even if the failure wasn’t your fault, apologize and fix the problem. Worry about who was at fault later. For instance, Club Med guests pay a premium for a great experience. During a flight to a property, a guest left the airport late and had insufficient meals on board to meet demand. Before the flight landed, passengers were circulating a petition for a class-action lawsuit against Club Med. Instead of blaming the airline for the failure, the manager jumped into action to provide food and entertainment at the airport, then whisked passengers off to the property in limousines, rather than the promised bus. In the end, the guests reported that this was one of the best vacations of their lives.

An authentic apology, along with empathy, also goes a long way toward negating bad publicity.

3. Go offline

Sometimes, it’s better to take the conversation offline rather than have a protracted discussion in the open. For instance, a student complained when the airline refused to waive change fees when she attempted to get home before a predicted snowstorm. The airline contacted her via phone, made the new reservation, and got her home without a fee. She later posted online about how the company turned bad publicity into a good experience for her.

First, you should acknowledge the validity of the complaint before moving the conversation offline to demonstrate that you’re listening and working to fix the problem.

4. Ensure effective internal communication

Your team is on the front line when it comes to handling bad publicity. Provide them with accurate, up-to-date information when something negative happens while providing streamlined upward communication to ensure you learn about issues before they become a crisis.

A script might help these employees address problems so the company’s message remains consistent. For instance, I called my internet provider with a problem. Rather than getting frazzled or responding to my tone, she was able to deflect my anger and fix the problem. In the end, I was satisfied with her solution and remained a customer.

5. Counteract the negative with the positive

As I said, you should never attempt to delete negative comments. Instead, seek to overwhelm the negative with positive comments. For instance, amplify positive stories by reaching out to satisfied customers, encouraging them to post positive comments. Share their comments across your social platforms and on your website to counteract any negative comments. The idea is to improve your overall rating, while pushing down negative reviews so they have less impact.

Conclusion

To sum up, it’s always wise to address bad publicity rather than ignore it. Empathizing and communicating with customers can counter bad reviews  by showing customers you’re ready to take responsibility and make amends. You can spin errors in marketing, product choices, and even disasters like a security breach in a positive way by putting the customer first. This shows that your brand is a responsible company, even if you do make mistakes.

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