We’re just going to say what everyone is thinking: 2013 was huge for crisis. It was a year rife with scandal, controversy, manufactured outrage and social media style schadenfreude. Who could forget Walmart’s Black Friday fiasco, or Alec Baldwin’s repeated anti-gay tirades, or the sexual harassment allegations that cost San Diego mayor Bob Filner his job, or NYC mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner’s repeated sexting gaffes?
You can practically demarcate the months by the crises that swept the headlines.
Truth be told, whittling down every public relations disaster that occurred during 2013 into a top-ten list took a lot of work. There was a lot of competition. After careful consideration, however, we managed to compile O’Dwyer’s top ten PR gaffes of 2013.
Washington fails at everything
There’s no question that when it comes to PR fails in 2013, the U.S. government takes top billing. In reality, this entire list could be dedicated solely to the government’s follies if we wanted it to be.
First the Internal Revenue Service was raked over the coals for targeting conservative nonprofits like the Tea Party for their tax exemption status. Then it was discovered that the Justice Department had subpoenaed months of phone and email records from Associated Press reporters as part of an ongoing DOJ investigation into leaked classified documents regarding a foiled terrorist plot.
Then there was the biggest bombshell of all: Edward Snowden’s exposure of 200,000 classified documents that offered the American public a glimpse into the NSA’s outrageous surveillance activities, which has now been called the most significant information leak in U.S. history and is single-handedly responsible for souring diplomatic relations with some of our greatest allies. In the fall we saw the GOP’s selfish shutdown of Washington (admittedly, this deserves a category of its own), and the year ended with colossal kinks in the rollout of Obamacare. Politifact in December revealed its 2013 “Lie of the Year” was President Obama’s statement that anyone who liked his/her health care plan could keep it.
Obama’s dwindling legion of supporters was forced to admit that 2013 was the year the President approached Nixon-grade levels of credibility.
Taken together, Washington’s gross PR missteps in 2013 all point to an incompetent, hopelessly inept and laughably mismanaged government that is apparently incapable of getting its own milquetoast message straight.
Rob Ford on the rampage
Performance artist, Chris Farley impersonator and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford became a household name in the U.S. after fabled tales of public drunkenness and drug use culminated with the rumored existence of a video that allegedly showed him smoking crack cocaine. When Ford attempted to address the rumors with his patently cavalier braggadocio, things, predictably, got worse.
Ford admitted to smoking crack (during one convoluted public admission, he said he used it “probably approximately about a year ago”), then followed with a bizarre spate of public appearances that, impossibly, managed to give the crisis more legs. He made statements regarding a female staff member’s genitalia that we can’t repeat here, and a heated exchange on the floor of the Toronto City Council ended with Ford accidentally toppling a council member.
One of the reasons Charlie Sheen is funny is because he possesses nary a scintilla of power. Ford’s recklessness, as much as it makes for good TV, is hardly a laughing matter to the good citizens of Toronto. Fueled by claims that he is no longer fit to remain in office, a motion in November was passed by Toronto City Council to strip key aspects of Ford’s mayoral powers. Despite the scandal and subsequent emasculation of power — and despite the fact that most of Ford’s core staff have since resigned — Ford has refused to leave, and even promises to run in the next mayoral election, in October 2014.
The beleaguered mayor has now stupidly compared his crisis with the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. If history is any indication, the world of reality TV awaits.
Carnival Cruise sails troubled waters
The year kicked off with the news that the luxury cruise liner’s passenger ship Carnival Triumph had experienced an engine room fire that ultimately left 3,100 passengers stranded in the Gulf of Mexico for four days. With the crisis literally out to sea, traditional wisdom would suggest that a shore-bound press would be unable to spin the event into a media crisis.
The Triumph disaster, however, served as a bellwether for the times, as photos and tweets from stranded passengers lit up the social media channels for the world to see, thus taking the crisis — now unfortunately christened the “poop cruise” — out of the hands of those responsible for it.
After finally docking in Mobile, Alabama, Carnival was able to regain control of the narrative, and threw a Showcase Showdown of concessions (refunds, free cruises worth thousands) at travelers whose vacations were ruined by the incident.
McDonald’s: no gold in these arches
Pressure had been growing for some time for fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s to hike workers’ wages, and strikes have even been staged in several cities in recent months.
Leave it to McDonald’s, however, to make matters worse by releasing a series of out-of-touch financial “guides” regarding how employees can get by on their meager wages, thereby highlighting just how unreasonable those wages truly are. These “guides” didn’t account for expenditures like food, and its numbers were predicated on the premise that employees have a second job.
A second guide even managed to take the class down a notch, and advised burger-flippers on how much to tip their pool boys, au pairs and personal trainers. Concurrently, it was revealed that McDonald’s bought a $35 million luxury jet for its executives.
