The Side Note

When you really, truly need to hire a PR person….

I have a hard time believing the advice of Tiger Woods’ publicists has been “make a statement on your Web site and say nothing else to anyone, anywhere.” But that has been Woods’ mantra the last two months. And this has resulted in Woods receiving a lot of negative press, not just for his self-titled “indiscretions,” but also for his complete lack of communication with any media outlet.

Vanity Fair seized the opportunity (very quickly) to write a cover story about the situation in the current issue that exploited some Woods’ early, and quite frankly crude and rude, sexual remarks. If Tiger had come out and made a public address, would things be different? I don’t know. Maybe. But this is now a crisis-communications-gone-bad case study.

Woods has hurt the golf industry. His sponsors and the PGA TOUR will lose money over this scandal. A lot of people will lose money over this scandal. Woods would have done himself well to have been more publicly cognizant of the ripples of his actions.

But just “speaking to the media” will not get the job done. Take this weeks’ example of the ex-Tennessee football coach, Lane Kiffin. He abruptly resigned after 14-months on the job. If you know SEC football, you know the passion that exists with alumni and fans for their teams. Kiffin ignited a furry of passion on Tuesday night when he resigned as head coach for the Tennessee Vols and took his top staff members with him.

The PR problem he made only got worse when, in his hastily-called press conference, he made no apologies for leaving, he was arrogant in his statement and he refused to take questions. See the press conference for yourself:

His comments to the press sparked riots in Knoxville and ignited a flurry of online hostility. An article in American Chronicle illustrates that the online reaction to his departure included videos, tweets and Facebook pages.

Among the Facebook pages created in Kiffin’s departure is one called, “Dear Lane Kiffin, We hate you. Love, the Vols.” It has 36,402 members.

Another is, “I was betrayed by Lane Kiffin.” It has 12,904 members.

The lesson we need to learn from Kiffin and Woods is when you are about to make a lot of people mad, try to be humble in doing it. Try to show compassion. Try to act human. If we have learned nothing from politicians, it is that you can make mistakes and people will forgive you – if you admit the mistake, if you are regretful and if you promise to try to do right by your constituents. Many people don’t know how to craft these types of messages. And it is OK to admit you need help, because sometimes you really should just hire a good PR pro to do this type of work for you.