Volkswagen has recently had a bit of trouble. After discovering that the steering was faulty on some vehicles a couple of years ago, they’ve recently been in the news because it was discovered that some of their cars were fitted with devices that enabled them to cheat pollution tests.

In releasing the news to the world, VW made a terrible mistake which sent their shares plummeting. They told us:

“In order to cover the necessary service and other measures to win back customer confidence, VW plans to set aside 6.5 billion euros in provisions in the third quarter.he group’s earnings targets for 2015 will be adjusted accordingly.”

Now, the Liberals know a thing or two about winning back confidence. According to the latest poll in the Fairfax Fantasies the Coalition now sit at 53% two party preferred. (No mention of the 3% error margin in that story!)

Yep, the Liberals sure know how to change perceptions. Now, if they were in charge of Volkswagen it would have gone something like this:

Meeting between CEO and PR manager.

“I’m about to issue the press release. What do you want me to say?”

“Tell everyone that we have a new grill!”

“A new grill?”

“Yep, we’ve replaced the whole front of the car. If you’ll just announce that we’ve replaced the old Abbott grill with the sleek, attractive Turnbull grill.”

“So you’re solving this by getting rid of the Abbott grill?”

“Well, we haven’t actually got rid of it yet. We’ve put it out the back till someone works out what to do with it?”

“I think the problem needs more than just a prettier front.”

“That’s not all we’ve done. We’ve replaced the Andrews bull-bar, and put the Hockey in the boot.”

“The Hockey? What’d it do?”

“Nothing much. We couldn’t work out what it was there for. It just seemed to get in the way and cause us to stall whenever we got a green light. Nah, nobody’ll even notice that the Hockey’s gone. We’ll be asking people instead to concentrate on the Morrison we’ve installed.”

“The Morrison? What’s it do?”

“It tells you that the problem isn’t that there isn’t enough petrol. The problem is that you want to drive too far.”

“That sounds like something the Hockey would have done!”

“Nah, the Hockey would have only said that poor people drive too far. The Morrison thinks everyone should just sit in their garage until they’ve saved enough on petrol to build their own roads. Privatisation, see.”

“OK, so I’m to put out a statement telling people about how much better the cars look now. No problem. But I don’t see how this gets around the basic problem.”

“What’s that?

“You were cheating on emissions!”

“What if I told you that we’ve got a new front grill that doesn’t cheat on emissions?”

“The front grill had nothing to do with emissions.”

“Exactly!”

“The problem is that people don’t trust you and it sounds like nothing you’ve done is going to fix things.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised how well people respond to something shiny.”

“Can’t you do something to fix the emissions problem?

“Hey look, we fixed the steering problem. We’re no longer veering all over the road. And soon we’ll be commencing our direct action plan that fixes the cheating on emissions.”

“How?”

“Well, we’re going to pay our engineers to produce accurate devices.”

“Isn’t that what they should have been doing originally?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

“How do we convince people that it’s all ok, and that the emissions aren’t a problem?”

“Not everybody’s concerned about emissions. Some of our engineers believe that emissions are good for humanity, and that all this talk about carbon monoxide being dangerous is just a lot of lefty greenies trying to create a world government in order to impose anarchy. In fact, they didn’t even think that we needed to replace the grill. They thought the old Abbott one was pretty damn good. But then some of them haven’t been happy since we stopped calling the things we put engines into ‘horseless carriages’. They don’t like change unless it’s absolutely unavoidable.”

“If we’re going to have any credibility, I really think that you need to fix the basic problem.”

“Not necessary. People will be so busy admiring the new appearance that they won’t even noticed that we’ve sealed up the doors.”

“You’ve sealed up the doors? Why?”

“Part of the plan with the Morrison. If nobody can get into the car, they won’t notice any of the problems. We’ll just tell that what’s inside the car is an ‘operational matter’. And if they can’t press the accelerator and that way, there’ll still be plenty of fuel.”

“But isn’t the whole idea of the car that you go somewhere?”

“Oh, we’ll unseal the doors and let certain people in. But that’s only after we’ve won back everyone’s trust.”

“This is going to be a hard sell.”

“Come on. You’ve had hard sells before, and you’ve always come through. Like when you convinced the public that those driving our biggest models were really contributing more to the company, so that’s why we gave them free fuel and servicing.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But don’t blame me if people starting buying your competitor’s cars. Even if they have that ugly Shorten as a grill.”

“Yes, our inquiry into dodgy grills has certainly put a dent in that one. The only concern now is that they use it as an excuse to replace the grill with their Plibersek or their Albenese.”

“Well then we can run the old ‘how can you trust a company that replaces its grill’ line?”

“Won’t that back-fire on us?”

“Nah. Don’t you remember that ‘it’s all about trust’ one we ran for John Howard after he’d broken just about every election promise including the never, ever GST! If you say it, they will believe you.”

“it’s not that simple.”

“It’s a well-known fact that if you keep repeating something, people believe you.”

“It can’t be that simple.”

“Yep, If you repeat something often enough, people believe you.”

“Really?”

“Look, if you repeat something, people believe you.”

“I suppose. Anyway, get started on that campaign. Announce that anyone who has an earlier model with an Abbott grill, should be very pleased because that Abbott grill has just been wonderful and really one of the best grills that a car can possibly have, but next time they take their car in for a service, they’ll come out with the Turnbull.”

“Doesn’t that sort of contradict your message that it needed replacing?”

“Just spin it that we thought the Abbott looked better out the back. I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

“OK. I’ll get onto it.”

“Good luck.”