I have a new post up today on HBR Blogs about how Apple broke all of the public relations rules in handling AntennaGate and it worked completely. It is a little tongue in cheek (5 essentially made-up rules of PR conventional wisdom and I am no PR expert) — although the point is serious. The PR rules actually do come partly from a PR expert, Nick Morgan, who wrote (also on HBR blogs) at the time that Apple’s PR handling was a complete disaster. Clearly I disagree.
2 thoughts on “AntennaGate in HBR Blogs”
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Core Economics 
This may be an effective way to handle product problems that are being fueled by media hype, But I doubt whether it would have worked in, for example Johnson & Johnson’s 1982 Tylenol disaster – chiefly because competitive pain relief medications were not known to contain any cyanide.
But it may be an effective strategy in cases like Toyota’s recent unintended acceleration one, insofar as if a driver accidentally tramps on the accelerator instead of the break, any motor vehicle will accelerate.
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The key difference may be the level of actual or perceived harm. Poison in bottles of Tylenol or exploding Bridgestone tires on Fords have greater impact on personal safety than the quality (of lack thereof) of iPhone signals. Maybe things would be different if the iPhone antenna caused a rash or something ?
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