WHAT IF...?

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS

What if every company used Tylenol’s wonderful 1980’s response to the tainting of its products as a model for modern crisis communications?

What if someone in the PR Department at AIG had said, “Wait a minute! Do we really think it’s appropriate to reward the people who drove us into the ditch, and who destroyed the life savings of so many millions of people?”

What is someone in the PR Department at Wells Fargo had said, “Wait a minute! Do we really think it’s appropriate to be planning lavish parties when so many of the people who hold mortgages with us are going under?”

What if more companies didn’t try to be everything to everyone, but just focused on doing the best they could within their niche?

What if most company presidents who did TV commercials – or mea culpas – didn’t come off as stiff, over-rehearsed, under-genuine windbags who could never really empathize with the millions who feel betrayed by them?

What if the insurance and banking executives whose boundless greed helped create the financial crisis…actually had to experience the pain that other folks have experienced because of their folly?

What if companies stopped making claims about their products that they know – full well – aren’t true? (Or, conversely, what if they started making products that actually do live up to their claims?)

What if companies, in their advertising and marketing approaches, started talking more about us – and our needs – rather than themselves?

What if more PR and marketing executives believed that the way for their companies or clients to generate attention was not to should louder than the other guy…but to speak with more substance?

What if they banned celebrity spokespeople from the media…and products had to be hawked only on their actual merits?

What if Super Bowl ads actually spoke about the benefits of their products and services…rather than turn the nation’s most-watched television event into a competition for the most technologically-wizardrous ad?

What if we actually spoke with our publics…instead of to them?

Steve Winston
President, WINSTON COMMUNICATIONS
(954) 575-4089
steve@winstoncommunications.com
www.winstoncommunications.com