Should BP spin its wheels on its pesky little PR problem?

June 7, 2010June 9, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

I bet this will be question that many presenters on crisis communications and PR turn to –at the IABC World Conference in Toronto this week, and many other events.

Variations of this question could come range from “can social media rescue a company’s reputation,” to “Is this a warning shot for corporations dabbling in social media?”

You could say BP which has the nation’s largest environmental crisis on its hands should ignore the PR disaster they have inherited (as Len Gutman at ValleyPRBlog noted, “There are some things PR can’t fix”) and stick to fixing what it has wrought. It’s near impossible for them to address the ‘wisdom’ of the passionate crowd leveraging new media.

Take these responses to the oil spill:

The BP Logo Redesign Contest. I’ll don’t need to tell you what this means in a Web 2.0 world where images are shared, commented on and archived forever.

Fake Twitter Account for ‘BPGlobalPR’: With 129,000 followers and counting, it shows how seemingly powerless Goliath is when David’s got the slingshot. The tweets themselves are entertaining.

Facebook Protests, including this one calling for a Worldwide BP Protest Day in the coming week -12 June 2010

More logo attacks on Flickr – Behind the logo group

Wikipedia edits. Lots of activity on the discussion pages of BP’s Wikipedia page, where editors this week seem to be dredging up –still unpublished– unsavory details of cancer etc.

In the face of all this, what in the name of crisis communications is the value of the full page ad in the New York Times, and some of those TV spots? Is there any value in using old media Tylenol-type tactics to fix the situation BP is in? I recall BP used to run a great series of ads, when it was re-branding, that said things like “It’s time to go on a low carbon diet.”

I think its time for BP to go on a low PR diet!

Egg on its Facebook, why doesn’t Zuckerberg learn?

May 27, 2010May 27, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

The moment I heard Mark Zuckerberg say things like “When people have control over what they share, they are comfortable sharing more,” I knew that (a) I had heard it before and (b) this was a desperate to distance Facebook from the keyword “privacy” to the other seven-letter keyword, “sharing.”

He has said that “The key here is that we always listen to what people say and the data.”
Translated: “we are always being forced to respond to react to the outcry.”

In his state of the backlash address yesterday (video) he spoke of his belief in a more connected, world powered by sharing. Hard to fault him on that.

But you can sense that this 26 year old idealistic web visionary (who was only nine years old when the first Web browser arrived on the scene) has not quite understood the true human motivations that make his application so popular. He and his team may have a critical feel for the market forces they are engaging, but they are constantly misjudging the people who populate Facebook.

Check some earlier problems here (the EU was upset then)
And here (remember Beacon?) and here.

Almost every Facebook user I speak to (friends, clients and colleagues) admit they have no clue as to how to tweak the convoluted privacy filter settings.

Three years ago a security firm, Sophos, warned of how too much sharing would backfire. They did that again last year. They found that the sharing gene in people lets them give away too much information.

By invoking what he called the “simple master switch” Zuckerberg is trying to woo users by saying that they will be more in control. He has also said that:

“The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.”

Where have I heard this before?

Zuckerberg didn’t say it yesterday. He said this in February 2009!

Pure Fitness hides billing mistake behind small print. What’s the goal here?

May 11, 2010May 12, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Ever tried to discontinue a service only to be given the run around by folks and billing bureaucracies that attempt to wear your resistance down?

It happens with big corporations, right? The ones with call centers in places like Scroungeistan…

I didn’t think my local health club would stoop so low. After all it’s more community-based. My contract with Pure Fitness ended in March 2010. It explicitly stated it was a 23 month term. I went over to tell them I would not be continuing. That was April 17th, before the next charge hit. No problem the guy said. He’s leave a note for the admissions director. She will call me if there was a problem.

No call.

