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I know it’s not a particularly creative title for a story, but it just happens to be totally accurate in this instance. Of course, I’m talking about Apple the company, and the recent brouhaha over the iPhone 4. For those of you without access to the outside world, the swanky new iPhone 4 has been selling like no other smartphone has ever sold but the Apple groupies aren’t entirely happy. At issue is the unusually high number of dropped calls, even with perennial whipping boy AT&T available as the convenient scapegoat. Seems that when you hold the phone in a certain way, quite normally in fact for us lefthanders, calls are routinely dropped even when the signal bars appear to be strong. The only conclusion, say the techies, is (gasp!) a design flaw.

Before I go any further, a word of disclosure. I’m not a particularly huge fan of Apple products. I have an iPod that’s so old that my family refers to it as a DinoPod (perhaps because of the content I’ve downloaded rather than the product itself). But mostly, I resent being told what the next cool thing is by some guy my own age, and I am further horrified by the lemmings that follow him over the cliff. Now, of course, Apple is bigger than Microsoft, so all these Apple geeks have to grapple with the fact that the cool upstart is now bigger than the beast itself. Does that make Apple yesterday’s news? That’s for another column.

Anyway, I digress. This is about the incredibly poor management of this “crisis” by the arrogant communications team at the big Apple. I’ve been around the crisis communications block a few times in my 25 years in PR and I can smell a “crisis management” strategy a mile off. This was a fairly transparent example, and not very well thought out. Two common principles in crisis management were on display here: first, “widen the circle of guilt,” and secondly, “blame the media.” Let’s take a closer look. Mr. Cool was on stage last Friday telling the world that AntennaGate was indeed an issue, but it’s not Apple’s problem alone, others suffer from the exact same problem. To illustrate his point, he embarked on one of the tackiest pieces of PR I’ve witnessed in a long time. It was pathetic watching Jobs on TV trying to widen the circle by saying Blackberrys have the same problem rather than saying what I was dying for him to say which is, “Hey, we’re Apple, you love us, we love you, but sometimes even we screw up and here’s what we’re going to do to fix it.” Did he really have to show (unsubstantiated) video of other manufacturers’ problems? Tacky in the extreme, and more importantly, most un-Apple like. Great leadership brands lead partly by ignoring the competition. Then, blame the media? Jobs said this issue has been “blown way out of proportion.” Oh really? Seems to me that the master of media manipulation may have lost his playbook for a second. He who lives by the media frenzy can also be hurt by it (just ask Tiger). This flaw was not created by the media. It was not brought to his attention by the media but rather by the legions of loyal followers he so covets. (As as side note, take a look at Dennis Kneale’s great piece called “Apple’s Core Problem: Credibility” on CNBC.com about the truth, lies and antennagate. www.cnbc.com). Again, bad crisis management strategy, and of course, the ironic vision of Jobs on stage trying to manipulate the very people he’s partially blaming for his little crisis.

So, what would have been the best approach? As with most things in life, the best path here would have been the truth. All Apple needed to do was admit to the problem, offer a solution and move on. Letterman’s strategy vs. Tiger’s? But when you have an ego the size of Apple’s and have drunk so much of your own Kool-Aid, the truth can sometimes be a hard thing to locate. What’s truly sad about this tale of poor communications is that Apple will have learned nothing from it. This week, the company reported blow out earnings with the Showman back on stage saying he could have sold more iPhones if only he could manufacture them fast enough.

Not sure what’s sadder in this tale – the blatant arrogance and deceit of a great American icon brand, or the continued stupidity of the great American public. Probably a tie, and no doubt both will continue to do what they do best.

I love the phrase from Henry Ford, “If I asked my customers what they want, they’d say a faster horse.” It succinctly communicates the conundrum of market research for communications planning.

Every brand team I’ve ever worked with conducts extensive market study with the goal of getting deeper into the psyche of the target audience. How do they think? What are their habits and desires? Aspirations? Attitudes? What are the brand attributes they look for? How does X brand fit into their everyday lives?

Armed with that information, we in PR, along with our agency partners on the DTC and online sides, trot off and develop our communications recommendations knowing they were supportable and research-based. That’s all we need to develop an effective program, right?

Not always. Here’s why:

• As is typically the case with questionnaire-based research, the output is only as good as the input. Even when you think you’ve got the right tone, the right queries, the right target, the end product is not gospel. It’s a guide.
• People often don’t know what they want or how they feel, so they dutifully complete the questionnaire but the answers may only reflect their true opinions at the time they gave them. The yield: some good insights.
• Unless your brand is first to market, or you are introducing a new message never before heard by your customer, chances are the responses are colored by a positive experience or frustration with existing brands. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but I always maintain a little distance in those cases to avoid positioning the brand as the rebound relationship, rather than the ideal based on its own merits.
• Regardless of what some audiences – especially if older adults are an important audience – report about dissatisfaction with this or that, they don’t like change.

Even with all these caveats, market research is a necessary and critical part of strategic and tactical planning. When we’re putting together PR recommendations, we draw on a variety of research – market studies, media audits, soft soundings with third party organizations, discussions with key opinion leaders, historical review, competitive analyses, and trends. We are guided by the information we collect, but are not wedded to it. We view the research data as an important ingredient in the communications recipe to which we often add experience, something new, a bit of the unexpected, and instinct. Finally, we ensure what we deliver is measurable. The finishing touch may also include a carefully considered and well informed leap of faith with the anticipated result that our target audience will welcome the information as something they couldn’t quite articulate but have been looking for all along.

The FDA’s new Bad Ad Program conveys many messages, both overt and subtle. The obvious ones: the FDA believes there are misleading prescription drug promotions out there, and the government needs the help of health care providers to identify them. The underlying but nonetheless crystal clear message:  Healthcare providers –and by extension patients, their families, consumers–should not trust the pharmaceutical industry and certainly not their ads and promotions.

That the Rx industry continues to be cast in the role of the villain is not news.  Poll after poll show the need for pharma companies to improve trust. It’s not as if the industry isn’t listening.  The industry invests significant time, energy and resources—people and financial— into programs that give back globally and locally, and on corporate reputation. Just look at any company’s website to see the good that’s being done at home and around the world.

But with this new black cloud, the negative perceptions may come dangerously close to overwhelming any of the realities.  In today’s world where the public trust has been compromised in so many different arenas –Madoff, Toyota, BP, Wall Street –the pharmaceutical industry is in pretty shabby company and Americans are in no mood to forgive.

Now, more than ever, credibility is everything, and PR has long been the communications “credibility” vehicle of choice.  PR can help companies dial up the trust factor in brand marketing by providing the communications balance to DTC investments through programs that deliver against a higher cause – patient education, disease awareness, free screenings, easier access to important information for at-risk patients and families. Moreover, we can help build relationships and establish partnerships with the full range of players from the for-profit and non-profit sectors on important health issues, and support company communications with important stakeholders using clear language and decisive actions.

According to a recent Harris poll, only 18% found pharma advertising most trustworthy compared to ads from four other major US industries.  Although every word of every claim and every visual that appears in a pharma ad is regulated, whether it’s a “good” ad or a “bad ad” isn’t clear, not even to the regulators.  Trust is at the heart of the issue, and we in PR should embrace this latest challenge and do what we do best to help our healthcare clients with counsel and programming that will help to close the the credibility gap.