Who do we trVWst?
The scandal over Volkswagen equipping 11 million of its cars with software to skew emissions data has been a gripping story since it broke on Sept 18th.
While the scandal hasn’t had an immediate effect on Volkswagen’s sales in Ireland, the financial costs for VW are likely to be huge, with US states initiating law suits and commentators predicting a final cost to the group of up to $87 million.
For PR professionals, the more interesting issue is the story’s focus on the issue of trust. From the start, trust was at the centre of how the world’s second largest car company tried to dupe both consumers and regulators. Somewhat ironically, Volkswagen’s statement on 23rd September talked a lot about trust: securing it; regret at losing it and; working to regain it
When most of us got over the shock at the audacity of Volkswagen to carry out such large scale fraud, the next thought was what else was the company not telling the truth about. For example, if their emissions data was rigged, how might their safety data or other claims be trusted?.
Trust is such a crucial issue for any organisation. Indeed building trust is something we place a major emphasis on with organisations that we give media relations training to. Warren Buffet once commented “it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it… if you think about that, you’ll do things differently”.
The implications of breaking your customers’ or stakeholders’ trust are massive and can be bigger than the offending company. There is a strong chance the VW scandal will affect other German businesses and their wider economy too. Country of origin has traditionally had a big impact on the trust that consumers have in products. The global reputation of ‘Germany Inc.’ has suffered and it is a lesson to all countries and all businesses, as Ireland has also learned in the past, most notably in our meat industry.
The Volkswagen emissions scam, still rippling out in its appalling implications for that company, will undoubtedly be felt for years to come.