top of page

Bend It Like - Apple ?

The fortune favors the prepared. History has served as recurring reminders on how enterprises that have had prior preparedness and swift actions were better at handling threats, crises, and other disruptions.


One example could be the “#bendgate” crisis of 2014. Apple was embroiled in a controversy concerning its iPhones, particularly the then newly-released iPhone 6 and iPhone 6-Plus. The issue was termed "bendgate," referring to the issue of the phones "bending" in people's pockets.


Apple claimed that the bending was very rare. The company insisted that the items were created to the same high standards as any of the company's previous products.


However, bent iPhones continued to turn up with viral videos popping up showing people bending their phones with some grit and sprinkle of thumb strength.


Things further took a turn for the worse when news came out that iPhone 6 units started to show the "touch disease." The touchscreen would break due to a defect in the motherboard's touch-controller chips, which some speculated was caused by physical damage from bending iPhones.


For fortune 500 brands, such a scandal spells doom. However, Apple through its crisis management and communication strategies, came out unscathed becoming known for its resilience in times of crisis. They followed the typical pillars of crisis communications response - Apologize, reassure, implement and enhance.


Being a large enterprise they pulled together a task force dedicated to managing specific customer queries and addressing the complaints individually while issuing factual data online. Apple even countered that only a handful, 9 to be exact, of customers had made a formal complaint about such an issue and it was looking into the complaints on a case by case basis. Showing the responsiveness and accountability it took on its customer experience.


It added reassurance by effectively communicating that "Our iPhones are designed, engineered and manufactured to be both beautiful and sturdy." Apple outlined its selection of strong, durable materials and construction, highlighting the goal of high-quality service for customers. It further issued invitations to various media outlets to its campus to see how carefully it tested its products at the time. This reassured customers in times of crisis or controversies.


It went on to review its manufacturing contracts with Foxconn (critical supplier) and enhanced key controls to avoid any mishaps in the future. These strategies helped Apple in two ways. It tested and strengthened their belief in proactive preparedness. Secondly led to a roaring success in the subsequent iPhone’s launched for the years to come, making it the undisputable leader in its realm.


With situations such as these, the limitations in time and resources to respond create panic-struck minds to scramble around for decisions, causing further delays and playing catch up to the evolving crisis damage.


For the ones prepared, such situations inevitable can be turned into an opportunity with the right amount of insights and cohesive planning.


Does preparedness mean - drawing out plans and stacking them for a crisis? Partially! but what if the ever-evolving scenario could be tested out adhoc? Like instinctively or intuitively?


Wouldn’t that be a key enabler for the building familiar ground with the unknown?


When designing the Testing capabilities of BCM next, that’s exactly what we have done.


We innovated this space to help you think of a scenario and play it out for it to be rehearsed now. That’s the power of next, BCM next.

Comments


bottom of page