In all the excitement over the last couple of weeks with Crisis PR events, I neglected to talk about this little incident that occurred in Mexico.
Picture this. You’re a caddy working locally, and normally get paid a couple hundred dollars in US currency for an outing with a professional golfer. But then one guy contracts you for 20 times that amount. Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? Except it wasn’t.
Golfer Matt Kucher who won his local golf tournament to the tune of $1.3 million pays his caddy $5,000, when the going rate in the United States would be to give him 10 percent of your take. , or in this case, around $130,000. The controversy blows up on social media.
Kucher says he made a fair offer; in fact, above market rate. That may have been true, but the fact is that when you take home that kind of money and give a caddy who’s instrumental in your success a small pittance, certainly smaller than you normally would pay, you just come across looking arrogant, pompous and selfish.
All of the social media melee that occurred afterwards and the bad publicity Kucher received negated any kind of savings. In the end, the caddy got $50,000, but not before Matt Kucher did some real damage to his reputation.
There’s a good lesson here for organizations who decide to be penny wise and pound foolish in making some public decisions. While you may save a few bucks in the short term, you may wind up looking like a zero instead of a hero as a result.
