Newspapers: Not quite dead yet.
June 6, 2011 Leave a comment
Quick Post: There are 10,000 online newspapers in the world, find out where, here:
A Scorpion, a Frog and an Aflac Duck
March 16, 2011 3 Comments
By now you’ve heard that Aflac insurance fired comedian Gilbert Gottfried as the commercial voice of its Aflac duck for tweeting insensitive and offensive remarks (since removed) about the disaster in Japan on Twitter.
True, tweets like these (here are two of 12 issued in total) are insensitive and could be considered offensive:
“I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said, ‘Is there a school is this area?’ She said, ‘Not now, but just wait.’”
“Japan is really advanced. They don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.”
The company stated the tweets were “lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac.”
Fair enough, and the fact that Aflac does 75% of its business in Japan is certainly a valid business reason to end their relationship. The company was entirely within its rights — and indeed had no choice — but to do so, even though Gottfried’s voice is not used in the Japanese versions of the ads and most of Aflac’s customers likely never knew that Gottfried supplied the duck’s voice.
Insensitive, offensive and ill-timed. But that describes Gottfried who has a long-held and well deserved reputation of being, as Howard Stern recently put it, “the most foul-mouthed comedian” out there.
Example: Shortly after 9-11, Gottfried was part of a Comedy Central/Friars’ Club roast of Hugh Hefner where no one was in the mood to laugh. There, a joke about his plane having a connection at the Empire State Building was met by catcalls and cries of, “Too soon!” Concluding that it was time for a comedy “Hail Mary”, Gottfried broke into an obscene, graphic, vile, extended version of the recognized “dirtiest joke of all time” – ‘The Aristocrats.’ It is also accepted as the best performance of that joke ever.
And that brings us to the fable of the scorpion and the frog. A scorpion approached a river and Read more of this post
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Of Kenneth Cole; Twitter; and Crossing the Line
February 18, 2011 Leave a comment
“The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones.”
– from ‘Julius Caesar’ by William Shakespeare
By now you’ve heard about this tweet issued by fashion designer Kenneth Cole where, in an obvious case of insensitivity, he tried to connect the world-changing events in Egypt to his spring line:
Ouch! And for this he has rightfully drawn the scorn of the Web. That’s what he did wrong. You know it, I know it and he knows it.
What he did right next was to remove the offending tweet, but not try to cover it up; instead he acknowledged the mistake and apologized publicly within a few hours: 
When negative reaction persisted, he did so again, more extensively. Still, “the evil lives on”, these days in the form of first page Google search results.
But, as inevitable as that sounds, mistakes will be made – so create an action plan now for handling the blowback.
Cover-ups Never Work
People always ask me how to remove negative social mentions online. The truth is they can’t be summarily deleted. Manipulating social media to obfuscate the truth never works. I can cite examples. The social space is in many ways self-correcting, and the truth will out. Always. The best tactic: do good things. And get those good things (thought leadership examples; blog entries; positive reviews of personal appearances) published online. Get them in front of key influencers and, this is vital, do everything while maintaining three core principles:
Accuracy; Integrity; Transparency
Social media reputation management does not work any other way. Don’t let the good be interred with the bones of the brand’s or individual’s reputation when crises hit. Be both reactive and proactive.
Of course, the best way to handle a PR crisis is to avoid them in the first place. As a brand, Kevin Cole is known for being socially relevant and supportive of social causes — often in a controversial way. As such, his brand supporters and loyalists will not likely be affected by this social media faux pas compared to those for whom he was an unknown.
In a sense, he’s lucky that it was he who made the intended-to-be-pithy-but-ultimately-offensive remark. Had a social media manager in his company done this he/she’d likely be looking for a new job.
But then again, in the hands of a professional, maybe the mistake would have been avoided.
