Now that the NFL lockout is over, we can all breathe one big sigh of relief. There will be a 2011 season. There will be a Super Bowl on February 5, 2012. There will be tailgating, fantasy leagues and grown men who paint their bodies with their team’s colors and act the fool for a fleeting moment of recognition on national TV. The world seems to be spinning on its axis once again.

It appears that the NFL and its players have avoided dropping the ball on this one. It may be that there are lessons learned from the past when NFL management and its players became locked in a legal battle over a labor agreement and suffered the loss of respect of its fans. I have been a fan of football for a long time. I remember the debacle of the 1987 season when the owners brought in "replacement” players to break a strike by the players association. No one wanted to watch a bunch of guys who got cut before the season started playing like they were on the road to the Super Bowl. It never got that far before the strike was settled and the regulars took to the field once again.

What does this have to do with marketing? A whole lot if your company has had some unpleasant news to navigate around. If you have ever had anyone in the organization who has "dropped the ball” and it became news, marketing and communications become key to reassuring your target audience that everything is on the mend. Otherwise, the dropped ball becomes the moniker that follows you the rest of your career.

I ran into a former NFL player the other day. Quentin Coryatt played linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts almost twenty years ago. He was at a camp for high school players and doing a good job of teaching the boys about being a linebacker. I took note of him because I was a Coryatt fan when he played for the Colts. However, there is one play I always think of when I remember him, and I am sure he would just as soon it never happened. In the waning minutes of the 1995 AFC Championship, the Colts held a 16-13 lead over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Neil O’Donnell was the Steelers quarterback. The Steelers needed to score and time was running out. O’Donnell dropped back and threw a pass over the middle. Coryatt was in the right place at the right time. The pass hit him squarely in the chest, and then fell to the ground. He simply dropped the ball. Had he caught it, the Colts would have run out the clock. Instead, the Steelers got another shot and scored to win the game and go on to the Super Bowl. Of all the plays that Quentin Coryatt made over his career, I can only remember that one. Catch the ball and you go to the Super Bowl. Drop the ball and… oh well, better luck next year.

So what can you do in the wake of dropping the ball in business? First, don’t act like nothing happened. It may be unpleasant, but tell the truth and take your medicine. Every business makes mistakes from time to time. If you try to act as if it never happened, you will eventually be exposed and it will be worse. Get some sort of communication out to your customers, your key vendors and the public that explains what has happened and what you are doing as a company to fix the situation. Do all the sordid details need to be revealed? Probably not, but it depends upon the size of the mistake. Always error on the side of telling your own story rather than letting someone from outside your organization tell the story for you. If you think a reporter is going to get all the facts straight, think again. If you think your customers will see the situation as it really happened and not listen to rumors, don’t count on it. You need to be the source of correct information. Put out a press release if necessary. Write a letter to your clients that addresses the issues with facts.

Secondly, a good marketing and communication plan should help you move beyond the mistake. People have short attention spans when it comes to news. Plan on putting out a series of good communication about your company. (You should be doing this on a regular basis in any case.) If you are hiring, send out a press release about open positions. If you have employees who have given time to a charity, get a photo and send it to the newspaper and online news sources. If you don’t have a charity that you give time or money to, find one (see my previous Nailing Post, What’s in a name: the case for cause marketing.) Hold a blood drive. Become a sponsor of an industry golf outing. Don’t let the last thing your customer hears about your company be a bad thing.

Thirdly, get in front of your clients and your vendors. I am not talking about an email or a tweet. Physically go and see these people. There is nothing like a human touch to reassure both the people who are buying from you and supplying your business that things are going to shake out and things will get back to normal. As human beings, we have the choice to hold a grudge or to forgive and move on. Sitting across the table from someone in an eye-to-eye conversation goes a long way towards forgiveness. What your clients feel about you has a grand impact on where they spend their money.