The Role Of Marketing When Things Go Wrong

Summary

"I think we learned a long time ago from J&J that a very smart way to go at any kind of product or company dilemma is to be honest and to be quick about your honesty."

– Sharon Driscoll, IBM VP Demand Generation talks to MeetTheBoss about product innovation in marketing and marketing strategy innovation.

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Sharon Driscoll

Sharon Driscoll is VP Demand Generation, Systems & Technology Group at IBM.

Sharon Driscoll

Every company faces the prospect of having a systemicfailure within their organization, within their product, within the things thatthey deliver to the world.  I think welearned a long time ago from J&J that a very smart way to go at any kind ofproduct or company dilemma is to be honest and to be quick about yourhonesty. 

So I would beinclined to say that any company facing any kind of a negative situation shouldobviously quickly go to rectify, but should be very, very honest about what’shappening because nothing is infallible and I think consumers know that.

Where I think ourbusiness people and consumers get nervous is when they think that they don’tknow the whole story.  So for mepersonally I would advocate that any company who was facing a situation thathad any kind of negative impact would go out very quickly, say this is whatwe’ve learned, this is when we learned it, here are the fixes that we’reputting into place and of course we’re dreadfully sorry.  I think people would give them credit forbeing dreadfully sorry for anything that had happened.

But you must go outthere and say what should you know. You’ll know all that we know and here’s how we’re going to fix it.