I don’t write about companies to embarrass them, so I almost never actually run the company name in the post. Most people will know who this is anyway, but here goes:

BLANK, a premier provider of digital signage and networked media solutions, today announced the addition of team members in the roles of business development, sales, and solutions management.

A GUY joins BLANK as President and will focus on business development and driving further growth and adoption of BLANK’S solutions in the market. Blah blah blah, and furthermore, blah …

The release this week goes on to talk about some other people who have been hired and how excited everyone is. Yippee!!!

What the release doesn’t say, anywhere, is A GUY is replacing DIFFERENT GUY who has been the president and highly visible face of the company for many years. This is the guy who all the company’s clients and business partners know. There’s nothing in the release about the departure, nothing about his choosing to pursue new opportunities. Mutual agreement. Just nothing.

I don’t know what went down, but the guy is highly respected and was front and center at the company’s booth at the industry’s biggest trade show only two weeks ago. By issuing press that ignores the big orange polka-dotted elephant in the room, the company is creating the perception that the departure was unpleasant and that it is no one else’s damn business.

My guess is that’s not really the case at all, and it was more like differences in opinion and direction that weren’t going to get resolved.

When something big happens, that your industry and your clients are going to notice and talk about, don’t try some silly misdirection by celebrating one part of the story and forcing people to draw their own conclusions about the other, more interesting half.

Be open and direct, and the response will be, “Oh! Interesting …” Be evasive or pretend it didn’t even happen, and you create a nice big, dark cloud over your company.

In such a crazily competitive, hard to differentiate industry like this, you need to carefully manage perceptions.

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