Damage Control

The holidays aren’t so jolly for FedEx, which is now battling bad press and late-night jokes after one of its “couriers” was caught on tape tossing a computer monitor over a fence. The monitor broke, the video is viral (and available after the jump), and the damage control has begun.

Matthew Thornton, the SVP of U.S. operations for the company, has filmed a video of his own and issued a statement on the company’s website stating how sorry and embarrassed the company is, restating its customer service standards, and assuring us that the issue has been resolved with the customer.

Also, he wants to make it clear that this was an isolated incident. “It is one person and one package,” he writes.

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Has Words With Friends-gate finally reached its finale?

Alec Baldwin appeared on SNL this weekend dressed as American Airlines’ “Capt. Steve Rogers” to apologize to the star, talk up how wonderful his is, and explain why any normal person playing Words With Friends would leave their seat and slam the lavatory door as the plane is about to take off.

One PR blogger thinks the skit was a good move. Your thoughts?

Apparently, with Herman Cain out of the GOP race, Rick Perry has decided to become the new gaffe machine.

Over the weekend, Perry added to the list when he called Solyndra, the bankrupt solar energy company that is causing problems for the Obama administration, a country. After the Iowa debate on Saturday, Perry stuck around and talk to people. That’s when trouble ensued.

“No greater example of it than this administration sending millions of dollars into the solar industry, and we lost that money,” Perry said, discussing what he says has been the President’s mishandling of government spending. “I want to say it was over $500 million that went to the country Solynda.” Not only did he call it a country, he forgot the “r.” Oh you, Rick Perry.

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Earlier today, Herman Cain taught us a lesson about using words carefully. Now Paypal is teaching us to use our rules carefully.

Regretsy.com, a site that pokes fun at ridiculous things they find on Etsy, decided to be nice and try to raise money to buy Christmas gifts for needy kids. We don’t fully understand what happened — it looks like they broke a rule about using something reserved for nonprofits — but Paypal tried to shut down the effort.

Rule number one for avoiding bad press and being a good citizen of the world: Do not interfere negatively with any effort to help needy children.

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Hilary Swank made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her movie New Year’s Eve, talk about the eggs she just bought, and tell the world that she now knows she should do her research before going to a suspected human rights violator’s birthday party.

You’ll recall, Swank got into trouble for making an appearance at an event for Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov (Jean Claude Van Damme and Seal a.k.a. Mr. Heidi Klum were also there). The Human Rights Foundation says they tried to warn her. Swank has apologized, donated the money, and has fired a few people over the issue. Her PR firm, 42West dumped her because of it.

Last night, Swank continued to explain, with help from Leno who tossed her a few softballs and made up some excuse about celebrities being dopes and just getting on planes when they’re told to.

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Lt. Pike pepper-spraying the subject of Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World."

Video of a UC Davis campus cop, Lt. John Pike, in full riot gear confronting peaceful student demonstrators and then casually pepper-spraying them went viral on Friday. The reaction from authorities to the viral clip has been swift: two police officers and the police chief were placed on leave, and UC President Mark Yudof has called for a review of police procedures across the entire system.

The school said in a statement that police Chief Annette Spicuzza was placed on “administrative leave to restore trust and calm tensions.” The campus is in an uproar. And rightfully so.

Besides the damage that this has been done by this truly disturbing video, a clever Internet meme has popped up to comment on the outrage.

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Oftentimes when we hear about a PR disaster, we look immediately to the person, brand, or company to detect whether a crisis plan is in place to minimize the damage. No plan, you say? Well that was stupid.

But even if you have a plan and you execute it as best you can, there are other factors, like the facts, that can get in the way.

In today’s guest post, Don Goldberg, partner at comms firm Bluetext, analyzes the limits of damage control. Goldberg spent a decade on Capitol Hill, was a senior member of President Clinton’s comms staff, and has worked with companies including GM and Halliburton. So he’s been around some damage.

Click through to read on.

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As we mentioned in this morning’s Ticker, Ashton Kutcher has turned his Twitter account, and its more than eight million followers, over to Katalyst, the firm he co-founded with Jason Goldberg and Anthony Platt.

After getting blowback following a tweet in defense of former Penn State coach Joe Paterno, Kutcher said on his blog that he’s going to hand “the management of the feed” over to the Katalyst team. According to Kutcher, he tried deleting the tweets after he learned about the school’s child abuse scandal, but it was too late. Tweeters had already launched their attack, as they are wont to do.

It’s interesting that Kutcher should fall victim to a Twitter catastrophe since he himself has used the social media platform to launch an assault against another party.

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Kim Kardashian’s former friend, JJ Public Relations head Jonathan Jaxson, says he thinks Kim K got married for publicity. You think?

“Part of it was publicity, she knew they were going to make a lot of money from her wedding. It made them millions,” he told RadarOnline.com. “I do think it was a genuine relationship, it wasn’t a genuine marriage though. It was all orchestrated for TV, it was all for show. It was just too much,” he continued.

He also says he wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reconciliation because it would get attention.

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In a very Netflix/Qwikster-like move, Bank of America has decided to drop its plan to charge $5 per month for debit card purchases after customers (also in a Netflix/Qwikster-like move) got completely pissed off and let the bank know about it. That is awesome.

The bank said in a statement, “In response to customer concerns and the changing competitive marketplace, Bank of America no longer intends to implement a debit usage fee.”

“Our customers’ voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so,” co-COO David Darnell also said.

Catching a hint, other banks, like J.P. Morgan Chase, have also ditched their debit fee plans.

BofA has met with push back, not just from consumers, but also from lawmakers. We noted the tone-deafness of the bank’s CEO Brian Moynihan and its social media outlets previously. But, as we also noted, all businesses at some point have to answer to consumers. BofA reached that point.