Bank goodwill to stem negative PR hits

Who had worse publicity during the last two weeks?

Arguments for any of the following can be made: NCAA, Major League Baseball, Wake Forest University and Boeing. The NCAA because of its weekly legal spend to defend its not-so-amateur model after years of losing the same debate; Major League Baseball for see-through pants; Wake Forest for not ensuring an opponent’s basketball team walked off the court safely and Boeing because well, none of us want to see wing-area doors open. Ever. Certainly, not midair then learn whoops — machinists missed some parts.

Boeing’s major-major issue, as opposed to its major issues, happened a few weeks ago, but other safety cases continue to pop up on its planes, and flyers and airline personnel are looking at them with more scrutiny each day.

For MLB, understand that Nike designed and Fanatics manufactured players’ uniform pants, but the motherload of public finger-pointing has gone toward the league. After all, assuming there were quality control checks at the drawing board and factory, the league had to sign off on them. (By the way, that story broke at least a week ago and it’s still among the most discussed topics when fans bring up the coming season because 99 percent of us giggle like 10-year-olds with see-through anythings.)

If you read no further, each of these PR crises are louder than others of late because organizations haven’t earned the public’s benefit of doubt. If you bank enough goodwill, sometimes things like see-through pants will be a joke one day and forgotten the next because the public trusts you to make things right.

The rest

How do you stop hits to your reputation when things go sideways? Here are some suggestions for the above businesses. Some may mirror something you’ve gone through.

NCAA — Own your errors and failed arguments to save what little goodwill you have left. Save a few dollars after the millions you’ve already spent on lobbying for empty antitrust arguments and call it a day. It’s time for an organization that acts quicker than government to do its job, which is supposed to be in the interests of college athletes. The national association hurts collegiate sports each day it fails to act on its own (with new rules) or exit. Athletic departments have been operating on guesses since the Alston case, which dealt with education-related compensation, came down. As a result of lost cases in court, most anything goes. It’s understandable that athletics personnel feel like they’re on a rollercoaster that will never stop.

Major League Baseball (Nike and Fanatics, too) — Listen to your players. They’re the ones who will wear these uniforms. If they’re not comfortable whether it’s because they feel like they’re in a new version of wet t-shirt contests or it hampers their play, you made a mistake. I hope discussions are far enough along that corrections are being made and baseball will become a main talking point instead of see-through pants.

Wake Forest — You can emerge as the good guys if you make the first move to combat court-storming. There are a bazillion other ways fans can celebrate a big win without putting athletes at risk. It will take uniform discouragement for things to change.

Boeing — Have you never assembled IKEA furniture? So what if you have to spend extra time assembling an airplane? Rumor has it that when it’s done correctly, the flying tubes will last longer than a BESTÅ TV storage unit. 

Until next time … be kind and love one another.