I remember the first time I flew on a plane by myself. Although I was 13, a reeeaaal teenager, I was still terrified of A) the plane crashing and being without my mom to hold my hand on the way down, B) sitting next to a creepy stranger, and C) accidentally dosing off and drooling on that stranger.
Luckily neither A, B nor C were issues on this flight.
When I arrived in Phoenix my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Jim swooped me up and told me about all the adventures we were about to embark upon.
During my last weekend in Arizona we took a little road trip up to their cabin in Flagstaff. After the weekend trip we drove back to Phoenix. I slept in the back of the Explorer sprawled out across both seats. Suddenly I heard a loud THUMP and the car seemed lower on one side. Then there were more thumping noises, at which point I popped up in my seat to see what was going on.
Uncle Jim pulled the Ford over to the shoulder of the highway to investigate. We realized that the tread had completely come off the Firestone tire. I asked Aunt Sharon how this happened. She attributed it to the heat. That day as the hot Arizona sun beat down on the red clay earth, Uncle Jim changed the tire as a state trooper helped, or rather, watched.
It never occurred to me at the time, but after I’d returned to Dallas I realized there might be a connection between our incident and the high profile Ford/Firestone blowout scandal. Our story was, thankfully, not nearly as severe as others. But there was definitely commonality.
In August 2000 Ford and Firestone disputed claims that "tire treads were separating from the tire core-leading to grisly, spectacular crashes," according to a Forbes.com report.
According to one case study, the two companies made irreparable PR moves.
First of all the companies did not have a crisis management plan in place. So, apparently their idea of smoothing things over with the press was covering up safety defects. Bad idea? I think so. By being dishonest with the public and covering up information, hundreds of lives were lost because people were left in the dark.
The company also blamed customers for improper tire inflation. Like my mom always says, “The customer is always right!” Bad move Firestone, bad move. That’ll really put everyone who lost a family member to a blowout at ease. Not!
The unsuccessful communication strategies continue…
Ford and Firestone then began to publicly blame each other for the accidents. Real mature…
Lastly, neither party was quick to try and solve the problem. Finally Firestone recalled the tires, but was slow to alert the media. The public had no resource, no Web site, no hotline, nowhere to get information about the recall or how the company was going to address the issue.
After hearing all about this on TV I asked my Aunt Sharon if she ever reported our tire incident to Ford. She said, “No,” and that was the end of it. I’m glad our Ford/Firestone story didn’t have and alternate ending.
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The sad part about that whole story was, I read in a textbook that we discussed as a case stud in a marketing class was that Ford actually calculated that the cost of the settlements from the lawsuits that would inevitably occur would be less than the amount they would save by going with inferior tires and bad engineering. Now that's messed up.
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