Consumers wary of the plight of fast-food workers and current wage disparity in America aren’t “lovin’ it.”
NFL drops the ball on accountability
It hasn’t been a good year for football. Native American groups like New York’s Oneida Indian Nation have amped up their attack against the Washington Redskins over the team’s controversial mascot and name.
The franchise still appears to be in good standing (a 2013 USA Today poll found 79% of Americans believed that the Redskins should keep their moniker) but Redskins owner Dan Snyder hasn’t been exactly diplomatic in handling the matter, telling USA Today in May that he will “never” change the team’s name.
Simultaneously, Miami Dolphins offensive tackle Jonathan Martin went public with allegations that detailed widespread hazing and bullying in the sport, leading many to demand that the NFL address its boys-will-be-boys culture.
Finally, it was announced that the NFL had agreed to pay a whopping $765 million in a settlement brought on by a massive lawsuit by 4,500 former players who claimed to suffer from everything from dementia to depression to Alzheimer’s as a result of concussions they received while playing the sport.
The NFL long has denied the prevalence of brain-related illnesses in football, but growing evidence, as seen in a recently released book League of Denial, suggests otherwise, and has charged the NFL with deliberately withholding evidence that the sport can irreparably damage players’ brains.
Abercrombie ditches loyal consumers
A recently uncovered 2006 interview with Salon captured Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries claiming he doesn’t want overweight people (or “uncool” people) to wear his company’s clothing. Social media pushed back, and viral videos and mock ad campaigns with names like “Attractive & Fat,” popped up overnight.
The resurrected quote comes at a particularly bad time for Jeffries, because his company is hemorrhaging financially. It’s no secret the brand isn’t as popular with teens as it was 10 years ago, and A&F quarterly profits reflect this: the once-hot retailer was down nearly 20% in profits at the beginning of this year.
Jeffries’ employment contract expires in February, and bids are currently underway to replace him for what investors hope is fresh blood who won’t insult its customers.
Barilla overcooks its reputation
Barilla Group Chairman Guido Barilla found himself in hot water after stating, during the course of an interview with an Italian radio station, that his company would never use a gay family to advertise its line of products.
“Our family is a traditional family,” he said. “I would not do a commercial with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect toward homosexuals — who have the right to do whatever they want without disturbing others — but because I don’t agree with them, and I think we want to talk to traditional families.” Barilla noodled on, stating that he also has “no respect for adoption by gay families because this concerns a person who is not able to choose.”
Barilla apologized for the statement, though massive international boycotts hurt the business’ bottom line and sauced their reputation.
Lululemon stretches the truth
Chip Wilson, founder and outgoing chairman of Vancouver-based athletic apparel line Lululemon Athletica, showed some bad prana after offering a mealy-mouthed explanation for a recent defect in his company’s popular line of yoga pants.
After hearing reports that many of Lululemon’s yoga pants were unintentionally see-through, the company ordered a massive recall.
That should have ended it, but Wilson in November managed to stretch his foot into his mouth when he went on Bloomberg TV and attempted to explain the defect, but ended up insulting his customers when he said “some women’s bodies just don’t actually work” in their line of pants.
Rutgers dribbles over abuse allegations
Video taken in 2012 captured former Rutgers men’s basketball head coach Mike Rice Jr. yelling at his players, as well as kicking them, pushing them, throwing basketballs at their heads and referring to them with sexual-orientation epithets.
Rutgers wasn’t particularly savvy in how they handled the situation. After university officials initially learned about the behavior in December 2012, Rice was suspended for several games and fined $50,000. The university changed its tune once ESPN aired the footage in April and the story went national; that’s when Rutgers flew into crisis mode and terminated Rice the following day.
The assistant coach who initially reported the abuse claims he had tried to bring the matter to the attention of Rutgers’ athletic director a year prior to no avail, and now claims he was fired by the university for bringing Rice’s behaviors to light.
Deen: scattered, covered, smothered
The South’s favorite celebrity chef Paula Deen was thrown into the oven when a lawsuit filed by a former employee claimed the deep-fried queen had a penchant for using racial epithets when describing African Americans. The former employee also expounded upon Deen’s love of antebellum lore, and claimed Deen once ruminated on the idea of hosting “plantation style” parties wherein African American employees would dress as slaves.
Even though many of Deen’s alleged antics were decades-old, her public and courtroom explanations of them managed to hurl them into the present. Reporting on her initial court deposition, The National Enquirer in June reported when asked if she had used the “N-word” in the past, Deen replied with a matter-of-fact, “yes, of course,” but later clarified that she had never tried to use the word “in a mean way.”
Deen’s gravy train dried up: the Food Network announced it would not renew the contract for her TV show, and she lost more than a half-dozen high-profile sponsorships.
Deen’s brand still remains strong, however, and a federal judge in August dismissed the suit brought against her.
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