When disaster strikes, the most important thing is how you deal with it. What’s done is done - you have to focus on putting it right. This is why crisis PR experts are paid a fortune to help businesses salvage their reputations and manage a situation when things go horribly wrong. There are usually apologies, offers of amends and people falling on swords to satisfy the need for a scapegoat.

But, with a bit of careful planning, trouble on this scale can be avoided in the first place.

Having realised the situation they were in, the PureGym PR machine will have been burning off more calories than a spin class trying to dig themselves out of this episode at its Luton branch which made headlines around the world.

Fitness trainer and assistant manager Matt Simpson wanted to celebrate Black History Month and told the gym’s social media followers about the 12-step workout named after the Hollywood blockbuster, adding "slavery was hard and so is this".

I am totally lost for words as to why anyone would think it was a good idea, let alone try to defend it when it all hit the fan. In a nutshell, he got it spectacularly wrong.

He has since apologised for his “ill-judged” post and added: “Where the post came from was not a place of malice, it was me as an individual trying to bind my history that I'm a part of, as a person of colour, with my passion which is fitness."

The firm has described the incident at “wholly unacceptable” and explained that each gym manages its own social media feeds and is encouraged to engage with clients at a local level. The company doesn’t manage or check them.

PureGym, like any large organisation, will have a strict social media policy, telling staff what is and is not acceptable, such as getting involved in exchanges on social media if someone complains. And it would have reminded each gym about the company’s guidelines as they took on their own social media.

However, in this case, I very much doubt that Matt Simpson sat down with the guidelines and checked that his exercise programme ticked all the boxes. He just didn’t think it through and got it horribly wrong.

The company has been quick to distance itself from the debacle and Matt Simpson has stressed that the organisation is in no way racist. I am sure he is right, but it is not the sort of controversy any firm would want to be involved in.

The most frustrating thing about this episode is that it was entirely preventable. Had this been run by the comms or social media teams, the alarm bells would have been deafening and a PR disaster could have been averted. And you would like to think that even if he had run it by colleagues or the manager, doubts would have surfaced.

One of the problems with social media is it is instant and there are no filters or checks. By the time you realise something is wrong, the damage has already been done and any changes, retractions and apologies might not be enough to stop a backlash or even legal action.

A prime example of this is the letters pages in newspapers. For every letter printed, there must be at least half-a-dozen which are rejected because they are inaccurate, inflammatory, libellous and even illegal. These are checked by professionals who know what can and cannot be published. I would get complaints from letter writers demanding to know why their submissions calling the local headteacher a paedophile and community doctor a thief had not gone in.

But there are no such checks on social media and there have been cases in which people have been jailed for naming victims or witnesses who have been given anonymity by the court.  

I feel sorry for Matt Simpson, who has learnt the hard way that while he may be an expert when it comes to fitness, PR and social media are sadly not his forte. And, with a few simple checks in place, this was a headache he and PureGym could have avoided.

Here’s a suggestion you can have on me - the Daley Decathlon – a regime of 10 exercises celebrating the successes of British decathlete Daley Thompson.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-54446293

#blackhistorymonth #12yearsofslave #puregym