Today’s sad announcement that Ford is closing a plant in Wales with the loss of up to 1500 jobs should have come as no surprise to anyone, given that the news was so comprehensively trailed in the media yesterday. This might have been a good old fashioned leak, but we doubt it. Our view is this is quite a clever crisis communications approach from Ford.
By letting the unions know there was going to be some kind of announcement at Bridgend yesterday the cat was let out of the bag early. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess what the announcement was going to be, given similar news from competitors, such as Honda’s news of a car plant closure and Nissan’s plans to abandon new model production in the UK. Commentators including the Unions and the local MP speculated correctly yesterday that the plant was to close - driving a volume of media coverage last night and in this morning’s printed editions.
This soft run into the hard reality of this morning’s announcement dulls the blow a little bit. By the time Ford confirmed the news this morning, the world had already taken on board what was going to happen. The shock factor was diminished.
Announcements like this are never going to be pretty because of the human cost and the devastating effect this news will have on the communities such as Bridgend where Ford has been the major employer since 1977. But because the bad news was less newsworthy by this morning, the media today has included some of the broader and more positive messages in their reporting – Ford’s (eyebrow-raising) assertion that this has nothing to do with Brexit and its commitment to remain in the UK for example. There has been space on the news agenda for these messages because some of the bad the news was pushed out of the way yesterday.
Of course yesterday’s speculation was less of an issue for Ford because the announcement – while big news for Bridgend and the UK economy generally – was unlikely to be price sensitive to a giant US listed firm and Ford has already announced European job cuts. Smaller British listed businesses might not have the same freedoms. But it’s certainly worth thinking about.