Case Study: Can A PR Mistake be Fixed?

To date, there have been a number of larger companies that received COVID support who have eventually returned the money to the government.

For example, Shake Shack returned $10M to the PPP program. There were others. I’m sure they regret it now but I do think they accessed the money to bring furloughed workers back, which is what the money was for.

The larger point here is whether fixing the mistake helped Shake Shack’s reputation.

Anyone reading this post has been in this meeting. Your brand hangs in the balance, and one camp will tell you that you should double down and defend what you did, or that the damage is already done and trying to fix it is pointless….or, will just remind people of what we did…or we should just let people forget about it, if they haven’t already

There are also people who just won’t admit they are wrong or who believe doing so invites litigation.

I would tell you that your response to a screw-up can do more than control damage…it can actually build trust in your brand. I’ve seen this many times in my career. The public understands mistakes and they respect real apologies and (even more) corrective action. Too often a crisis is approached defensively. I advocate that a crisis as an opportunity to build trust when people are watching.

Let us return to Shake Shack. Here’s Morning Consult data on the company’s reputation.

Source: Morning Consult

Here we see that that Shake Shack took a temporary hit when this news originally came out, but by the time the most recent survey was taken, their favorable ranking was higher than it had been stretching back more than six months. In another measure, Shake Shack was able to raise $139M in equity sales just a couple of days ago, a clear vote of confidence in the company…even in the face of possible economic collapse and the Treasury Secretary claiming he will investigate.

Speed matters. One of my favorite stories is when Michael McCurry, President Clinton’s Press Secretary, was interviewed three days into the Lewinsky scandal. He was asked why she was at the White House after midnight, and he said “I assume if we had a good answer for that you would have heard it by now.”

The point is, if you made a mistake the public expects you to realize it right away, not after a week of “contemplation.” If you truly know you shouldn’t have done it, you want to act before it looks like you were pressured into it or decided your best option was to come clean.

By doing the right thing quickly—if still belatedly—Shake Shack was able to recover…and way faster, I submit, than they would have done in battle mode or ostrich mode.