“Ok, You Dirty Rats” – No, That’s Not James Cagney But PR Damage Control, Never More Needed Than When Rodents Invade Your Restaurant Or When Loaded Airplanes Sit For Hours On The Tarmac

Philip Stone March 6, 2007

What’s the worst thing that can happen to a restaurant chain? How about video shown around the world of big fat rats prancing all over one of your New York restaurants? Perhaps worse could be if a significant number of guests a couple of months before throughout the East Coast got e-coli poisoning from tainted lettuce and that had customers staying away in droves. Both happened to Taco Bell and yet the shares for its parent Yum Brands are still flying high on Wall Street.

Then take the case of low-price Jet Blue airways. A huge winter storm hit the Northeast US. Many airlines canceled flights early. Jet Blue didn’t. In fact it loaded its planes and sent them out to the runways where they sat and sat and sat. It was an absolute debacle, 1100 flights eventually canceled, the airline paralyzed for days. Passengers furious and even angrier when it took days and days to get their luggage back. Yet, after a slight blip Jet Blue’s shares are back where they were before the disaster.

It’s times like these that a company needs to know that it has a PR disaster plan in the can ready to go. When the disaster hits is too late to think of a plan, you have to have it beforehand and practice, practice, practice.

Yum Brands, owner of the Taco Bell food franchise, has had a horrible three months. Last December 71 people fell ill after eating in several East Coast restaurants. In February the chain was humiliated globally by video broadcast over the Internet showing rats prancing around one of its New York restaurants (even the New York Times’ s web story linked to the YouTube video).

Tainted lettuce caused the e coli food poisoning, but it took a couple of weeks to track it down. What to do? The company heavily promoted it was closing the affected restaurants for sanitizing, it very publicly hired a food safety expert, it made available very quickly tests done on its food, and it hired a PR crisis-response firm.  Shortly thereafter the chain took out newspaper ads in its largest markets saying it was safe to eat at Taco Bell, and promoting its safety policies, and for good measure it changed some food suppliers.

Although it used a company spokesman to make announcements, it made sure its President, Greg Creed, was in on the act giving out statements, showing to be on top of things. He was quoted in the New York Times saying how his people were cooperating with state investigators and how health investigators thought the worst had passed.

Spokesman Will Bortz made all the right noises, “As we move forward, what we would really like is to work with government regulators and the rest of the industry to figure out how to change how things are dealt with at the farm and supplier level," Bortz said. "We need to see if we can stop this from ever happening again."

It took until the company’s fourth quarter financial report, released in February, to see the financial damage – Taco Bell’s earning for the quarter dropped only 5% when many thought it would have been much worse. Perhaps the only people Yum Brands weren’t entirely up-front with was their own shareholders – the word “e-coli” never appeared in the quarterly report, rather there was a “product sourcing” problem.

So with this under its belt what chance did a couple of dozen rats have in a Taco Bell Greenwich Village restaurant? A passerby walking by the restaurant that had not opened yet for the day was amazed to see through the window that rats had taken over the place. The media got called; still photos and video got taken. A PR nightmare. But Yum Brands knew how to swing into action.

“Northing is more important to us than the health and safety of our customers,” a corporate statement said. “This (incident)  is completely unacceptable and is an absolute violation of our high standards. This store will remain completely closed until this issue is completely resolved.” The city sent food inspectors around and noted 92 violations, and the mayor reiterated the restaurant would stay closed until the rats were gone permanently and everything sanitized. Apparently there was construction work in the basement that disturbed the rats and gave them a large opening into the restaurant.

Taco Bell wants the public to accept the situation is isolated. That would have been easier without the e coli problem. Now, within three months people will remember only there was bad news a couple of times about Taco Bell. Jennifer Sheehy, vice president/crisis prevention and management for Boston-based Cone, told MediaPost the fact that video is out there on the Internet means this bad news is not about to go away any time soon. "What would've been an incident isolated to one area, with limited repercussions for the brands is now being spread all over the country, even the world," she said.

Another crisis management expert said if the problem becomes too bad then Taco Bell might have to resort to the ultimate crisis plan – change its name. Its been done before -- discount airline Valujet had a plane go down in the Florida Everglades 10 years ago and to recover the airline changed its name to AirTran.

Another discount airline that hopes it doesn’t have to resort to a name change is Jet Blue. Founded in February, 1999, it had seemed the airlione could do no wrong. It kept prices down yet each passenger has a TV entertainment system in the seatback in front  of him,  leather seats, and the planes were   usually on time. Until the big East Coast ice storm of February, 2006. Whereas other airlines saw what was coming and canceled flights and tried to notify passengers as best they could, Jet Blue didn’t have that infrastructure –  a cost savings allowing it to keep fares down. It didn’t cancel the flights and instead loaded its planes and sent them out onto the runways where they sat, and sat, and sat. Many more than five hours. Passengers were not happy. Even unhappier when it took days to get their luggage back. The airline shut down for a few days, it had planes and crews in the wrong places; it was as bad a nightmare as any airline could dream.

And it was its founder and CEO, David Neeleman, who took point in trying to calm a very angry public.

Using the rules laid down by Harvard University’s “Avoiding PR Disasters,” taken from its Management Communication Letter issued in May, 2001,  let’s judge how Neeleman did.

Rule 1: Be honest. That Neeleman was. He gave a news conference and said it was all the airline’s fault. It should not have happened, it didn’t have the right infrastructure to handle such an emergency, and he was talking steps to fix that.

Rule 2: Convey empathy with authority: He said he was sorry countless times, his body motion indicated how upset he was at what had happened, and he made clear he was the boss and he was going to make sure it never happened again.

Rule 3: Use a top executive if he is good at it: Neeleman is CEO and he was very good. There could be little doubt by anyone listening to him that he knew it was a disaster and that he would make sure it didn’t happen again. (Another snowstorm hit a couple of weeks later. This time Jet Blue canceled flights early).

Rule 4: Never say “No comment”:  Neeleman was as talkative as one could hope. He was forthright with the press. Didn’t try to hide how bad the company had performed. The only time there was a real slip-up was when the disaster was actually occurring and the media got wind of what was happening and wanted to interview stranded passengers. The airline eventually stopped the media from entering its JFK terminal. That was a bad decision.

Rule 5: Have a crisis Plan: Boy, did he come out with a crisis plan. He set up a customer Bill of Rights that garnered huge positive publicity for the airline. The Bill of Rights basically promises to pay money or gives travel vouchers to passengers for a large number of possible travel mishaps in the future . They ranged from $100 back if the flight is delayed on the tarmac for more than three hours, $25 back if you can’t get off the plane within 30 minutes of arrival,  and suffer a six hour or longer delay waiting to get on a plane and you are given a round trip ticket for a future flight at the same value. The company figures it will spend some $26 million compensating passengers for the calamity.

Neeeleman also sent out an email to all his customers – not just those who were affected by the storm but it seems anyone who had ever flown with the airline and for whom the airline had an email address. In that email Neeleman wrote such lines as, “Words cannot express how truly sorry we are for the anxiety, frustration, and inconvenience that we caused …We are committed to you, our valued customers, and are talking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in us…We have published the JetBlue Airways Customer Bill of rights including details of compensation …You deserved better – a lot better – from us last week. Northing is more important than regaining your trust.“

Whether any of this works is ultimately up to the customer who will weigh a bad experience versus a low price ticket. But at least Jet Blue followed the crisis plan to the letter. That it did right!

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