Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I'm Not Cynical Enough

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Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I'm Not Cynical Enough

By letterhead | October 18, 2009

After my last post on the total impotence of PR, I felt a twinge of guilt. “Am I just too cynical? Too bitter? Surely there are flacks with integrity out there. Surely someone somewhere in the dark corners of the profession cares about it. Somewhere, surely, some company takes it seriously.”

Then I did some reading up on the recent PriceWaterhousCoopers (PWC) debacle — i.e., the AHIP study. What a mess… and so instructive as to the points made in my last several posts, which spanked the PR profession for being so constantly impotent and wrong.

For those living under a rock, the issue is that PWC authored a report for the health insurance industry lobby (AHIP) — released on the eve of an important vote in the Senate — that claimed insurance costs would rise under the proposed legislation. (WaPo story here)

Since the report was released, it has backfired on AHIP and PWC. The report has become a rallying point for the bill’s proponents who decry the report as a biased hatchet job. (It was… CNBC story by way of Motley Fool here.)

And PWC is now backing away from the report, saying that — AT THE REQUEST OF AHIP — PWC only analyzed a small slice of the bill’s measures to come up with its conclusions. Politico has a good brief on PWC’s backtracking, but the ever humorous Donkelphant says it better than LiteralMayhem even could:

Allow me to translate, “AHIP asked us [PWC] to conduct an intellectually dishonest study and we did it because they paid handsomely. But we didn’t realize they were going to act as if this was iron clad evidence that premiums would skyrocket. That’s why we’re stepping in and calling BS on them so they don’t destroy our credibility.”

A SEEMING NO-BRAINER… EXCEPT FOR THE BRAIN DEAD

Imagine, as a PR pro, a business team lead at your firm comes to you — in the middle of the most bitter, vituperative, mud-slinging fight over government policy since Medicare — and says that he wants you write a press release touting the firm’s work on a report (sponsored by health insurers) that could scuttle the entire legislative process. You say:

a) “Why sure. Let me just get my handy guide to superlatives so I know how to make it sound really super-important.”

b) “No problem. I don’t care about having a job, or a career.”

c) “Alrighty then. Is this report accurate? Has this been vetted by legal, regulatory affairs, and compliance?”

d) “You’re a moron get the fuck out of my office.”

WHAT COULD THEY POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN THINKING?

The PWC affair illustrates a crucial point about the limitations of PR as it is currently practiced: business people don’t care about it and don’t even think about it until it’s too late.

One has to wonder what the fuck the “executives” at PWC were thinking. What could the head of PWC’s healthcare practice have been thinking… to take on an assignment like this in the first place?

The assignment… to assess the cost impact of an isolated number of provisions in an enormous and complex piece of legislation… is by definition biased.

Presumably a person with decades of experience in healthcare should have a teensy weensy inkling that such a report would be not just be explosive in its implications, but create a political firestorm with PWC right in the center. And where were PWC’s armies of legal experts, regulatory experts, communications people (internal and external), marketing gurus?

Anyone with three functioning neurons could see that AHIP was looking for third-party corroboration of it’s own selective calculations. Yet, not one of PWC’s in-house geniuses had the foresight to see this freight train coming from miles away?

Were the PR people at PWC involved in any of the deliberations about the release of this material? Did they see the report before AHIP released it? Were they involved in the decision to take on this assignment in the first place?

Here’s a thought… by way of analogy… before putting your foot on a landmine, call in a landmine expert to tell you if it’s armed.

The brain trust at PWC makes their living instructing people on how to run their businesses. They presumably OUGHT TO KNOW HOW TO RUN ONE THEMSELVES! What they have clearly showed here is monumental incompetence.

At the very least they have demonstrated a tin ear to the issues of reputational risk, and how to “integrate risk mitigation seamlessly into the business process”… to put in consultant-speak that even PWC can understand.

PR IS THE FOOTMAIDEN TO PROFIT

We see it time and time again. We’ve written about it time and time again. Honestly it gets exhausting.

Businesses are about business. They don’t give a flying fig about anything except business until the consequences hit them in the wallet. One would think with the demise of Arthur Anderson still visible in the rear view mirror, PWC would have been a bit more cautious. But no, sadly and predictably, they weren’t. The client got what the client wanted.

PWC signed on to disastrous piece of business, let it wend it’s way through weeks (if not months) of research and writing, editing and approvals, and not one person in authority had the sense to kill it before it saw the light of day.

And what of PWC’s handling of the mess? If you do a search for “AHIP” on the PWC website you get… nothing! If you search “America’s Health Insurance Plans” you get nothing more recent than July 2008. If you go to the “Press Room” there is no mention of the study or the statement that was issued on Oct 13. So much for transparency and values in PR.

Thank goodness for the bloggers in pajamas who keep track of such things. You can see the PWC statement at Firedog lake here.

All of this makes PWC’s corporate responsibility statements (here and here) sound like baloney, especially the statement onPWC’s global site:

Today, many people believe that business has a positive responsibility to operate in ways that benefit society and foster its well-being on a sustained—and sustainable—basis.

DEJAVU ALL OVER….

PWC, like so many companies before them, will likely have to spend millions more on repairing their reputation than they earned on one stupid project in the first place.

It will cost them gobs of time, money, energy and indigestion to overcome a perception that every piece of PWC business advice now comes with an automatic disclaimer: “We’re greedy idiots.”

So much for the value of PR as a corporate conscience…

Topics: Media, PR 2.0, Politics, Public Relations | No Comments »

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Brain-Dead PWC… Maybe I'm Not Cynical Enough

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