Recepie for brand disaster: Let the lawyers handle it!

I have seen a lot of cases of senior executives stepping into the marketing arena where they knew nothing a reaping a great deal of damage in the process. If I had to pick one specific red flag it is when an organization goes into crisis mode and right away it is decided to allow the lawyers to handle everything. That is a surefire recipe for disaster.

The reason I say this is that lawyers by nature are a secretive bunch who wish to with hold as much information as possible and then, when it is too their advantage or when they have no choice, disseminate to select audiences. What is amazing is this philosophy nearly always fails! It would be if doctors used hot mustard plasters and blood letting to cure a patient of exposure to noxious vapors.

A score of business histories worst marketing moves have the thumbprints of marketing all over them. Does anyone remember the lawyers telling Ford not to recall the Ford Pinto because it would be cheaper to settle the lawsuits than recall and fix the problem. Or when the Catholic Church faced sexual abuse claims they decided, based on legal advice, to settle with privacy clauses so they could deny responsibility and put off the day of reckoning another day.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Johnson and Johnson and Pepsi and Coke represent the ideal of how marketing and communications should function in a crisis. All 3 of these organizations kept the lawyers in the loop, but let the marketing people do what they do best. As a result they emerged from their crisis and one could argue that they emerged stronger thanks to their foresight.

The company to watch now is Twitter. As you may know there have been two denial of service attacks on Twitter which brought down the service. That is not at all good for the company and you have to wonder how they will react to what for them is a major crisis. I haven't seen much by way of communication from them so I am guessing that the lawyers are saying, shut up and keep your head down. Sadly, if they follow that advice they may end up writing the first line of their obituary.

The response to a crisis is a role that should be handled by the marketing and communications team. We have the firmest knowledge of crisis management and our goal is to minimize damage to the brand. Lawyers will try to prevent the fewest lawsuits and the fault there is that sometimes you have to take your lumps in order to overcome a crisis. The legal method in my view doesn't resolve the crisis, rather it is about avoiding blame and that only lays the foundation for the next crisis.