The Blame Game

We start doing it as children. When Mom puts together the clues of a broken window, glass shards, and a baseball, she asks Little Johnny if he was responsible. “It wasn’t me!” is his reply. Or maybe he blames older Sister Susie for making him do it. He could try to convince Mom that a broken window was not as bad as when Timmy down the street backed his parents' car into the fire hydrant, or he could offer to superglue the window back together with the promise to practice more so his throwing aim improves. Or maybe Little Johnny plainly admits what he did and asks Mom’s forgiveness.

These are not examples of a classic Leave it to Beaver lesson about responsibility—they are examples of tactics used in William Benoit’s image restoration theory. Benoit said there were five types of image restoration tactics that individuals or organizations could use whenever their reputation becomes damaged.

We will look at each of those tactics, with an example of the strategy used in real-world PR crisis situations.

Denial

Caught in a tricky PR situation? You can always deny it ever happened. Maybe it’s an outright blanket denial. Or you call certain elements of the story into question by adding your own evidence, alibis, or relevant information to support your denial. Or as an alternative, maybe you deny your involvement, but then helpfully pass the blame on to someone else (Selzer, 2013, p. 1).

The funny thing about this tactic is that it works best if it is true. Denial did not work out so well for the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton. In the face of the Monica Lewinski scandal, President Clinton delivered this denial to the American people: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinski” (Waxman, 2018).

The problem? He did.

See? It is better when you can deny honestly.

Evading Responsibility

So, you cannot deny it…because you kind of did it. But it was not your fault! When denial is not an option, evading responsibility is another tactic. Humans just do not like to be wrong, so a strong instinct would be to try and shift responsibility away from yourself. One way you could do that was by blaming someone else for making you do it. Another is to plead ignorance—you did not know any better! If the PR crisis could be attributed to an accident, you could shift the responsibility to their arbitrary nature. Finally, you could try to evade responsibility with the most common material paving the road to hell—you had good intentions (Selzer, 2013, p. 1).

Ford evaded responsibility when they blamed Firestone/Bridgestone tires for the rollover crashes in their Explorer models in the late 1990s. Certain models of Firestone/Bridgestone tires would fail as their tread would separate at high speeds, causing crashes and unfortunately hundreds of fatalities. When it was realized that many of these Firestone/Bridgestone-related accidents were happening in Ford Explorers, Ford quickly blamed the tire company. However, Firestone/Bridgestone asserted that Ford intentionally under-inflated the tires to compensate for an issue in Explorer stability, thus creating the problem with the tires. Regardless, the controversy harmed both companies: the issue was estimated to cost Firestone $1.67 billion to Ford’s $530 million. Further fallout ensued as Bridgestone's market price dropped by 50%, leading them to restructure the company at a cost of $2 billion. In 2001, Ford had a loss of $5.5 billion. (Merola, 2020).

Reducing Offensiveness

Benoit’s third image restoration strategy is reducing offensiveness. An accused individual may attempt to reduce “the degree of ill-feeling experienced by the audience” (Selzer, 2013, p. 1) by:

Bolstering—when you distract from the offense by highlighting all your good qualities and actions.

Minimization—getting the audience to believe the PR crisis is not as bad as they think it is .

Differentiation—but if they still think it is bad, you can try to rationalize that it is not as bad as something similar but much worse.

Transcendence—this method tries to make you seem less at fault if you put the situation into a different context.

Attacking one’s accuser—pretty self-explanatory.

Compensation—offering some item of value to mitigate ill feelings (Selzer, 2013, p.1).

When iPhone users discovered that when they replaced the batteries in their older models, it increased their devices’ speed, “Battery Gate” was born. Apple quietly acknowledged in 2018 that it throttled down the speed of older devices and to offset any bad feelings about that revelation, they tried to reduce offensive by means of compensation—discounted $29 replacement batteries (Smith, 2018). It was a good gesture, but not enough; Apple settled a lawsuit in 2020 about the throttled-down iPhones, agreeing to pay a $113 million settlement (Hartmans, 2020).

Corrective Action

Corrective action involves the accused individual promising to fix the problem either by showing they are trying to restore things to the way they were before the incident or by making adjustments to satisfy the public that the incident in question would never happen again.

Hello, rehab. Celebrities often find themselves the subject of PR crises with their bad behavior. Celebrities like Charlie Sheen, Ben Affleck, Lindsay Lohan all publicly entered rehabilitation facilities for some form of abusive behavior as a public atonement and pledge to do better in the future. It almost became a fad—everyone who wanted to be front-page news booked themselves into rehab (Pomarico, 2021).

Harvey Weinstein tried it too, but he was too late to the trend (also his accused crimes were much more severe than others)—his stint in sex rehab did nothing to change public perception (Weiss, 2018).

Mortification

Benoit’s final component of his image restoration theory is mortification. Mortification is the most direct and the sincerest of all the strategies because you are admitting your fault and publicly asking for forgiveness.

Since it is sincere, it is also effective. Hugh Grant famously used the mortification tactic after his arrest for soliciting a Hollywood sex worker. Unfortunately, the arrest happened about two weeks before the release of his latest movie, Nine Months, which just happens to be about the time that publicity for new releases occurs.

Grant was booked for several US talk shows and decided the best thing to do was just face the music. When asked by Jay Leno “what the hell were you thinking?”, Grant answered: “I think you know in life what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it." (Riemenschneider,1995).

Nine Months debuted at #3 at the box office with $12.5 million in its opening weekend (Dutka, 1995).

So if you find yourself in a PR mess, you have a few strategies to choose from to restore your image. Your best bet, however, is to avoid scandals in the first place.

Good luck, and avoid throwing baseballs around glass windows.

References:

Dutka, Elaine (1995, July 18). Weekend Box Office: “Under Siege” Opens in NO. 2 Spot. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-11-me-22547-story.html

Hartmans, A. (2020, July 13). You may now be eligible for a $25 settlement from Apple if your iPhone experienced issues due to 'batterygate'. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-batterygate-iphone-scandal-settlement-2020-7

Merola, T. (2020, July 9). What You Don’t Know About The Infamous Ford-Firestone Controversy. Town Fair Tire. https://www.townfairtire.com/blog/what-you-dont-know-about-the-infamous-ford-firestone-controversy.html

Pomarico, N. (2021, September 4). 20 Celebs Who Have Been to Rehab. Cafemom. https://cafemom.com/entertainment/celebs-rehab-stints

Riemenschneider, C. (1995, July 11). Actor Hugh Grant ‘Fesses Up to Leno on ‘Tonight Show’. LA Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-07-11-me-22547-story.html

Selzer, J. (2013). Pay for Play: Analysis of the Image Restoration Strategies of High Profile College Athletes. Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 4(2),1. http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/820/2/pay-for-play-analysis-of-the-image-restoration-strategies-of-high-profile-college-athletes

Smith, D. (2018, December 30). If you own an iPhone 6 or later that isn't holding its charge, now is the time to get your battery replaced. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-battery-replacement-program-december-2018-9

Waxman, O., & Fabry, M. (2018, May 4). From an Anonymous Tip to an Impeachment: A Timeline of Key Moments in the Clinton-Lewinsky Scandal. https://time.com/5120561/bill-clinton-monica-lewinsky-timeline/

Weiss, B. (2018, March 10). Harvey Weinstein spent time in a $58,000 sex rehab program in Arizona that made him wake up at 6:30 a.m. every day to meditate. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/harvey-weinstein-sex-rehab-center-scottsdale-arizona-2018-3