By the end of the month I got my credit card statement that, lo and behold, showed not only another charge –the 24th payment — but an inexplicable bill for $173.52. I went over again to the location at Elliott and Alma School, and the guy tells me it must be a mistake. The person who took down the details probably didn’t communicate my cancellation info to the billing dept., so would I call the membership director. There was a new membership director, he noted. The former gal was not there anymore.

I did and the new gal gives me this spiel on why 23 months actually could mean 24 months since the account rolls into a month-to-month cycle.

Even though I asked to cancel? Even through it explicitly defines the term in the contract?

Yes. Apparently, as she noted, one should notify them 60 days prior to cancellation. As for that mysterious charge would I come in ans show my credit card statement? I said I would.

Just to be sure I got my facts straight I switched on my recorder on my mobile “for quality and training purposes” as I informed her when I called.

Today, my 4th visit, counting previous attempt months ago, I went in to get that explanation and refund for that mystery charge. I switched on my recorder this time too. For quality and transparency purposes. To paraphrase the unhappy conversation, here’s how it went:

She: This charge (the mystery $173.52) was for your wife’s account.

Me: Huh?

She: Apparently you joined together

Me: You can’t bill me for someone else? I didn’t sign for her. She didn’t sign for me…

Me: Could you refund that then?

She: No, you will have to take that up with your credit card company and ask them to dispute it.

Me: Ridiculous. That is a third party. I am here at this location, in first person. I want it refunded. This is your mistake!

She: We can’t do that. Your credit card company can do it.

Me: Huh? You would take their word, but I am here in person with a document to prove it is your mistake, but you want me to ask them to ask you to fix it?

She: Let me ask my boss (exit stage left)

Me: (To customer who’s also come to cancel) These Romans are crazy!

By now I get that creepy recollection of the back-and-forth we all went through when trying to buy a used car in the old days. Is this worth my time? Is it worth the time and angst of a million dollar company? What’s the strategy here? Wear the customer down till he breaks out to a sweat without use of the treadmill?

She: (returning after meeting the hidden boss) My boss says we could cut you a check for that amount. We will get back to you…

Me: Whew! And about that 24th payment? Will that be refunded too?

She: No. The terms say you have to inform us within 60 days.

Me: (to myself) So 23 payments could really meant 25 payments. How cool is that! Someone’s gonna have a few nice corporate lunches on my account!)

Me: Show me where it says this.

(We both look over the fine print. No such thing in original contract. I agree to come back the 5th time to get most of my money refunded.)

Me: worn down, sort of. OK, You keep your $19.99. Just cancel my account.

The odd lessons about this encounter:

No apologies from the boss for taking so long to resolve this, for mistakenly billing me
Sneaky contracts. The attempt to hit the customer with sneaky fine print, and a relentlessness to attempt to prove –albeit ineffectively — that the company is right.

Oddly enough, this morning, I interviewed someone for an upcoming article about the concept of ‘markets are conversations,’ the central thesis of the Cluetrain Manifesto) where we talked of Thesis #13 and the need for a human side of business communication. The authors put it this way:

Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

That was 10 years ago! Today, it’s sure easy to launch a Facebook page, and a Twitter account and pretend that you have solved the problem of corporate c0mms, while being so far removed from the conversations going on outside your walls.

There’s a lot of work to be done. Or to invoke Asterix, These Romans are crazy!

End Note: Pure Fitness, could I give you a copy of Cluetrain? Gratis! No fine print. I won’t ask for a refund. Promise!

Blogs allow CEOs permission to stop being ‘corporate’

May 10, 2010September 12, 2013 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

There aren’t a lot of CEO’s who blog. Still. No one expects that of them. But there are many who -blog-like– speak their mind. So when people ask me for some examples, there are a few I usually refer to.

Kevin Roberts’ blog – KR Connect, the blog of the the Australian CEO of Saatchi Worldwide.

Steve Jobs’ blog –actually this is not Steve. It’s the celebrated, outed ‘Fake Steve’ blog, but it’s worth reading…

Mark Cuban’s blog. Calling himself BlogMaverick, Mark has been setting the tone for CEO-speak for a long tome.

Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. I hold Jonathan’s Blog responsible for infecting CEO’s with the idea that it was time to bring social media in from the fringes into the mainstream communication

Schwartz, the former CEO of Sun Microsystems, was frequently called things like ‘blogger in chief‘ for good reason. His blog at Sun set the tone for everyone else blogging at Sun. He was not the kind of person who had one set of communication rules for the corporate office, and another set of rules for the rest.

I’ve interviewed many CEO’s and VPs for articles and podcasts, so know when someone is not comfortable presenting his/her human side just because there’s a microphone or camera in the room. Others don’t even have to switch into homo sapiens mode –they are exactly the same when facing external audiences as they are when communicating to internal groups.

How does your CEO, or client communicate? Are they instant ‘blog material?’ Do you sometimes wish you could capture the big guy’s thoughts in a podcast or blog, knowing that if you ask him to write it down or send it through his PR/legal funnel it would come out as something nonsensical?

I don’t recommend a blog for everyone, but I do know that its discipline and format has a way of giving a senior manager the permission to stop being all stuffed up and corporate, and to be more authentic.

Prep your story for the timeless web!

May 8, 2010December 8, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

In the future, every story will need to have a beginning, a middle and a hyperlink!

This is an article published in May 2010, in CW, the magazine of IABC

I often return to the theme of storytelling. Despite the new tools we tend to squeeze into our working life as business communicators, much of what we do is probably entered around telling stories.

But we have been trained to think that the stories we create need to adapt to the attention economy. People are too distracted by all the multi-tasking and the competitive information coming at them. Our content needs to be designed to cut through the clutter, so we better beef up our narrative, sex-up our storylines.

Sounds familiar?

Download article here (PDF)

How to fly (through social media turbulence)

May 5, 2010May 8, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Airlines frequently fly into turbulence –not always the kind they are used to. Just ask United. Better still, just ask Southwest Airlines. Over the years since they began embracing a slew of social media tools, Southwest has done a grand job of listening and responding. Sure, they’ve made their mistakes, fixed them fast, and moved on.

There may be a huge difference between an airline and an airplane, but I thought of juxtaposing them because of some common lessons they have for all of us –not just people who communicate about objects with wings.

If you missed this case involving Boeing, it’s worth a second look. The setup:

Child draws lots of pictures of airplanes.
Child sends one drawing to Boeing.
Corporate office sends him a standard letter saying it does not accept unsolicited designs, and has destroyed the letter.

Sad? Legal? Damaging to brand? All of the above?

The boys father was crushed/confused. He writes a blog so he asked his readers what to do. Word got out. People came up with creative answers (including one that suggested writing the letter Boeing should have sent his son!) Boeing was forced to join the conversation at the late stage, and respond.

There are many lessons here. The first is about a canned response and a genuine response. So easy to do the former. But it’s out-of-place in a world where we make a huge din about being better at communications, great at listening yada yada.

To cut to the chase, Boeing Corporate (which uses this Twitter account that’s different from the one that talks of its engineering stuff) responded with aplomb, and thanked everyone for ‘supporting’ Harry Windsor, the child artist/airplane designer. “Supporting Harry,” as you might suspect is code for Punishing Boeing. Loosening them up. Humanizing them…

But we all live and learn. Boeing is a great company. They may have never in their wildest dreams of crisis planning imagined an eight year old would teach them a rapid lesson in communications. Neither do many organizations. So here are my takeaways from these two examples:

Plan for the unplanned: Social media adds a lot more turbulence, often the kind that cannot be anticipated by the most sophisticated ‘tracking’ tools on board.
Know your audience’s audience: No matter who your end-users or customers are, your audience –and your ‘followers’ are always larger than you thought.
Put humans in charge. A professional response is not as good as a human response. Many of us/you are trained in the former. Don’t check your humanity at the door when you walk into your office.

Social media is nothing special. It has no secret ingredient. It is nothing more than humanized communications, for a world that has done an awful job at it.

