Are you sorry? or sorry you got caught?

The father that let his 7-year-old drive the family SUV at 40 klicks with seatbelt-less mom and toddler sibling in the back seat came forward. After letting his kid drive down a remote logging road and fliming the spectacle, he put the video on youtube to brag about his son's driving skills. When questioned, he said:

"I regret having done it. It was a bad decision on my part," the father, identified only as Sylvain, said. But he added that media coverage of the incident has been exaggerated. "They make it sound like I killed someone. It makes no sense."

Another stumble in the art of apologizing. If you've got to apologize for something, apologize. Don't follow up the apology with but...but...but. It negates what you had to say in the first place. But this often happens with the forced apology. You don't really think what you did warrants an apology, but you apologize because you're sorry you got caught.

The hole gets deeper as the father continues:

"I was proud of my boy because he was able to drive a car," he said, adding that it is not unusual for parents to let underage children drive. "How many parent let their kids drive in the middle of a city?" he said. "Here, there was no traffic."

So basically he spends more time giving excuses than for an actual 'apology'. Not exactly the best course of action if you're potentially facing criminal charges after endangering the lives of your family and potentially other people.

And I've got news for him. I may be driving in the wrong part of town, but I'm not seeing a lot of parents letting their kids drive cars in the city.

There's a lesson in there for people and companies that have done something wrong and find themselves under media scrutiny. If you're going to apologize for something, make it a good one. You've only got one shot at it.

Quote of the day

A property management firm in Chicago decided to sue one of its tenants for a Twitter post that spoke ill of the company.  The company, Horizon Group Management, says that the tenant sent the message maliciously and filed suit asking for $50,000 in damages.

Asked about the suit by the Chicago Sun-Times, Horizon owner Jeffrey Michael noted:

"We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization."  Yee-haw!

Ok, I added the Yee-haw part.  And I don't think he was riding a horse when he was talking to the reporter.

But anyway, I guess that didn't go over so well because the company went on to issue a news release yesterday "apologizing for tongue in cheek comments that were made previously regarding our approach to litigation".

Phew.  But they're still litigating.

Issue management 101: Douse the issue before it gets out of hand

Fire at the White House is out. Time to go back to the health care debate.

Wow. President Obama just went in front of the Whitehouse Press corps and said he'd erred in his comment on how the Cambridge, Mass. police arrested a prominent African American professor. Immediately after the arrest, Obama had said:

"the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home."

But today, Obama rightly moved to douse the issue, calling the arresting officer directly and saying he'd essentially erred in his comments.

"I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sgt. Crowley specifically," Obama told reporters. "I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to Sgt. Crowley."

The fact was the controversy over the arrest and the President's subsequent comments were overtaking the agenda in Washington and distracting media and politicans from debate on the health care legislation in front of Congress. All too often people in this position wait too long to engage with the counterparty in a controversy and this usually just magnifies the issue.

Mark Knoller (@markknoller) from CBS notes that:

In the past, Presidents wait to the very last moment to admit an error in judgment: Clinton-Monica; Reagan/Contras: Ford/Poland.

Obama made the right move by acting quickly. Most politicians aren't this astute. Normally we see officials in trouble bend themselves out of shape to avoid saying they screwed up. It's an all too often occurrence. Outside politics it's an issue you frequently see as well.

The bottom line is people sometimes make mistakes. Your average person understands that. So if you take the initiative and wrest control of the issue by owning up to the blunder, you and your organization will be better off in the end. You might just have to swallow a little pride in the process.

Above all else, be credible. Are you listening Chicago Blackhawks?

There's a certain type of PR hack that drags down the whole profession. It's the flack that tries to spin something beyond the realm of credibility. In the process they leave a trail of disbelief, skeptics and second guesses at what is actually going on in the organization.

Case in point - the Chicago Blackhawks fired their GM, Dale Tallon, today and put in place his subbordinate, Stan Bowman - son of hockey great Scotty Bowman. But the release announcing the change is frankly, BS. It says:

The Chicago Blackhawks have promoted Stan Bowman to General Manager and have reassigned Dale Tallon to the position of Senior Advisor, Hockey Operations.

This kind of thinly-veiled attempt to disguise what's going on helps no one. Worse yet, the release has a humiliating 'quote' from Tallon:

“In my new role as Senior Advisor, Hockey Operations I will continue in any way that will help make this a better product on the ice. I’ve seen Stan come up through our ranks and I’m confident he is the right person to step in. This is what is best for the Chicago Blackhawks.”

Who in their right mind would believe Tallon actually said this? And its the height of poor taste to belittle a guy you've fired by making it look like he agrees that it's the best decision. Nobody will buy this. I don't care how crappy someone is at their job, who's going to stand up and agree they should be fired?

