Facebook users were up in arms recently after the company replaced the email address that appears in their profiles with an “@facebook.com” address. The response was swift and negative, with Facebook fielding a raft of harsh comments in the media and across the blogosphere. Facebook responded with a brief statement distributed by email from an unnamed spokesperson. Adding a real name to the statement would have been more effective.
Facebook’s response pointed to a little-noticed news release from mid-April in an effort to try to minimize the issue:
“As we announced back in April, we’ve been updating addresses on Facebook to make them consistent across our site,” the Facebook spokeswoman said today via email. “In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines.”
After the outcry, Facebook was quick to admit it could have communicated the change better. But it is missing one obvious step that could have helped temper 
the reactions and which might help the company manage a future crisis: stop using anonymous statements.
An anonymous statement feels impersonal, distant, even defensive. It reinforces negative impressions about a company. Attributing a quote to a real person makes for a much stronger statement. It looks more credible when someone rises to defend the company’s actions.
Here’s another example, from a Wall Street Journal article on a tax probe in Germany that is targeting clients of Credit Suisse:
The policies were sold to clients as a way of earning tax-free interest on savings, people familiar with the investigation said. A Credit Suisse spokesman said in a statement the bank has told clients who bought the policies to talk to their tax advisers. He added that Credit Suisse told its clients they were responsible for determining their tax obligations when they bought the products, which the spokesman said were legal in Switzerland.
You can practically see the spokesman cowering under a desk.
An anonymous statement is better than saying nothing of course, which would leave the allegations unchallenged, but the bank would have looked much better if the spokesman had been quoted. Quoting a senior bank official would have been even better.
Of course, issuing a statement attributed to an individual is no guarantee it will be reported that way. News organizations don’t always use a spokesman’s name when it is provided, although they are more likely to quote an operating executive than a press officer.
So why is an official’s name so rarely seen in a press statement?
It’s fear mostly. People are risk averse when it comes to putting their name into a controversy. Sure, it can be difficult to approve a quote when reporters are about to file, but it’s no more difficult than approving a nameless statement. Executives might fear being sued, but if an issue is controversial enough to make headlines they will be sued regardless of whether they are quoted.
Adding a name to the news won’t avoid negative coverage, but it just might make it pass a little more quickly.