For 82 years, accounting and consulting firm PwC has enjoyed a reputational boon from handling the balloting method at the Academy Awards.
Now its really hard-won image as a dependable partner is beneath threat.
The corporation has apologized for a colossal error at the 89th Academy Awards on Sunday night when actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty wrongly announced the leading Oscar went to “La La Land,” rather of “Moonlight.”
The presenters, it turned out, had been provided the wrong envelope by tabulators PwC, in this case the 1 awarding Emma Stone for very best actress for her role in “La La Land.” The representatives from PwC, formerly identified as PricewaterhouseCoopers, eventually corrected the error on air but it really is not clear however how the wrong envelope ended up in the hands of the “Bonnie and Clyde” stars.
Whatever the purpose, it is been a cue for endless jokes and hilarity about the world.
For London-headquartered PwC, it’s anything but funny.
According to Nigel Currie, an independent London-primarily based branding specialist with decades’ worth of business practical experience, this error is “as bad a mess-up as you could think about.”
“They had a fairly uncomplicated job to do and messed it up spectacularly,” he stated. “They will be in deep crisis talks on how to deal with it.”
Brands go to extraordinary lengths to defend their image and reputation and to be noticed as good corporate citizens. History is littered by examples when a really hard-won reputation nosedives — from sporting legends Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong to organization giants like BP following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster and Volkswagen right after its emissions cheating scandal.
Crisis managers say PwC has no other option than to front-up instantly and clarify specifically what happened to include the harm to its reputation and brand and plot a way forward where there is no repeat.
“There will absolutely have to be accounting for this error,” said Jeremy Robinson-Leon, principal and chief operating officer at New York-primarily based public relations firm Group Gordon. “The onus will be on PwC, assuming they remain as partners, to institute controls to assure this does not happen once more.”
PwC, which originated in London more than a century ago, was swift to apologize to the films involved, Beatty, Dunaway and viewers, but has but to fully clarify what happened.
“The presenters had mistakenly been given the incorrect category envelope and, when discovered, was straight away corrected,” it mentioned in a statement. “We are at present investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred.”
In reality, it took more than two minutes on air, for the duration of which time the “La La Land” team gave 3 acceptance speeches, prior to PwC corrected the error on stage.
PwC’s representatives had been Brian Cullinan, a companion at the firm — and, according to his bio on the company’s site, a Matt Damon lookalike — and Martha Ruiz, the second lady to serve as a PwC Oscars tabulator.
Cullinan is the lead partner for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which includes the annual balloting for the Oscars ceremony. He has been portion of the balloting team since 2014.
Ruiz, a 19-year veteran at PwC who specializes in giving tax compliance and advisory services to entertainment consumers in southern California, joined Cullinan as the Oscars balloting co-leader in 2015.
In a promotional video on the company’s web-site ahead of Sunday’s show, Cullinan said he and Ruiz are the only two who knew who the winners were on the evening of the awards.
“There are 24 categories. We have the winners in sealed envelopes that we hold and sustain throughout the evening and hand these to the presenters ahead of they stroll out on stage,” he mentioned.
According to Mike Davies, PwC’s director of international communications, both Cullinan and Ruiz would have had a briefcase on either side of the auditorium to hand out the envelope for the category to be announced. Every single briefcase would have had one particular envelope of every category winner.
In his remarks just before the show, Cullinan had mentioned PwC’s relationship with the Academy Awards is testament to the firm’s reputation in the marketplace for becoming “a firm of integrity, of accuracy and confidentiality and all of these factors that are seriously important to the function we have with the Academy in counting these ballots.”
“But I think it really is truly symbolic of how we’re thought of beyond this part and how our clientele feel of us and I believe it really is a thing we take really seriously and take a lot of pride in.”
Robinson-Leon mentioned it was vital to bear in mind that counting ballots is not PwC’s core company but that it will have to be serious about dealing with the aftermath of Sunday’s embarrassment and media fallout.
“This can take place once and there will be relative forgiveness but it cannot come about twice,” said Group Gordon’s Robinson-Leon. “If they have been to do this once more, that could have an impact on the brand. If this is an isolated incident, the long-term impact on the brand will be minimal.”
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