What Not to Do When Your Company is Caught in Sticky Situation?

While watching CNN, I caught a small segment dedicated to a Planned Parenthood scandal. A pro-life group had done an undercover sting where had a young woman acted as a 14 year old prostitute and a man acted as her pimp. The sting was to uncover Planned Parenthood employees who would give “advice” to the pimp and thus, abet child prostitution. The news was that there was one recording of a manager giving such advice.

Stuart Schear, Vice President of communications from Planned Parenthood gave the official response to the scandal. The anchor had simple questions such as: Is this episode indicative of practices at many clinics? How does the organization feel about the manager? What will the company do to prevent this? Schear responded that the manager was fired but followed by stating the group behind the tape is focused on bringing down Planned Parenthood and this is about them trying to take away women’s rights. The anchor quickly responded by asking questions focused on the situation. A couple more times, Schear would switch the conversation to the group and their pro-life efforts against Planned Parenthood. At one point, the anchor stated she wants answer to this situation because many Planned Parenthood patients would see this as alarming.

The interview was short but disastrous. As V.P. of Communications, Schear did a bad job of focusing on communicating to his audience, supporters of Planned Parenthood. There is an opposition to the company because they are involved in a very debatable field. Regardless of the debate, the company has been caught in a situation, which could destroy their public image amongst those not opposed to them. Instead of focusing on their supporters, Schear wanted to focus on the opposition. At times, Schear digressed from addressing or acknowledging the possible consequences from the recording.

My point has nothing to do whether one opposes or supports Planned Parenthood. The point is when a company catches itself in a sticky situation, they should first get out of the situation before addressing any schemes that led to them to be in the situation. While an opposition set them up, a Planned Parenthood manager fell for it. Schear’s response, which was presented as the official response of the company, did little to present the company well. They will always have an opposition so they should spend their public time focused on their supporters.