Full disclosure: In a past life I worked for El Greco Leather, a company owned by Kenneth Cole’s father and run with his two brothers. I never had any direct contact or dealings with Kenneth (though I do wear his shoes)
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Social Media Week 2011: SUXORZ
February 11, 2011 3 Comments
When looking over the Social Media Week NYC offerings, there were many having to do with how to do social media right. So, it was only natural to register for the one that promised to lambaste those who failed — and failed spectacularly:
SUXORZ*: The Worst Social Media Advertising of 2010, Hosted by Blogads
* – SUXORZ: Leet-speak (hacker talk) for something that sucks, a lot. Opposite of ROXORZ.
Panelists at the Feb 10 event at the Gershwin Hotel were: Jessica Amason, ThisIsWhyYoureFat; Brian Clark, GMDstudios; Brian Morrissey, Ad Week; and BL Ochman, Proof IC with moderator Henry Copeland, Blogads.com. Entrants were grouped into five categories, and the winners, err, losers of each going for the Biggest Loser title. Here are the categories, with the winner in bold.
Meme Purgatory: Trying, but failing, to create viral characters
Cisco’s “Ted from Accounting” – trying to emulate Old Spice’s “Smell Like a Man” icon
Dell’s “Dr. Ashley”
Smirnoff’s “Bros Icing Bros”
Volkswagen’s “Sluggy Patterson”
Missed Connections: What you would typically label a #FAIL
CVS’s Community Manager having a protected Twitter account
Denny’s pointing to a Twitter account (Twitter.com/Dennys) which actually belongs to a Taiwanese guy
Leo Burnett Worldwide’s Introduction to Humankind video
Starbuck’s getting Facebook to blitz an existing Community page that had 3,000 members — in Hungary — when they launched their “official” Hungarian page
Mean People Suck: There’s a way to soothe the savage social media beast (sic) – and then there are these:
Dr. Pepper taking over fans’ Facebook status updates to post outrageous entries
Mercedes requiring Facebook sign-up for a Twitter contest
Nestle’s inability to deal with the social media backlash spurred by Greenpeace
Price Chopper contacting a customer’s employer and requesting disciplinary action for posting a negative tweet
You’re So Vain: Just because your PR team makes you do social media doesn’t mean you get it
Fast Company’s Influence Project, where popularity equals influence (it doesn’t!)
Kenneth Cole’s Coptic co-opting of the unrest in Egypt to tweet about his fashion line
Kim Kardashian led Digital Death campaign to forgo social media until a ransom was paid (see my related entry Quitting Twitter for Charity Doesn’t Make Cent$)
Lebron James joining Twitter just before his big announcement, then abandoning it
People’s Choice: New media failures that ticked people off
BP’s response (or lack thereof) to social media sturm-und-drang regarding the oil spill
Charmin’s ‘TP-A-Friend’ Facebook app
Facebook’s Stories that turns your posts into ads
TSA’s handling of the full-body peep show security scanner
Worst of the Worst:
Cisco’s “Ted from Accounting”
Denny’s Taiwanese guy Twitter account
Price Chopper negative tweet retribution demand
Kim Kardashian Digital Death campaign
BP’s response (or lack thereof) to sturm-und-drang
The biggest loser is: Price Chopper! For the most unsocial social media response.
A well deserved #EPICFAIL
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Live Tweeting: Social Media Week IABC
February 9, 2011 Leave a comment
Last night (Feb. 8 ), as part of New York Social Media Week* I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the New York chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators at my old stomping grounds, the McGraw-Hill building, titled:
When Publicly-Held Companies’ Free-Wheeling Social Media
Collides with Disclosure Policies
When employees in a publicly-held company disclose “material information” via Social Media, the risks and ramifications are enormous. It could even result in the Securities and Exchange Commission investigating your firm or imposing a fine – all because they found out through the wrong channel.
The panelists were:
- Standard & Poor’s, Alice Cherry, Senior Director of Social Media
- Pfizer, Kate Bird, Director, Corporate Internet Communications
- AT&T, Paul Dalessio, Vice President at Fleishman Hillard (agency)
- Definition 6, Gil Wolchock, Group Account Director [Moderator]
The spin on this discussion was it involved companies that operate under strict regulatory guidelines in addition to normal corporate concerns over social media use. Here are my tweets broadcast from the event (in chronological order): Read more of this post
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Bottom of the Food Chain 