I’ve just discovered Consumerist.com. LOVE it. Both Carrie and I pride ourselves on being vigilante consumers and Consumerist.com is a surly watchdog on retail baddies.

The recent story on how CircuitCity recovered from grand PR oopise is a great example of one of my favorite business dictums: Tell the Truth and tell it fast. If you f*%! up – just be straight about it. Whether you’re a corporation or a friend, spinning the facts and deflecting the blame just erodes your character and annoys people. Fess up with out haste. And if it’s in the bounds of respect and good taste, remember that a sense of humor goes a long way.

After a Circuit City exec ordered stores to search and destroy all copies of a recent Mad Magazine issue featuring a 4-page parody of “Sucker City,” Consumerist jumped on the story. They then received a “surprisingly classy message” from CircuitCity corporate:

Hi, Ben,

I spotted the article about Circuit City and MAD Magazine on your site.

FYI, I became aware of this “situation” only this morning, and I have sent a note today to the Editors of MAD Magazine.

Speaking as “an embarrassed corporate PR Guy,” I apologized for the fact that some overly-sensitive souls at our corporate headquarters ordered the removal of the August issue of MAD Magazine from our stores. Please keep in mind that only 40 of our 700 stores sell magazines at all.

The parody of our newspaper ad in the August MAD was very clever. Most of us at Circuit City share a rich sense of humor and irony…but there are occasional temporary lapses.

We apologize for the knee-jerk reaction, and have issued a retraction order; the affected stores are being directed to put the magazines back on sale.

As a gesture of our apology and deep respect for the folks at MAD Magazine, we are creating a cross-departmental task force to study the importance of humor in the corporate workplace and expect the resulting Powerpoint presentation to top out at least 300 pages, chock full of charts, graphs and company action plans.

In addition I have offered to send the MAD Magazine Editor a $20.00 Circuit City Gift Card, toward the purchase of a Nintendo Wii….if he can find one!

All the best,

Jim Babb
Corporate Communications
Circuit City Stores, Inc.
Richmond, VA

Consumerist gives a great evaluation of the “3-step system for fixing corporate gaffes:”
1. Admitted they were wrong
2. Stopped doing the wrong thing
3. Made a material gesture of apology

And we’d like to add – humour people, humour! A few funnies keeps us all human.