Recently a problem was presented to the students of public relations and lobbying world over. The case presented and studied in variety of schools and universities were very unique. In the books and journals there is a detailed description of the crisis faced by Bank of Scotland. The bank’s image that has been built over the years was under serious jeopardy. The person who was being made the business partner had a very tarnished reputation in society. With growing concerns for human rights and freedom of choice in the modern global society, partnering with a person which such rigid beliefs was not an ideal choice. This had a highly negative impact on the image of bank of Scotland. The bank of Scotland should have been more careful in adopting such practices. Reputations are built in years and destroyed in minutes.
Bank of Scotland in search of economic gains had left their social values to one side and planned to go ahead. Either the bank ignored the personality aspects attached to Mr. Robertson or it choose to ignore it to earn economic rewards instead. The values of Bank of Scotland and Mr. Robertson ideology were contradicting. Hence Bank of Scotland failed to integrate the economic and social considerations together.
The situation could have been better if the Public Relations
department had informed of the background and personality traits of
Mr. Robertson. The comments directly given by Mr. Robertson were
definitely not within the values of Bank of Scotland. The deal was
a lose-lose situation for BOS. Hence the Public relations
Department should have highlighted Mr. Robertson public image and
he backlash it created in media should have been predicted.
Assuming that the top management failed to read into the concerns
in proactive manners, the reaction of BOS was also not appropriate.
Mr. Robertson’s actions were out in front for everyone to see
and BOS was in no position of defending media’s pressure.
Hence the PR department should have acted more swiftly and tried to
calm the situation, rather than blaming the media for their own
faults.
In the end the bank had to withdraw the business and apologize to its stake holders and community. The statement made earlier by the bank was also a case of the bank trying to blame the media rather than condemning Mr. Robertson’s comments. This again was a big failure on part of the bank. The PR department should have been able to access the negative impact of Mr. Robertson’s public image. It should also have dealt with the aftermath of the situation better. Co operating with the media rather than blaming it would have helped Bank of Scotland to cut the damage. So in total the case of bank of Scotland is a good learning curve for students of public relations and lobbying anywhere in the world.
