One of the great lines of BS that gets passed around by corporate PR folks is that they have to “protect” the brand and image.
Which is usually coupled with some sort of ridiculous corporate response to something innocuous that always causes more attention to be drawn to the response than ever would have been drawn to the actual infraction, real or perceived.
The thing is, when you or your PR staff start throwing around the idea of “protecting” anything…the first question should be:
“who are we really protecting?”
or
“what are we really protecting?”
If it isn’t something that is tangible, more likely than not, you are offering up a line of BS that is going to do you more harm than good.