At the moment, I’m acutely aware of my personal failings. Trying to quit smoking has a way of bringing it out. Maybe it’s all those quizzes they ask you to take to determine your triggers and the things you associate with smoking.

For instance, apparently I:

-Smoke as a pick-me-up
-Smoke as a reward
-Smoke when I’m stressed
-Don’t feel like I’m fully awake until I’ve had a cigarette
-Experience difficulty sleeping if I don’t have a cigarette before bed
-Have difficulty handling stressful situations without cigarettes
-Have difficulty handling boredom or slow points in the day without cigarettes
-Experience intense cravings to smoke before/during/after meal times or coffee
-Experience intense cravings to smoke when drinking alcohol
-Use cigarettes as a way to mark the progress of my day
-Feel cigarettes help my concentration
-Feel cigarettes help me relax

So, if they were grading my quiz, I’d definitely get an A for ADDICTED. (All caps are acceptable in moderation)

I guess that makes sense after more than a decade as a smoker. And, like I said in the beginning, all this time staring one of my biggest, baddest personal faults right in the face has put me in a fairly introspective state of mind. It has also made it really difficult to drag myself out of the doldrums and put together a blog post. Until today.

I got to thinking (a comma and quotation marks denote internal monologue), “What it would be like to live in a world where people confronted, acknowledged and attempted to rectify faults?” More to the point, what would it be like if brands did that?

I read a pretty good post by Peter Madden about taking a long, hard look at his own agency. Read it here. Maybe it was his candor – or the nicotine withdrawal, but either way I got on a tear about how best to handle bad brand behavior.

You could take the Terrell Owens approach, with a nod and a wink to the camera:

Or you could take the overtly scripted, stiff approach taken in so many ignominious public “mea culpas” by politicians and legal-department-approved press releases from corporations. I’m not going to link to any of those because it’s actually painful to read/watch that kind of contrivance.

If you’ve ever done someone wrong, you ought to know the best apology is one that comes with a future change in behavior. If you don’t plan to do that – or if you don’t even feel sorry – why bother apologizing at all?

So, if your company or one of your clients has engaged in some bad behavior, get that apology right. And please, please make sure you don’t do the same thing again.

Cheers,

jae