• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, June 5, 2018

Wisdom has it that it’s hard to say you're sorry. But it’s proven to be a lucrative emerging market in the ad business. Facebook is launching its biggest campaign ever  to say, “Hey, sorry, we screwed up.”

Well, actually, the ad doesn’t really say that at all. It’s hard to tell what the ad says. It talks a lot about friends. And why Facebook is awesome. And it has a cat in a party hat blowing a noisemaker.

What’s actually missing is an apology of any sort.  

That’s not unusual for a corporate ad run after a PR disaster. The strategy seems to be: Let’s throw a sentimental soundtrack, an empathetic voiceover and a lot of warm and fuzzy pictures together, and perhaps no one will notice that we’re not actually taking the blame for anything. It’s the era of the Teflon Corporation. The hope is that blame won’t stick.

But the science doesn’t back that up. Social media has made corporate ethical responsibility personal. And that means apologies should be personal, too. Companies want us to think of them as a friend. But that cuts both ways. If you screw up, you should do what a friend would do in a similar circumstance. You should come clean. And a warm and fuzzy TV ad is not the way to do that.

A study from Ohio State University found there are six components of an effective apology:

 1. Expression of regret

2. Explanation of what went wrong

3. Acknowledgment of responsibility

4. Declaration of repentance

5. Offer of repair

6. Request for forgiveness

Of these, the most important is number 3: acknowledgement of responsibility. Then number 5, an offer of repair.

Go ahead, watch the Facebook ad again. You won’t find an acknowledgement of responsibility anywhere. There’s some vague promises about doing better in the future, but Facebook’s “mea culpa” seems to be missing the “culpa.”

Come to think of it, it’s missing the “mea” too. Because you know what else you won’t see in the Facebook ad? Anyone from Facebook. Not Mark Zuckerberg. Not Sheryl Sandberg (COO). Nor Dave Wehner (CFO), Mike Schroepfer (CTO) or Chris Cox (CPO). There are no actual people from the actual company actually talking to you. And that’s another problem.

Another study, from UC Berkeley and London Business School, found that if you can convince an executive to say he's sorry -- and mean it -- he'd better be pretty damned sheepish about it. This is how the study authors stated it: “We analyzed the market effects of normative versus deviant facial affect expressed during apologies for corporate wrongdoing.” In slightly simpler language, they looked to see if it was more effective if the boss looked sad when delivering the apology. The answer? Yes. It was much more effective.

Typically, corporate apologies stress the positive, or even worse -- as is the case with Facebook -- hide behind a smoke screen of warm and fuzzy imagery. But this study shows that that’s not what we want. We want someone to accept responsibility -- to admit they messed up -- and to look contrite about it.

If you think about it, Facebook’s campaign is kind of like your neighbor backing his car over your cat and then apologizing by reminding you of all the great times you’ve had with that cat.

Feel better yet?