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The owner of The Safety Warehouse must step up and apologize for the company’s controversial $ 100,000 cash drop, public relations experts say.
David Cormack of The Draper Cormack Group said the wrong events, such as a cash crash, could do considerable damage to a company’s reputation.
“People see it as a business that benefits from those who are struggling,” he said.
The event was marketed on social media as “New Zealand’s first massive cash drop”, with the promise of $ 100,000 “in value” flying from the sky.
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People flocked by the hundreds after getting free tickets, but when the cash started pouring in and people realized it was fake money, the atmosphere became volatile, according to witnesses.
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Counterfeit cash handed out in The Safety Warehouse cash crash has caused outrage.
Police confirmed Monday that they were making inquiries.
In a press release Sunday night, Thorn said the event had been “unfairly characterized” as one with fake money.
He said “royal funds” were given away, and he never expected that the inclusion of coupons would have created “so much hostility and a misunderstood narrative.”
Thorn said the coupons were added after risk assessments were conducted to help mitigate “offensive behavior between customers.”
“The Safety Warehouse stands behind our marketing and what aired at the event.”
But a cash fall like this would always attract people who had been struggling and looking for a way out of financial difficulties, Cormack said.
“You’re playing with the hopes and dreams of the people and the people who can least afford to take time off from work, or take time off and ride a 10-hour bus trip from Levin to attend. So it seems really callous and unpleasant to those who can least afford it. “
The cash fall also looked dishonest and “dishonesty in this country is a bad smell to you as a business,” he said.
The flip side of the situation was that it presented the company with an opportunity to acknowledge that it had made a mistake, Cormack said.
Companies that had made a misstep like this were generally advised to acknowledge and apologize for their mistakes as a first step in rehabilitating their image, he said.
Australian airline Qantas was a good example of a business that had recovered after a public debacle, Cormack said.
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Public relations guru David Cormack says companies needed to own their mistakes to rebuild trust with the community.
In the midst of a bad year for the company that included staffing problems, strikes and flight delays, Qantas launched a social media campaign asking customers to share their favorite moments with the airline.
Participants could be entered into the drawing to win a Qantas pajamas.
“People started sharing their terrible experiences with Qantas in their place and they found it horrible,” he said.
Qantas regressed, focused on its core business, and resurfaced a few years later with an improved reputation.
Marketing director at the University of Auckland Business School, Bodo Lang, said there were some steps in crisis management that companies needed to take to repair their image.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s an oil spill or a customer relationship disaster or a faulty product, the first step is basically for the highest person in the organization to stand up to the media and the public and acknowledge that something went wrong, to apologize and tell them what the company is doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again, ”Lang said.
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Auckland University Business School Marketing Director Bodo Lang said businesses that were not moving quickly risk irreparable damage.
The final step was to identify those affected and find some kind of remedy, he said.
Hello Fresh provided an example of a company that responded quickly after a customer was forced to seek medical attention for food poisoning from fish in the meal kit, he said.
The company moved quickly to alert customers, initiated rebates for the fish and examined its processes to make sure a similar problem did not recur, Lang said.
But for companies that didn’t take proactive action quickly, a miscalculated event could be the first nail in the coffin, Lang said.
Cadbury was the classic example, Lang said.
To save money in 2009, Cadbury started using vegetable fat, including palm oil, in its chocolate instead of cocoa butter.
The public outcry was huge and spread among people who did not like the new flavor and who did not like the environmental impact of palm oil production.
After holding out for a short time, Cadbury got the cocoa butter back, but the blow to its image was huge, Lang said.
“I think Safety Warehouse could really suffer from this. Any business that has used this place will just go away, let’s not support this place, ”he said.
Safety Warehouse has been contacted for comment.
