Turning around Huawei’s battered image: a tough job but someone ought to do it, crisis management experts say
- Amid its many travails, the company’s public relations approach has suffered from inconsistency and poor coordination, observers point out
- Many of the suggestions for the Chinese telecoms giant would require patience, humility and years of strategic nudging on multiple platforms
After years of stellar growth and a rags-to-riches corporate history, Huawei Technologies is caught in the middle of a US-China trade war, accused of stealing trade secrets, facing espionage concerns, its chief financial officer detained, its global business threatened.
By its own admission, the crisis has cost the Chinese telecommunications giant US$30 billion.
Experts in crisis management – an industry that helped turn around Johnson & Johnson after the cyanide-laced Tylenol deaths and Volkswagen’s doctored-emissions scandal – say the Shenzhen-based company would be a particularly challenging assignment were they hired.
Success would crucially depend on Huawei’s willingness to follow their advice, spend and take the long view, hardly assured given sometimes erratic messaging and a revolving door of outside expertise, they add.
“Houston, we have a problem,” said Richard Levick, chief executive of Levick Strategic Communications. “If you’ve got US$30 billion a year at stake, I can’t imagine them not wanting to spend several millions of dollars a year on advisers and take their advice.”
Start by outlining realistic goals, experts say. Winning Washington’s approval to sell fifth-generation, or 5G, telecoms equipment? Forget it. Selling less sensitive hardware through US partners, chipping away at global suspicion and improving European commercial ties? Probably doable.