An Apology Tour of The Corporate World
A colleague of mine noticed an emerging trend while watching TV. You could call it the apology video. Apology videos are becoming remarkably common these days. They are marketing videos that aren’t afraid to say sorry, but somehow they don’t really say sorry.
The Uber Apology
Uber was once regarded as “a giant among Unicorns,” destined to reimagine and replace a major slice of the transport industry. Then, early last year, it fell apart. A former Uber engineer, Susan Fowler, wrote a devastating blog depicting a “chaotic company-wide culture” of sexual harassment, sexism and unprofessional business practices. Way too many negative headlines followed in its wake. Law suits came knocking at the door and, eventually, CEO Travis Kalanick was forced out.
The video below is part of the marketing effort to stem the bleeding…
The best line in this is: “One of our core values as a company is to always do the right thing.” This is, of course, disingenuous, but that’s the whole dynamic of an apology video. It’s not so much mea culpa, as carpe diem.
Wells Fargo
The Wells Fargo debacle stretches back to September 2016, and it has to be said, is still proceeding. So maybe this video is a little premature. To sum up in as few words as possible: Wells Fargo employees (encouraged by some managers) secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts (in an effort to meet commission targets). The bank retaliated against (i.e. fired) staff who tried to blow the whistle on this illegal behavior. The bank illegally repossessed cars. The bank was also fined for failing to comply with Dodd-Frank. Executives were fired or stepped down.
While I managed to cram the Wells Fargo misdeeds into a few sentences, this video crams them into three words “we lost it”. The take away line from the video is: “we are holding ourselves accountable.”
You can go here (Wells Fargo altered documents about business clients) for the late-breaking news about Wells Fargo. It seems that every month that goes by they have more for which to hold themselves accountable.
Facebook needs no introduction. Its tone-deaf behavior has permeated the news cycle month after month. It’s such a bummer when your technology is used by a foreign power to try to subvert democracy and your part in that includes complicity in giving away personal data. However, if you present it right, it may seem like you were an innocent bystander in all this. (See The Facebook Data Protection Racket)
The best line in the video is: “ But then something happened. We had to deal with spam, clickbait, fake news and data misuse. That’s going to change.”
See, things just happened. What can you do?
But actually it is going to change. Yes, it is. GDPR takes effect on May 25th, 2018!
I feel sorry for what that’s going to do to Facebook’s business.
No. Tell a lie. I don’t.
Robin Bloor Ph D. is the Technology Evangelist for Permission.io, author of The “Common Sense” of Crypto Currency, cofounder of The Bloor Group and webmaster of TheDataRightsofMan.com.
