Ezekiel Elliott and the Red Kettle

By now you've certainly heard of Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys leaping into the Salvation Army's red kettle after scoring a touchdown Sunday night against Tampa Bay. His jump led to a major increase in donations to the charitable organization in the hours and days that followed, vastly outperforming the same time periods last week and even last year.

Money going to a charitable cause such as this is a good thing.

The red kettles beyond each end zone aren't new. The two organizations have been holiday partners since 1997. The Salvation Army's National Red Kettle Campaign has been a staple for over 125 years. Charlotte Jones Anderson, daughter of the boss, is Executive Vice President/Chief Brand Officer of the team and a past Chairman of the Salvation Army's National Advisory Board, serving in that role from 2010-2014.

Cowboys Head Coach Jason Garrett talked about how "Lambeau Leaps" at Packers games are legal but how his team got a 15-yard penalty for Elliott's jump. Team owner and General Manager Jerry Jones dared the NFL to fine him, saying he'd take it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The hashtag #kettlehop is still getting attention on Twitter. Many people contributed $21, corresponding to Elliott's jersey number. I've even seen t-shirts made.

These signs all point to the Salvation Army and what they're trying to do, and they lead me to believe that this was an orchestrated public relations/fundraising effort. I feel like whomever scored first, whether it was Dez Bryant, Jason Witten, or Dak Prescott, had instructions to jump into the kettle, stand next to it or whatever. At some point during the game someone was going to call attention to the campaign.

I'm not criticizing the move-- the money that's raised goes toward feeding people and keeping them warm. It just has elements of a good PR campaign put together by people who knew what they were doing.

A tip of the cap to the Cowboys and the Salvation Army for coming together.

Chobani and Recalls

Hamdi Ulukaya bought an abandoned factory in New York in 2005 and started Chobani yogurt two years later, figuring he could make a better product than what the American companies were cranking out.

Ulukaya grew things to where he was moving well over a million cases of yogurt per week out of his New York warehouse, getting a solid foothold in the market, and even fielding calls with buyout offers.

So things were going very well.

But in 2013 things took a bad turn. The year started out well enough, as Chobani opened a second facility in Idaho to keep up with demand as well as to gain access to western markets. However the dairy inputs (different cows from a different part of the country) used in Idaho were different than what was used in New York, so the resulting yogurt was different, forcing them to adjust the proportions of the ingredients used. This led to delays and then in September a mold contamination problem at the Idaho plant.

The machine at Chobani swung into action, first recalling their product by contacting individual stores for a week or so before issuing the formal recall.

Public relations-wise, several positive steps were taken. They were active on social media, issuing an apology via Facebook that had the yogurt's defective code as well as a head shot of Ulukaya. They also reached out on Twitter and posted an apology letter to their website's homepage. The letter is well-written and thought out, and leads me to believe they had a template in place in order to be prepared for an event like this.

The homepage also had links to the FDA's report and the customer call center.

So Chobani's troubles (and $15 million loss in 2013) seem to connect more with growing pains and not with bad public relations, since they made wise choices to try and keep the public's trust after the mold contamination.

The company seems to have righted the ship, and now their problems have more to do with competition as well as a slowing of the market.

Wells Fargo

By now surely you've heard of the Wells Fargo accounts scandal, where between 2011 and 2015 about 1.5 million checking and savings accounts, as well as 500,000 credit cards were created/issued without customer consent. Employees were told to have a goal of eight accounts per customer, oftentimes using aggressive selling tactics if necessary.

This scandal made the news in early September when we learned the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined the bank $185 million. It's chump change when an article I saw from 2015 said the bank's value was nearing $300 billion. Billion. With a B.

We've seen the Wells Fargo damage control PR machine at work. CEO John Stumpf saying the best thing he can do for the company is to stay and lead it. Chief Operating Officer Tim Sloan and other WF executives made the rounds on Capitol Hill trying to mitigate the damage, and Sloan himself has apologized repeatedly for the missteps. Money has been set aside for customer refunds. We heard the expected talk about restoring tarnished reputations. The program itself ends at the end of 2016.

These words and actions ring pretty hollow when you consider Carrie Tolstedt, who ran the community banking division where this happened, retired in July of this year with a golden parachute valued at nearly $125 million. Who knows how much cash they made on fees and whatnot from those unwanted accounts. The $185 million fine is probably their cost of doing business, a drop in the bucket when you consider that amount is less than 0.1% of an estimated value that nears $300 billion.

Additionally, 5,300 employees were fired and now have to find new jobs. No executives, unless you count John Stumpf, who finally resigned on October 12.

In my opinion, the PR steps Wells Fargo takes will be insufficient. It'll be a long time before they're able to repair their image. Perhaps if Stumpf had resigned last month the PR hit wouldn't have been quite as severe. Upping the amount set aside for customer refunds from $5 million to a much larger number would help, as would rehiring people who were axed. That is, assuming they'd want to come back in the first place.

Those are just a few of the things the bank could try to win back customer confidence. I look forward to reading the articles in public relations journals that talk about this scandal.