The Beetle That Lied

A reputation for a brand is the coin of the realm. It is the permission a customer gives your business to speak to you. It captures the trust you have in a company, a product or a particular brand.

Imagine what Mathias Muller, Volkswagen’s new CEO has on his to-do list this week. He replaces the former CEO who resigned over the diesel software issue. Muller has to replace the image we all have of the beetle that lies. I can’t stop seeing Pinocchio driving a VW. How will he get that image out of our heads?

Mathias’ Things To Do List for This Week

Apologize to our customers for lying to them and trying to cheat them.
Help restore $22 billion dollars of lost value that happened in two days.
Demonstrate to your six hundred thousand employees that you will root out those responsible for this egregious activity.
Be completely truthful about the financial impact this will have globally – don’t be short-sighted and downplay the losses.
Publicly (and frequently) admit how severe this problem is and that your company screwed up. Don’t dance around it. Be direct. No one cares you are sorry. They care that you will act to prevent this from happening ever again.
Don’t immediately run ads trying to cleverly market your way out of this mess, especially with bribes (coupons, discounts, etc.) That is the wrong signal to send to the market.
Since you are an insider, hire someone from outside of the company to come in and independently investigate what happened so you can get rid of the grove of bad apples. They must be a person of the highest integrity who everyone will believe. They must have full reign to see everything and speak to anyone and to recommend firing as many people who were complicit.
Time is ticking away – you don’t have months to deal with this. You have about ten days.