By Chris Parsons
From a public relations perspective, Michael Scott, the bumbling office manager at Dunder Mifflin Scranton, exhibits just about every behavior that a P.R. should avoid. Here are the five times that Michael Scott bombed at P.R. and how we can do better!
#5. The time Michael went on a media blitz for a vulgar watermark
In "Product Recall" (season three, episode 21), Dunder Mifflin Scranton was rocked when their customers began complaining about an NSFW watermark appearing on their latest shipments of paper. Naturally, Michael declared "threat level: midnight," calling for all hands on deck to weather the crisis as he prepared to control the story.
I want to make one thing clear: Michael had the right idea!
• He called a staff meeting to communicate the strategy to his employees.
• He made sure to personally contact all of the clients affected and offer a genuine apology.
• He had a hunch that this could blow up into a media firestorm.
As usual, however, Michael forgot to hit the pause button to think about the crisis at hand.
Instead, he blazed ahead, committing his entire staff (who could have just kept working on their actual jobs) to the coordination of a poorly-edited PSA and a bizarre press conference, which allowed one client the chance to disavow Dunder Mifflin in front of a media member.
Michael's desire to set the record straight is admirable but he should have just called in the corporate P.R. team to handle the public fallout.
Also, consider that this episode originally aired in April of 2007, just before the dawn of the social media era. Had Michael acted the way that he did in the age of smartphones, Twitter trends and angry Facebook posts, the public blowback could have been far more devastating for Dunder Mifflin.
As Regina Luttrell points out "94 percent [of communications professionals] think that the failure to define how to handle online issues leaves an organization open to 'trial by Twitter'" (Source: "Social Media: How to Engage, Share and Connect").
Professional advice: don't hastily shoot from the hip.
#4. The time Michael threw a marketing stunt and gave his biggest customer 50 percent off
Michael is full of ideas. But, if you're looking for a trend, he's really bad at reaching out to the experts to make his ideas come to life.
In "Golden Ticket" (season five, episode 19), Michael disperses five sheets of gold paper in outgoing product shipments, which entitle the recipients to 10 percent off of their order.
Blue Cross of Pennsylvania, Dunder Mifflin Scranton's largest client, calls the office to notify them that it found a golden ticket in its order. Actually, it found five golden tickets, entitling the company to a whopping 50 percent off its order -- a business to business marketing flop of epic proportions. Fortunately, Blue Cross was so excited about hitting the jackpot that it asked Dunder Mifflin to be its exclusive office supply provider, saving the Scranton branch from downsizing. We'll chalk that turn of events up to fictional storytelling.
In reality, had Michael planned this with the corporate marketing team, they could have run some cost/benefit analysis, worked with the legal team on basic fine print to ensure that Dunder Mifflin's bottom line wasn't taken to the woodshed and ensured communication with the warehouse employees so that no five coupons went to the same place.
Professional advice: anticipate problems with robust planning.
#3. The time Michael sent a picture of his boss in a bikini to the whole company
This one's pretty straightforward. Michael went on a romantic vacation to Sandals, Jamaica with his boss, Jan. Upon returning to the office, a gloating Michael meant to email a sultry picture of Jan to one of his sophomoric work colleagues ("Back from Vacation": season three, episode 12). Except, Michael accidentally shot the picture to the entire packaging department, setting off a forward chain across the whole company.
Beyond Michael's obvious workplace infraction, this email mishap proves an timeless lesson for any professional communicator: double-, triple-, quadruple-check anything that you send with your name on it.
In "Social Media," Luttrell voices even more prescient caution for Michael's situation, writing "In the highly interconnected environment in which we conduct business today, the chance that a crisis can go viral has become extremely high."
Within Dunder Mifflin's digital network, this mishap went instantly viral and landed Michael and Jan in the corporate doghouse. The fact of the matter is that the digital workspace has put individuals' professional reputations on the line in such a way that one bad email can ruin your career. For real examples, look no further than the infamously disgruntled Google employee from 2017.
Professional advice: pause and proof your emails.
#2. The time Michael made his employees act really racist
Professor Elizabeth Toth, Ph.D., wrote for the Institute for Public Relations in 2009 that "Stereotyping of others... results in racial profiling, sexual harassment, pigeon-holing and missed opportunities to build relationships with the consequential publics of organizations."
Michael disregards Toth's advice in "Diversity Day" (season one, episode two), when he decides that the best way to teach his employees the value of inclusion is to make them stick racial identities on their foreheads and treat each other as their given stereotypes.
First, this is not a situation that you should ever put your employees in. Second, it serves as a the perfect anti-case for how to behave ethically as a professional communicator.
By approaching your target audiences based solely on their surface level attributes, you're not only disrespecting their complexities as individuals, but you're also completely wasting your own time.
A 2015 blog from PRmoment quotes Bill Reihl, partner and managing director of Ketchum’s Global Brand Practice, as saying, "Today the unifying factors between different target audiences are less about demographics and more about shared value systems."
Professional advice: treat your audiences like real people.
#1. The time Michael promised to pay for 20 kids' college
There's a timeless quote by David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather.
"Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read," he said. "You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine."
Despite being unmarried during his run on "The Office," Michael somehow found a way to do Ogilvy one worse.
In "Scott's Tots" (season six, episode 12), it's revealed that Michael had promised an entire third grade class that he would pay for each of their college tuitions.
However, when it's time to pay the piper, Michael, still only a regional officer manager at a mid-size paper company, has to stand in front of those same kids and tell them that he can't fulfill his promise. The room's shock quickly turns to outrage while you begin to question as a viewer if you can even root for Michael.
In today's hyper-disruptive social environment, a person, organization or company is only as valuable to the public as its ability to deliver on its promises. And, that pressure to deliver isn't going away anytime soon!
Clear, the global marketing strategy consultancy owned by M&C Saatchi, surveyed 10,000 American consumers in 2018 and found that 50 percent "do not accept a brand promise at face value, and 32 percent of respondents noted that the gap between what a brand promises and what it does is widening,"according to Ad Age. The study went on to show that this "experience gap" between brands and consumers can cost companies up to $860 million in annual revenues.
Clear's study makes it crystal: your integrity is your most valuable asset, and a failure to deliver will inevitably come back to bite you.
Professional advice: keep your promises!
To see Michael's mishaps come to life, check out my accompanying video essay!
I really liked this post. I think it is very interesting to see how the media portrays public relations vs. how public relations is actually done. I've seen a lot of T.V. shows that revolved around people who've had pr crises or have had to do some kind of pr job and usually it is not portrayed the way we would actually do things in real life. By comparing what Michael did vs. what someone should have done in a situation like that gives a better perspective of how public relations actually differs from what is seen on T.V.
Great post, Chris. I'm with you that what makes for great entertainment is often misaligned with best practices for a public relation practitioner. I think the real underlying flaw here, best evinced by #1 and #4, is the fact that Michael is naturally impulsive. Moreover, given his managerial role, there's little in place to stop him from making rash decisions. PR professionals are meant to be level-headed, side-stepping the repercussions tied to a misadvised message. Michael's failure to step back and consider the potential impact of his decisions demonstrates a fundamental principle all PR practitioners should follow: think then act.
As a public relations student, I have to put my love for Michael aside and admit he is pretty terrible at what he does. I previously watched the show before really studying PR. However, when I watch now it gives me headaches! This post makes me want to rewatch the show again to find even more of Michael's mistakes. As Luttrell notes, people "process images 60,000 times faster than written words." The images created and published by Michael would be enough to bankrupt any company in an instant in 2019. It is also important to address the point you made about keeping promises. Media relations are always based on trust. If a reporter can't trust you to maintain fair and…