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:

Charles Sykes/SYKEC, via Associated Press“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

Filed under business, media, PR, social media, Twitter Tagged with , , ,

On Employee Appreciation Day, How Will Yours ‘March 4th’?

March 4, 2011 2 Comments

March 4th! The only day of the year that is also a command. In today’s socially networked environment, where companies are forced to realize that they don’t control their brands — their customers do — their best “Brand Ambassadors” are often overlooked, under appreciated and underutilized: their employees.

Employees appreciate the annual Bloomberg L.P. picnic

And that’s dangerous. When 50% of employees who say they have considered leaving their job (source: MarketTools, Inc.) mix with the explosion in social media a potentially brand killing lethal combination ensues.  For example, let’s say you frequent a social media site where new autos are discussed and saw a valued member of the community who worked for an automaker but had nothing good to say about the company, you’d think twice before considering buying one of their models.

Social media builds engagement with employees, too. Traditional internal communications efforts, typically administered by your HR team and utilized to inform employees of company news and events via e-mail, newsletter or a Web 1.0 designed internal site are no longer enough. These cascading, ‘sermons on high’ one-way communications are often discounted or (worse) ignored by employees — especially in large companies with multiple offices spread over widely divergent geographic areas.

“Just as ‘All politics is local‘; ‘All communications is social'”

As mentioned in a prior post, let Communications/Public Affairs handle PR; let Marketing handle marketing; and now, let HR handle human resources – but rely upon a social media professional (yes, that skill set, again) to optimize all three.

The application of current social media two-way conversation strategies will engage a company’s employees the same way social media is used to connect the company with its customers. The more the employees feel connected to the company, its brands and products the more supportive they will be. Acknowledge that their opinion matters and is heard.

As for quick things you can do today, Read more of this post

Filed under business, holidays, hr, PR, social media, web2.0 Tagged with ,

Don’t Blame Twitter — Case Study: STRABAG SE

March 2, 2011 2 Comments

Austrian based STRABAG SE, one of the largest construction companies in Europe with 73,600 employees and annual revenue of € 12.B (both as of fiscal 2010), posted this update on Twitter after 18 months of use —>

In an email to IR Web Report (whose article inspired this blog entry), spokesperson Paula Rhys of STRABAG’s investor relations team said: “We do not see any benefit in using this social media tool for the time being. Stakeholders did not discuss actively with us on Twitter despite our efforts to ask questions.”

Now, regular readers of this blog or my Twitter stream know that a recurring theme of mine is that companies need to place the responsibility for its social media initiative in the hands of a social media professional. A quick review of this move by STRABAG underscores this requirement.

The Facts
STRABAG created their Twitter account on August 5, 2009 and issued its first tweet two days later (“Largest construction company in CEE“

  • It has issued 146 tweets over the 575 days from inception to the date of this entry (~4/week)
  • It follows 524 people, is followed by 527 and appears on 32 Twitter lists
  • Its bio info is exactly the same as its first tweet (see above)
  • Its profile provides a link to its home page: http://www.strabag.com

The Analysis (aka Why They Were Doomed to Twitter #Fail)
First, let me say that the mistakes STRABAG made are not uncommon when companies apply traditional marketing and communications strategies towards leveraging social media. I do not mean to assign blame to its communications and marketing teams — it’s not their fault — they were simply operating the way they were trained. But, Twitter, and indeed all social media, is a different animal. Here’s what they did wrong: Read more of this post

Filed under PR, social media, Twitter, web2.0 Tagged with , , , , ,

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)

Filed under did you see that?, media, PR, social media, Twitter, web2.0 Tagged with , , , ,

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

Filed under media, Memes, PR, social media, social media week, web2.0 Tagged with , ,

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