The factory management quickly produced a full page of text in the regional newspaper, GT, where they tried to explain that PVC is not at all dangerous when treated correctly. Unfortunately, they used a lot of words to say very little and, as Greenpeace had hoped, Norsk Hydro’s effort just made things worse. Instead of a well-reasoned and informative explanation, their response looked exactly like typical cold-hearted and cynical industrialists desperately trying to defend themselves.

I was called in as a branding and communications consultant to help the Norsk Hydro management team. The first thing I did was to explain to them how communication works. I felt that this seemingly obvious step was necessary because most of the management team was made up of engineers and business administrators who had never needed to know how to manage perceptions in people’s minds.

In A Brand Crisis Do The Unexpected

I suggested that instead of continuing to do what everyone expected them to do – explain with facts – Norsk Hydro should do the opposite and actually attack Greenpeace using their own methods. Instead of reacting and defending, they could break both their own expected pattern and the pattern of the common view on plastics as something we just use and carelessly throw away: waste without value.

I had two ideas on how they could break this pattern of perception in people’s minds, about plastic in general and PVC in particular. The first idea grew serendipitously from a meeting I’d had a few weeks earlier with a Swedish artist named Carouschka. She had told me that she wanted to create an exhibition about plastics inspired by a huge collection of everyday plastic items that a Stockholm advertising art director has accumulated. Carouschka wanted to add to his collection and create a major plastics display at the most visible cultural venue right in the heart of Stockholm, Kulturhuset. However, financing was an issue.

Therefore, I asked Norsk Hydro if they would consider funding it, pointing out the opportunity of breaking the pattern of what Norsk Hydro, plastic and PVC stood for at that moment in time. They agreed and within a month the exhibition was successfully launched. It gathered a lot of attention from the media and culturally influential people within Sweden and prompted one of the top cultural journalists to write the headline ‘Plastic – the modern gold’ in his review of the exhibition. In one stroke of the media, plastic was transformed into something with cultural and artistic value. And the centerpiece of the exhibition was a plastic bag containing blood, hanging from its hook and ready to deliver a life-saving blood infusion to a model human arm. Despite the toxins emitted when waste PVC is incinerated, its use is invaluable in medicine and it is the only material that can contain blood without risk of contagion.

The second activity I suggested also worked towards the goal of supporting a sense of value instead of waste. This activity was to immediately start a recycling program for plastics in Sweden. Convincing the engineers and economists in the management team to do this was a tough proposition for two reasons. First, the art exhibition was much easier to buy into, because there was already a plan in place that simply needed to be put into action.

A recycling program would need to be built from nothing. The second reason was that the recycling of plastics was technically difficult to manage and was not considered economical. I had to turn to the universal communication model once again to explain that the recycling had nothing to do with making money, nor did it even need to carry its own cost. Instead, it was symbolically essential to help people perceive plastic as something with its own value, as opposed to something worthless that you just throw away when you’re done with it.

The amazing and unexpected result of all this was a kind of truce that developed between Norsk Hydro and Greenpeace. It became the story of how non-profit organizations like Greenpeace, who had initially lobbied for a total European Union ban on PVC, had a serious impact on commercial companies like Norsk Hydro. This impact created a gamechanging effect in the PVC business that began in Sweden and quickly spread around the world. It fundamentally changed the industry’s approach and launched the drive to develop a sustainable business strategy and the development of PVC manufacturing techniques that replaced the toxic and poisonous ingredients with stabilized and non-toxic alternatives.

Break The Pattern, Solve The Brand Crisis

We have very clear, stereotyped expectations about how an industry should act in crises: first with silence, followed by denial, attempts to explanation or threats. Simply breaking that expected pattern creates the possibility for you to find your way out of the crisis with the respect of your opponents and with limited damage. It’s not enough today to turn around and admit a mistake. Now, you have to offer good reasons that explain your past choices and find a way to repair the damage caused by corporate mistakes. Which in turn are usually caused by the wrong corporate culture. As with the Norsk Hydro case, it may even be possible to turn a crisis into an acclaimed success by bringing people together.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Thomas Gad, excerpted from his book Customer Experience Branding, with permission from Kogan Page publishing.

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Matthias Muller doesn’t have that kind of time. Today marks the third day of his first full week at Volkswagen CEO, and time is of the essence. The organization lost $22 billion in market value in just two days last week as the emissions cheating scandal broke, affecting 11 million vehicles and tarnishing the company’s vaunted brand, perhaps permanently.

Restoring trust won’t be easy. Some product categories are more intimate than others. From a branding perspective, a car defines your identity publicly (you’re using it to signal to others who you are) and literally protects you and your body. If an envelope company cheated this way, you’d denounce their ethics. When Volkswagen does it, many of their ardent fans felt viscerally betrayed. Muller has a difficult – but not impossible – task ahead of him. Here are three things he needs to do this week to stop the spiral and get the company back on track.

1. Admit the severity of the problem. So far, Volkswagen has set aside $7.3 billion to cover expenses arising from their deception. Wrong answer. Between class action lawsuits, recalls, and the discounts that will be necessary to lure customers into buying new Volkswagens (who would want to, otherwise?), the damages are likely to be much, much greater. Muller needs to rip the bandage off now and show that he understands exactly how grave the problem is by giving an honest estimate of costs, not the current, absurdly low figure. The New York Times asked Kelley Blue Book to estimate the buyback value of defective cars just in the United States – a mere 5% of those affected. The cost? $7.3 billion. Try again, VW.

2. Show that it will never happen again. The next step in crisis management is to prove to customers, and the authorities, that a scandal like this will never happen again. One way to do this is bringing in an outside leader who is independent and beholden to no one. Sadly, VW has already failed on this score, since Muller – the former head of the VW subsidiary Porsche – is an insider with three decades at the company. With that decision already made, Muller should take the next best step and launch an exhaustive, independent investigation into the scandal led by trusted outsiders and serve as a complement to the inquiries the U.S. and German governments have already begun. Of course, VW is already looking into the problems internally. But they need to tap a trusted elder statesman (or stateswoman) to lead the charge – essentially, the German equivalent of former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, who led key projects on everything ranging from Middle Eastern peace to steroids in baseball.

3. Recognize that VW has changed irreparably. The automotive industry is the pride of Germany, and a key economic driver. VW is at the center of it all: it’s the largest carmaker in Europe and employs nearly 600,000 people. Yet all that has changed in the past week. Volkswagen shares are now down more than 60% from their March high, and Muller is taking the helm of a changed company. VW needs to recognize its new position in the world. Muller isn’t stepping in to run a swaggering powerhouse; it’s a humbled giant that will likely need to reinvent itself, organizationally and attitudinally, into the automotive equivalent of a ‘boutique firm.’ It will be smaller, less influential, and subjected to heightened scrutiny in all its future dealings for years. The new CEO must act accordingly and accept those strictures with grace.

Volkswagen’s scandal was egregious – less deadly than the cover-ups perpetrated by some automakers in years past, but perhaps more shocking because of its coldblooded and willful intention to deceive from the start. Few customers today will be rushing out to buy Volkswagens, but in order to prevent an even further plunge in market value, Muller needs to act fast to control the damage and reassure the public that the problems have been fully identified, a swift resolution is in the works, and that procedures are in place to prevent such malfeasance in the future. If he handles himself right in the next two days, he may be able to save the company.

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategist and professional speaker who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. As a former presidential campaign spokeswoman, she specializes in crisis communication and branding.

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