The Price of Behaving Badly

Today, the NFL (my favorite professional sports league) came down hard on Pittsburgh Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger. NYTimes.com coverage here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/sports/football/22roethlisberger.html?src=me

For corporations that work relentlessly to promote their brand and deliver a high quality product for their customers, nothing is more detrimental to that effort than when a high ranking official displays an obvious lack of judgment, poor values and self-destructive behavior in the eye of the public. This holds true for professional sports teams as much as it does the various state governments who have seen their Governors admit to extramarital affairs (Spitzer, Sanford, McGreevy among recent examples there).

Every day, it's my job to work hard to advance companies' story. We work tirelessly to make sure that the elements of the story that serve our clients' interests get told carefully and effectively. I'm sure that the same can be said about those that represent the Steelers organization or the various states where governors have gone astray. I can only imagine the frustration that the Steelers' PR team must be experiencing today - likely suffering collateral damage to their sanity and stress level as a result of a higher paid co-worker's trouble making.