Corporate Dumb and Dumberer

CTS Corporation of Elkhart, Indiana – a company many of us have never heard of – has bubbled into the news as the maker of the faulty Toyota accelerator pedals linked to the biggest vehicle recall in automotive history, a recall even National Public Radio, which chooses its words carefully, has called “unprecedented.”

CTS is an example of a big company, singularly focused on profits, that had better get heavy duty and competent crisis communications counsel … soon.

Does CTS Corp – traded (for now) on the New York Stock Exchange as “CTS,” as they tout at the start of perhaps the dumbest corporate news release in history – accept any sliver of responsibility for a safety issue that has put millions of drivers at peril? Of course not:

“We have no knowledge of any accidents or injuries that have resulted from this rare potential condition.”

Clearly, CTS doesn’t share Toyota’s concern over safety because profits come first. Just check out promotion of all the financials on the CTS home page. It’s all financial hype.

The barely literate CTS news release goes on to make an astonishingly arrogant and dumb statement:

Toyota is a small, but important, customer of CTS, representing approximately 3% of our annual sales. CTS has been actively working with Toyota for awhile (sic) to develop a new pedal to meet tougher specifications from Toyota.

CTS Corp Web Site

To refer to Toyota – the world’s largest auto maker – and use the word, small, in the same sentence reveals an utterly clueless corporate leadership. If, indeed, only 3 percent of CTS business comes from Toyota, why then did CTS stock drop nearly 10 percent yesterday and is in a free fall?

Following the 269 word CTS news release are 465 words of “safe harbor” boilerplate that essentially says nothing CTS has stated in the 269 words is the truth. Safe harbor boilerplate is used by a dwindling number of chief financial officers and attorneys living under the illusion that it creates a shield against law suits. In other words, they believe they can lie and get away with it in news releases.

Law suits?! My guess is that CTS Corp’s CFO Donna L. Belusar, who signed her name to the release and makes $622,000 a year, ain’t seen nothing yet.

Wait until she and CEO Vinod Khilnani get before Henry Waxman’s House Energy and Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill.

CTS Corp’s amateurish and reckless attempts at corporate communications are actually endangering the economic viability of the company and its shareholder value. It needs to be saved from itself.

Related posts:

1. Defining Corporate Journalism
2. Corporate Blogs: the Realities and Purpose
3. Winner: Convoluted Press Release of the Month
4. Ultimately … It’s All About Relationships
5. Banish the Boring Boilerplate

Tags: Crisis Communications

Category: Crisis Communications, Featured