Can the Reputation of AIG Be Saved?

American International Group, Inc.

The short answer: No way.

Rachel Maddow suggested that, "the one thing that can unite the USA is its hatred of AIG." While she may not have statistics to back up that assertion, it certainly seems that AIG is a brand that has little chance of ever earning back the trust of the American populace. Given that we now own 80% of AIG, my guess is that it will be a very cold day in hell before the American public trusts AIG with their insurance, their retirement, or anything else. Like Enron, WorldCom, and other colossal rip-offs in recent memory, AIG will now be forever relegated to the growing list of corporations whose reputations are way beyond repairing.

In the interest of transparency, I'm one of the people who empathize with AIG. I served on the board of the Institute for Public Relations with Nick Ashooh and I continue to serve on the board of the New Hampshire Political Library with his brother Rich. And Nick Ashooh is one of the nicest, most trustworthy people I've ever met, as is his brother. Frankly, I'm not sure there's a worse PR job in the world today. (Okay, maybe VP of Public Affairs for Kim Jong-il, or Dick Cheney, or the Taliban.) Nick doesn't deserve it. Any good millennial PA officer would have long since said FU to the job and fled to Whole Foods or Timberland or to a host of other companies for whom it is easy to do PR. But Nick has stuck it out and been as professional as one can be under the circumstances. Could he/should he have embraced social media and been more transparent long ago? Absolutely. Should he perhaps have questioned more and obeyed less? Of course. But we can forgive him for being a bit preoccupied. (Eds. note: See also this enlightening article in the NYTimes, "Dear A.I.G., I Quit!" for an insider's view of the situation.)

All that having been said, I would argue that Nick has been left holding the bag for a bunch of con men. He's too nice and polite to ever accuse them of being the rip off artists that they really are. And he's now representing a brand that has less brand equity than Bush, and about the same as brand Edsel. --KDP

Comments

[Hannah Del Porto]

I don't know. Humans have a pretty short memory. AIG has been around almost 100 years, they can probably hang out another couple of decades and wait for a new crop of consumers who remembers nothing about this. It will take some work, but even the worst PR disaster isn't forever.