Crisis Management, Oscar Edition

The bean counters at PwC, or PricewaterhouseCoopers, are having a bad morning. They had one job last night, and they botched it rather spectacularly. 

PwC's ad agency now faces the need to launch a brand-salvage operation, and quickly. 

When you fail on such a massive, and massively visible scale, it's hard to recover. This bell cannot be unrung. So it's an interesting creative challenge these guys face. 

One way to go might be with humor, not that there's anything particularly funny about a company getting its job so horribly wrong. 

Another approach might be the straight out apology. (Wake me if they try that one.)

There's always throwing money at it, like hiring Ryan Gosling as your new company spokesman. 

Of course the average Oscar watcher is not this company's target audience. PwC is not relying on you and me to hire them at tax time. Their target is other huge organizations, global corporations on the same scale as PwC. You will likely see their advertising response in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or in targeted digital ads, not on Entertainment Tonight.

This company is in control of its own destiny. One arm of PwC is an ad agency, so if their ideas don't work, they have no one to blame but themselves. 

(See an interesting article about PwC's in-house agency here.) 

Watch for PcW to launch in a matter of days. This is a pretty big mess to clean up.