Altimeter’s Social Media Analytics – please remix and reuse

May 3, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Even though I’ve been writing about this collaborative space for a long time, I never cease to be amazed at the generosity of organizations who give out their knowledge with no strings attached. The The Altimeter Group has published a step-by-step approach to social media to bring some clarity to an an area that is hard to pin down. Measurement.

Authored by Jeremiah Owyang and John Lowett, it has been published under theCreative Commons license.

As Jeremiah Owyang notes, both toe-dipping and deep diving into this thing is risky business. The focus of this framework is on measurement, and how to gauge what you are presently doing, and what you are up against. They talk of the four business objectives of a social media strategy:

Dialog: involves starting a conversation and offering your audience something to talk about while allowing that conversation to take on a life of its ow
Advocacy: activation of evangelism, word of mouth, and the spread of information through social technologies
Supporting: customers may self support each other, or companies may directly assist them using social technologies.
Innovation: The business objective of innovation is an extraordinary byproduct of engaging in social marketing activity.

Here’s a good place to take it all in –via a SlideShare presentation. You can download it, and in the spirit of the CC license, ‘share, remix and reuse.’ The remix mart is key in this case. Because, as the folks at Altimeter note, each organization needs to customize the framework to suit their needs.

I would add a fifth business objective –something I always recommend: Insight. I get –and promote– the evangelism part. But for management, insight is priceless.

Engaging employees plugged into the social web

April 28, 2010April 28, 2010 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Thought I’ll feature part of a guest post I wrote for the Employee Factor, a blog about Employee Engagement.

Managers don’t need proof to tell them that someone who’s more engaged is much more productive. There is plenty of experiential and anecdotal evidence to support this. For those who like some empirical data there’s always the long-term tracking study –the Q12 study– by Gallup that serves as “a macro-level indicator’ of a healthy workforce.

I tend to look at this through a communications lens. So when studies make a case for engagement, I see it not simply as good management strategy, but as great communication strategy. When they refer to it as ‘maintaining a line of sight’ I see it as keeping people on the same page. They sound analogous, but they have key differences.

Maintaining employee line of sight (L-O-S) involves bringing clarity between actions and outcomes. But it also means doing away with too much hierarchy, unlocking the holds on information, and also creating an attitude that welcomes suggestions for how employee goals can match corporate vision. Keeping those employees on the same page has deeper implications in a digitally enhanced workplace. Not just via emails and web conferences, but a willingness to open up two-way conversations. Line of sight in today’s workplace is not limited to being able to see ‘up and down the chain of command’ but sideways and diagonally –much like the connections of a social web.

Continued here

Hoipolloireport

Angelo Fernando's blog since 2004

Communications

Egg on its Facebook, why doesn’t Zuckerberg learn?

Pure Fitness hides billing mistake behind small print. What’s the goal here?

Prep your story for the timeless web!

Altimeter’s Social Media Analytics – please remix and reuse

Engaging employees plugged into the social web

Ian Schafer in Advertising Age about the dawn of Facebook currency

Mike Klein, responding to Steve Crescenzo‘s post at IABC Exchange, on the three kinds of writing communicators need to know.

Doron Kritetz, on the four subject lines that grab readers

Najibullah Malik, secretary of Pakistan’s ministry of information technology, on why Facebook was banned this week in the country.

Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris, who called for the ‘day’ to draw a cartoon of the prophet.

Gary Pierce, Arizona’s Corporation Commissioner in an empty threat to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The spat was over several states and counties calling for a boycott of Arizona over its new immigration law. The law has promoted many cartoons and punch lines.

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi Eorldwide, on his about turn on the vakue of the iPad

Gary Severson, senior vice president of entertainment for Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores

BT Chief exec, Ian Livingston on a device said to rival the iPad

Verizon Wireless’ Lowell McAdam commenting on the high speculation that it is soon to launch a Google tablet that will take advantage of its new network and new pricing plans.