In June 2015, after the Smiler crash at Alton Towers left five people seriously injured, Merlin’s chief executive Nick Varney went on television and did something corporate lawyers tend to discourage.
He accepted responsibility, plainly and without qualification or hesitation, spoke about the victims as people rather than in abstractions, and committed to compensation before anyone had asked him to. A decade on, his handling of those days is still widely taught as the benchmark, and the company’s reputation recovered in a way few predicted at the time.
Five years earlier, BP’s Tony Hayward stood on a Louisiana shoreline during the worst oil spill in American history and told reporters that nobody wanted the crisis resolved more than he did: “I’d like my life back.” Hayward was an experienced, fluent, extensively prepared corporate spokesperson yet that one simple sentence haunted him for the rest of his career, and he was swiftly dispatched from BP’s leadership.
The difference between those two moments isn’t technique, as fundamentally, both men could deliver a message well, rather their judgement and instinct differed dramatically.
Key takeaways
- Judgement beats technique under pressure: Nick Varney and Tony Hayward were both capable communicators. Their judgement in the moment decided how each crisis was remembered.
- Polish and credibility are different skills: polish can be taught in a session. Credibility depends on whether audiences believe a spokesperson is levelling with them.
- Too much polish backfires: a flawless line about injured customers sounds rehearsed, and rehearsal makes audiences look for what’s being hidden.
- Strong spokespeople make the same calls: they read the question behind the question, concede what’s plainly true, admit what they don’t know, adapt when the prepared line stops fitting and keep the focus on the people affected.
- Weak judgement spreads: one bad clip can become the story, set the tone internally and turn executive visibility into a liability.
- Judgement can be trained: realistic scenario training, regular repetition and honest feedback build it over time, long before a crisis puts it to the test.
Polish is not credibility
It’s worth dissecting these two concepts explicitly, because the industry has a habit of selling the former whilst underestimating the importance of the latter.
Polish is, essentially, a delivery skill: composure on camera, clean soundbites, bridging back to message. It’s important undoubtedly, and can be taught, but credibility is something else entirely.
Credibility is the intended audience’s judgement about whether this person is levelling with them, and they assess it it not from fluency or slickness of presentation but from actions. Did the spokesperson answer the question or slide past it? Did they concede what was obviously true? Did they sound like the situation actually weighed on them and they cared about it?
The uncomfortable truth is that beyond a certain point, polish can actually undermine credibility which is an ailment that has plagued many corporate executives over the years who bemoan the fact their messages were not received as warmly as they had hoped (or expected).
A perfectly smooth line in response to a question about injured customers reads as rehearsal, and an audience that senses rehearsal starts hunting for what’s being hidden. Under real scrutiny, the corporate spokesperson who pauses and then says something true will beat the one who delivers flawless evasion every time (politicians, take note).
The judgement calls that separate strong spokespeople from weak ones
So what is spokesperson judgement, concretely? Watch enough leaders under pressure and the same handful of real-time decisions come up consistently.
Reading the question behind the question. “Do you regret the decision?” is rarely a question about regret, it’s an invitation to show you understand why people are angry. Strong spokespeople answer what’s actually being asked; weak ones answer the literal words and wonder why the interview turned hostile.
Defending the indefensible is the fastest way to lose a room and knowing which areas to concede, proactively, goes quite a long way. Judgement is demonstrating the ability to say “we got that wrong” about the thing you plainly got wrong.
Choosing honesty over completeness is an important measure. “I don’t know yet, and I won’t guess” is a strong answer in a fast-moving situation. Inventing certainty to fill silence is how spokespeople make tomorrow’s correction story.
Knowing when the prepared line no longer fits. Message discipline means knowing your message and returning to it time and again (as well as making it feel natural). It curdles, however, into message rigidity when the situation has moved and the spokesperson hasn’t.
Remembering who the conversation is for. Hayward’s line was him being honest, but it was also firmly about himself and his own feelings, in a moment that belonged entirely to other people. The best spokespeople hold one question in their head throughout: who is hurting here, and does what I’m about to say serve them or me?
What breaks when judgement is absent
A spokesperson without judgement doesn’t just have a bad interview. The clip travels, especially given how ubiquitous social media is, and in a crisis communications situation it becomes the story, displacing whatever the organisation needed to say.
Colleagues watching internally take their cue from what they saw, so the tone deafness replicates. Journalists who sensed evasion come back harder, with better information, and executive visibility, the thing organisations spend money and resources building, turns from asset to liability, because every appearance is now a risk to be managed rather than an opportunity to be used.
Judgement can be built
The good news is that judgement isn’t a personality trait, it’s a trained capacity, and the training is not mysterious but it does require a specific set of circumstances in order to build it properly
Like it or not, it’s built under pressure, ideally through preparation rather than baptism of fire. Scenario-based media training only develops judgement when the scenarios are real enough to hurt: the questions your organisation genuinely fears, asked the way a well-briefed journalist would actually ask them, with the follow-up that punishes the evasive first answer. Generic role-play produces generic instincts.
It’s also built through repetition and feedback. One session teaches technique, but judgement comes from reps: repeated exposure to hard questions, honest review of real appearances, and the slightly painful experience of watching your own playback. That’s why spokesperson development is properly an ongoing discipline within leadership communications, not an annual event, an argument we’ve made before and will keep making.
And it’s built by rehearsing the foreseeable: Varney’s performance looked instinctive. It’s likelier that Merlin had done the unglamorous work in advance; knowing who would speak, what responsibility they would take, and what mattered most in the first hours. The judgement calls were made calmly before they had to be made quickly. That, in the end, is what preparation is actually for, not to provide responses verbatim, learned as a script, but to equip the spokesperson with the tools to get the job done.
FAQs
About the author
Simarin Tandon | Junior Digital Account Director
Having worked with brands across the Beauty & Wellness, FMCG, FinTech, and Home & Lifestyle sectors, Simarin focuses on driving acquisition and growth, whilst managing the Digital team at brandnation.
A curious marketer, Simarin’s finger is always on the pulse when it comes to performance and digital updates across both paid and organic platforms.
Spokesperson judgement is the ability to make the right call in real time under scrutiny. It covers knowing what a question is really asking, when to concede a point, when to admit uncertainty and who the response should serve. It matters most when events move faster than any prepared message.
Polish is a delivery skill: composure, clean soundbites and the ability to bridge back to message. Credibility is the audience’s judgement about whether a spokesperson is being straight with them. Audiences assess it through behaviour, such as whether the spokesperson answers the question, concedes what is obviously true and shows the situation matters to them.
The comment was honest, but it centred on Hayward’s own feelings at a moment that belonged to the people affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill. That one line came to define BP’s response, and Hayward left the company’s leadership soon after.
After the 2015 Smiler crash, Merlin chief executive Nick Varney accepted responsibility plainly, spoke about the victims as people and committed to compensation before anyone had asked. His response is still widely taught as an example of good crisis leadership, and the company’s reputation recovered.
Yes. Judgement is built through scenario-based media training that uses the questions your organisation genuinely fears, asked the way a well-briefed journalist would ask them. Repetition, honest review of real appearances and agreeing key decisions before a crisis all help spokespeople make calm, sound calls under pressure.
Treat media training as an ongoing discipline. A single annual session teaches technique, but judgement comes from repeated exposure to hard questions and regular feedback. Build spokesperson development into your wider leadership communications programme so skills stay sharp before they’re needed.
Say so. “I don’t know yet, and I won’t guess” is a credible answer in a fast-moving situation. Inventing certainty to fill silence risks a correction later, which becomes a second story and damages trust further.
