The Apology Impulse: How the Business World Ruined Sorry and Why We Can't Stop Saying It

        Saying sorry is in crisis. On one hand there are anxious PR aficionados and social media teams dishing out apologies with alarming frequency. On the other there are people and organizations who have done truly terrible things issuing much-delayed statements of mild regret. We have become addicted to apologies but immune from saying sorry.

            In January 2018 there were 35 public apologies from high-profile organizations and individuals. That's more than one per day. Between them, in 2017, the likes of Facebook, Mercedes Benz and United Airlines issued over 2,000 words of apologies for their transgressions. Alarmingly, the word 'sorry' didn't appear once.

            This perfectly timed book examines the psychology, motivations and even the economic rationale of giving an apology in the age of outrage culture and on-demand contrition. It reveals the tricks and techniques we all use to evade, reframe and divert from what we did and demonstrates how professionals do it best.

            Providing lessons for businesses and organizations, you'll find out how to give meaningful apologies and know when to say sorry, or not say it at all. The Apology Impulse is the perfect playbook for anyone - from social media executive through to online influencers and CEOs - who apologise way too much and say sorry far too infrequently.

·  1 Introduction

·  2 Who’s been apologizing and what are they sorry about?

·  Who is actually saying sorry?

·  How are organizations saying sorry?

·  The corporate apology starter pack

·  3 The six reasons organizations apologize and the one reason they won’t

·  How organizations fail

·  So why do organizations apologize?

·  Why organizations won’t say sorry

·  4 Culture, values and consumer expectations: Why ‘sorry’ means different things to different industries

·  Friction – and why your buying habits influence your chances of getting an apology

·  How market friction affects Uber’s conscience

·  5 The definitive modern apology and why everyone ignored it

·  Valentine’s Day crisis

·  The world’s first corporate social media apology

·  An offer of repair

·  The response to the response

·  6 If everyone’s sorry, nobody is sorry: Are we all apologizing too much?

·  Are we really apologizing too much?

·  Broadcasting our apologies far and wide

·  Outrage capitalism and the plummeting value of ‘sorry’

·  7 How the experts apologize without saying sorry: ‘Runway excursion incidents’, ‘re-accommodating passengers’ and ‘overpressurization’

·  When is a plane crash not a plane crash?

·  ‘A disappointing event for our company’

·  Unauthorized takeoff

·  Re-accommodating passengers

·  ‘Overpressurization…followed by a fire’

·  8 Schrödinger’s apology, grammatical deflections and evasions

·  How to spot a Schrödinger’s apology

·  What can we do better?

·  The evasive power of grammar

·  9 Crisis fatigue and the case for rationing apologies

·  Preempting the backlash

·  Crisis fatigue and tactical appeasement

·  The spectrum of contrition

·  The case for rationing

·  10 It’s not about you: How CEOs sabotage their own apologies

·  Tony Hayward – BP

·  Keep it simple

·  11 Keep trying: Why it took three of the world’s biggest brands three attempts to say sorry

·  Facebook

·  United Airlines

·  Papa John’s – third time lucky

·  12 ‘Forced to apologize’?: Fostering resilience and identifying customer intent

·  Court-ordered apologies

·  Allergy sufferers vs Sony Pictures

·  How can organizations be more resilient?

·  13 ‘We got it wrong’: What to say when you’ve killed a puppy (and how to fake humility)

·  ‘We got it wrong’

·  ‘We missed the mark’

·  ‘Sometimes mistakes happen’

·  14 Self-service apologies: Performative crisis management and teaching consumers to expect too much

·  Cultural hypervigilance

·  The burden of corporate innocence

·  The exceptions that prove the rule

·  Performative crisis management

·  Self-service apologies

·  The creative cost of reflexive apologies

·  15 Optics anxiety and apologizing for how things look

·  The importance of small details in a crisis

·  Optics anxiety

·  Topman vs the people of Liverpool

·  The cost of caring about optics

·  16 The true cost of corporate atonement: Why frontline staff pay the price

·  Trickle-down anxiety

·  Approval-seeking policy changes

·  Who is really paying the price for Starbucks’ mistake?

·  17 The economics of saying sorry: Why an apology could cost $5 billion

·  What does being sorry actually cost?

·  Lessons from nature

·  Restitutions and why 25,000 could be the magic number

·  What’s an apology worth?

·  Tesla’s five billion dollar apology

·  Is an apology worth $73,000?

·  18 Crisis communications and the potential for mischief: How organizations profit from their rivals’ apologies

·  At least we’re not Uber…

·  On-demand criticism – an $81 billion market that’s ready to destroy your reputation

·  Interflora and the unintended consequences of fighting Internet spam

·  19 Apology laundering: How a supermarket and an MP were defrauded of ‘sorry’

·  Apology laundering – how the media manipulated a row about relish

·  False confessions and the weaponization of vague language

·  20 Apologizing on behalf of others: Lessons from car makers, presidents and freelance apologizers

·  Passive–aggressive proxy apologies

·  Historical apologies

·  21 £1 million in sales in four days: Discover the unexpected benefits of not saying sorry

·  The missing piece of the jigsaw

·  Alienation marketing

·  The ‘feel-bad factor’

·  The power of tribalism

·  22 Don’t mistake kindness for weakness: Why the UK’s ‘nicest’ brand refused to say sorry

·  How to defend your organization against accusations of sexism and selling blasphemous toilet tissue

·  Redefining the ‘communications crisis’

·  What can we learn from M&S?

·  23 Conclusion: How to manage the apology impulse and deliver meaningful responses

·  Don’t make promises you can’t keep

·  Have a plan

·  Step 1 – Decide if you are you sorry

·  Step 2 – Decide how sorry you are

·  Step 3 – Decide what you are going to do about it

·  Remember to take your time