Since August is National Catfish Month, we’re dedicating this month to calling out unscrupulous companies with low morals and appalling track records for customer relations. You can read the first instalment in our series here.
A time-honored tradition of corporate America, the apology ad has experienced something of a renaissance in the past year. Uber, Facebook and Wells Fargo all aired mea culpa advertisements during the NBA Finals, with their wrongdoings ranging from sexual harassment claims (oopsie-daisies!) to flagrant data abuse (please forgive us!) through to large-scale commercial fraud (pretty please forgive us and maybe forget this ever happened?).
To take another Latin phrase, te futueo et caballum tuum—that is, screw you, and the horse you rode in on. We have no doubt that these companies are sorry—that is, sorry their shoddy ethics got exposed. Blind to everything but the bottom line, these companies are now suffering the consequences in the form of plunging stakeholder value, less new business and even congressional testimonials rich with schadenfreude.
Unfortunately, our tiny violins are getting tuned, so we won’t be able to play a sad dirge for these mega-corporations with their mega-profits. The public isn’t so quick to forgive these faux pas these days either (even when the company takes out a full-page ad in the New York Times that does pretty much the bare minimum in taking ownership).
This standard of corporate apology just doesn’t cut it anymore. Here’s why:
Consumers Can Read Between the Lines
Integrity is One of the Most Treasured Qualities a Brand Can Possess
….
To read our full article and hear how Wells Fargo is earning back your trust, click here.
Photo Credits: Unsplash / John Schnobrich, Pexels / rawpixel