Say sorry, but mean it

There’s a lot of it about lately. Tesco saying sorry to its customers for breaching their trust over the horsemeat scandal and now the Evening Standard tweeting a two-stage apology after broadcasting its front page about the 2013 Budget before the Chancellor had even stood up to make his speech. 

When the chips are down, making an apology in a timely way and getting it across to as many people as possible, can certainly help to minimise damage to brand reputation. But is there a right way and a wrong way of making a corporate apology?

Tesco’s strategy was to say sorry as loudly as possible – the sheer quantity of column inches bought up and used to communicate this message was impressive and demonstrated how seriously they were taking the crisis. Their message could not be missed. The company’s CEO, Philip Clarke was also very visible in delivering the message. But as slick as it was, their apology may have come across as a little contrived.

The Evening Standard was also quick off the mark when it came to making their apology. Joe Murphy resorted to Twitter – the very media that had caused the storm in the first place – to broadcast his apology as quickly and clearly as possible. His first message described the incident as a ‘very serious mistake’ and his second message indicated that he would be making a full apology to the Chancellor and to the House of Commons in due course. The newspaper has since followed this up with written apologies and suspended a junior employee.

The spontaneous nature of Twitter makes it an ideal media to use when communicating in the crisis and corporates are increasingly using it as their lead media channel in such circumstances. The immediate and personal nature of a tweet can also help to ensure that any apology is viewed as authentic and unscripted.

So what can we learn from this? When making an apology, all the usual advice applies - be direct, take responsibility and be prepared to communicate what action you are taking to make sure it doesn’t happen again. But above all else, your message must be believable and sincere and tweeting can help.