I can just imagine the team's communications department hunkered down trying to find a way to manage this issue. However, the course they chose didn't solve the problem. It only magnifies the rift that must be going on behind the scenes. Rather than deal with the issue and allow the team to move on, they've only invited more questions. And you're guaranteeing future skepticism from journalists and your stakeholders in the future.

The reality is people get fired. Things sometimes don't work out. The best way to deal with these situations is to just be up front and clear about the situation. Lay out the facts and explain where you're going. In this way you'll actually manage the issue down and allow the organization to move on.

The case against real-time PR

At the end of the G8 conference Canadian Prime Minister Harper attacked Liberal opposition Leader Ignatieff for a quote that ended up being from someone else.

How'd it happen? Harper's press secretary Dimitri Soudas was e-mailed the quote from a colleague in Canada; briefed the PM on the fly; and the PM then let fly a verbal pounding against Ignatieff. When it soon became clear the quote that set Harper off wasn't actually from Ignatieff, apologies started flowing from the PM and Soudas.

Harper: "I learned shortly after the press conference this was not a quotation of Mr. Ignatieff," said Harper before departing L'Aquila.

"I regret the error and I apologize to Mr. Ignatieff for this error."

Soudas: "I am upset," and he added later that the prime minister was "clearly, clearly not happy with the fact that he was put in that situation by one of his advisors.

"The prime minister is very bothered by the fact that his press secretary mis-informed him, and mis-briefed him and hence he obviously made an accusation."

I can see where Soudas wanted to use what seemed like a good opportunity to bash an opponent, but this episode is a great example of ensuring your communications infrastructure has the right checks and balances to make sure everything you say is 100% accurate.

For companies, the closest comparison to the speed in which the communications cycle was running in this situation would be a crisis management episode. In crises, events happen quickly, facts can change by the moment and its critical for your reputation that your communications remain accurate.

That means stay open and honest, but also slow down the process a bit to ensure you're providing clear and accurate facts. If you don't you run the risk of a meltdown that could likely compound any reputational damage from the crisis.

Jasmine MacDonnell, Ryan Sparrow - move over and make room for Mr. Soudas.

Going waaaay of message

Bernie Ecclestone owns the commercial rights to F1 racing. In an interview with the Times of London he somehow wandered from discussing racing to Hitler. You can guess where this went.

"It's probably my fault in that I got dragged into something I wasn't supposed to discuss – we got out of F1 into something else," Ecclestone said.

However, Ecclestone said he does not regret praising Hitler's leadership "except as usual things were taken a little bit wrong."

Just a bit.

Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'

Even if others say you should, sometimes saying nothing about a good deed is best. A 10 year-old with cancer had a dying wish -- see Pixar's new movie, Up.

"After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.

The company flew an employee with a DVD of Up, which is only in theaters, to the Curtins’ Huntington Beach home on June 10 for a private viewing of the movie.

Colby died about seven hours after seeing the film.

Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved."

That is absolute class. And absolutely the right way to communicate the good deed - silence.

"We have a 100 percent recovery rate ..."

This from Honeywell's European President:

"We have a 100 percent recovery rate of all the black boxes that we have installed that unfortunately may have been involved in accidents so we hope that we will be able to maintain our record and be able to shed some light on what happened."

They made the 'black box' aboard Air France flight 447, which crashed in the sea off Brazil. I think this is an example of missing the bigger picture. Yeah, your recovery rate is important to you, but no one else cares. Let's think bigger than that.

He essentially mentions their record twice and puts most of the emphasis on it. Sure, say you've got a 100% recovery rate, but let's focus on what people care about. Put all the emphasis on helping the families of those lost about Flight 447 understand what happened. It's what's important.

What's the point of even calling?

Toronto Star story about one hair salon in Yorkville suing stylists that left for a competing shop. The silliness of it all makes it news, I guess. The salon owner launching these law suits calls the Star because she says she wants to talk:

Until yesterday, Abrahamse had declined comment.

Yesterday, she called the Star expressing her desire to talk on the record.

"There are two sides to every story," Abrahamse said.

She posed for photos in the morning and scheduled an interview for the afternoon.

By 3 p.m., there were two customers being serviced on Glo's broad first level. Abrahamse and two of her counsel sat down in the empty third-floor spa level for the ostensible interview. Instead of allowing his client to speak, lawyer Bob Klotz handed out a one-page statement.

After summarizing the case, it ended with, "That is all we have to say at this juncture."

The alchemy of lawyers and jerking around a reporter invariably leads to a rough ride. Whenever the law bumps up managing repuations and public perceptions, it's incredibly important to have strong counsel that can balance the often competing needs and goals of lawyers and communicators.