public relations practice: November 2008 Archives
Last week, an ad for Motrin pain reliever targeting mothers created a firememe. Adage.com documents how the fire started, with some alpha bloggers posting and then taking the story to Twitter, where it lit up the service on Saturday and Sunday. You can also use search.twitter.com to view the activity on Twitter. Here's a nice graph of the chatter, courtesy of the Jeremiah Owyang.
Long story short, the ad came down and McNeil Consumer Healthcare apologized.
I won't spend much time on the controversy. My guess is that the agency on the Motrin account, Ajax, didn't do any research. I showed the ad to a roomful of college students unfamiliar with the controversy, and they identified five copy points that marginalized the first-person mom of the narrative. Not exactly a smart strategy.
Were the mommys who criticized the ad out of line? It doesn't matter. They did it because they hated the ad and had the tools to complain and effect change.
That's life today. And that's the lesson of this post.
On Monday morning, after a weekend of anti-Motrin chatter, I did a Google search and found no evidence of it. (regretfully, I didn't do a screen grab). On Tuesday morning, there were a couple of references, from "news" at the top and from blogs on the bottom. That's all. If you were a McNeil executive and did this, you would be blissfully unaware of any unhappy customers.
If this is all you do for personal or brand surveillance, it's not enough. There's a wall that separates traditional Internet use and social media use, and it used to be that most people stayed on the traditional side. Today, there's a mass audience on the social side. So you need to monitor both - one more slow moving, the other, lighting fast.
Here are some basic suggestions:
- If you're not currently using RSS to monitor the blogosphere, you need to. Stat.
- Ditto, RSS for monitoring searches from Google, Google blogs and other relevant search engines.
- You should monitor Backtype for blog comments.
- You should monitor Technorati.
- And for heaven's sake, get on Twitter, participate, and learn about his unique culture.
Two more points. Your brand needs a "safety valve" for disgruntled stakeholders (why is no one "gruntled" these days?). If you have a social media presence, they can bring their comments to you, where you can participate, listen, act on suggestions and defuse the controversy. Note: it's also good to hear from happy stakeholders. Here are some websites where smart companies facilitate communication with their customers:
If you can't create a site like these, don't worry. A well-written blog - one written by a real human in a real voice - should serve you well. Once you've created the blog, feed it, create relationships and participate in the social chatter.
Second, you need to monitor your reputation 24/7/365. The Internet never sleeps. Accept it and adapt. If people are mad at you, you don't want to give them a four hour head start.
Social media are at a tipping point. Moving forward, you can't afford to not be in the game. You can't afford to not have a plan. Staying out? That can give you one big headache.
--------------
What listening tools and strategies do you recommend?
It shouldn't surprise you to learn that the heads of the Big Three automakers flew to Washington on three private jets to beg for $25 billion in bailout money. A sensible person would ask: is this on message? Don't people judge you by your actions? Would it be so bad to fly commercial? At least couldn't they jet-pool?
Don't these CEOs have counselors on staff to avoid disasters like this?
Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) noted a "delicious irony in seeing private jets flying into Washington D.C. and people coming off them with tin cups in their hands."
But this is the the U.S. auto industry we're talking about. These guys have built their careers running once-great marques into the ground.
It's hard to understand things like investments and insurance. But almost everyone owns a car. We all have long-standing relationships with automobile brands. We all know something about the auto business. For example, I know that I just replaced the transmission on my daughter's U.S.-made 2003 Ford Focus, conveniently just a few hundred miles out of warranty and a relatively young car at 61,000 miles. I know it cost me more than $2,000 to keep this economy car on the road for a while longer.
And here's what else I know: American cars are not the best. If you want the best, the market can easily sort that out for you. Just look and see what five-year-old cars are worth. According to a current study released by Automotive Lease Guide, the cars that hold their value best are made by Honda, Subaru, Volkswagen and Toyota. The worst? The LIncoln Town Car and the Chevrolet Uplander.
An anecdote to illustrate the above point. Chevy's new Malibu has received very positive reviews. I mentioned it to a friend who was considering a Camry. His response? "Yeah, that might be a good car to pick up off-lease." Translation: if I buy one new I'll get hosed. But if I wait and buy it used, I can pick it up at a heavily depreciated price. At that point, I might take a chance on it.
The Wall St. Journal recently noted that the U.S. automakers just can't catch the leaders. It cited the Honda Civic; the car costs several thousand dollars more than the Chevy Cobalt, and still sells in far greater numbers. But after a few years, more than the initial price difference is recouped in the residual value of the car. Bonus: this comparison does not factor in the Honda's superior reliability and driving experience.
Here's how the American car makers have lost our share-of-mind: they fought against CAFE mileage standards. They did this while drunk on SUV profits, which disappeared rapidly when gas prices took another hike. Faced with almost no strategy for making fuel-efficient vehicles, they have latched onto flex-fuel vehicles. But ethanol is a loser technology, and everyone, except for corn farmers, knows it. And I'm sick of hearing about the Chevrolet Volt. How long before GM gets this potential game-changer to market?
And the most egregious tactic of all? The job bank. As of 2005, more than 12,000 autoworkers were paid autoworker wages to show up at an abandoned K-Mart, to work crossword puzzles, read the newspaper or watch TV. It's a legacy of a 1984 concession the automakers made to auto workers. As their market share grew smaller, the auto companies were forced to keep workers they didn't need on the payroll.
This is part of why Mitt Romney - the son of former American Motors CEO and Michigan governor George Romney - wrote in the New York Times, "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
Meanwhile, there are lots of good American cars to buy: a Honda, made in Maryville, Ohio. Or a Subaru, made in Lafayette, Indiana.
The PR lesson in all of this? You can't build good PR - in this case, consensus that the U.S. auto companies are deserving of a massive subsidy - on poor performance. These companies have failed to show that their business model has a chance to succeed. They've showed no humility. Their argument is basically that they're too big to fail.
But fail they will. And guess what? People will still need and buy cars. They just won't be buying those cars.
There's no helping a CEO begging for a $25 billion bailout who shows up in a private jet. The $25 billion, by the way, is to be paid by hard-working Americans who do not participate in the job bank. Americans who won't get a bailout of their own. Some of whom may be paying for a recent transmission job.
PR pro Shel Holtz has had it. He writes that the people running AIG are idiots. Dolts. Complete and irredeemable morons.
And I agree.
First, some background. In September, the Treasury promised insurance giant AIG some $85 billion in credit to keep the company afloat. In October, AIG got another $38 billion. By Monday, that may increase by another $40 billion. Total tab to you and me: $150 billion.So what has this "confederacy of dunces" (Holtz's words) done with our money?
The company put the former head of its financial products unit, Joseph J. Cassano, on retainer. His salary? One million dollars a month. Former CEO Martin J. Sullivan, who ran the company into the ground, got a $5 million "performance bonus."
In October, just days after receiving the first bailout, the company spent $443,000 on an executive retreat in Half Moon Bay, California. Reaction to this event has been negative. And bipartisan. Barack Obama said the executives should be fired. George W. Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said AIG's behavior was "pretty despicable."
And now, ABC News' Brian Ross reports another lavish AIG resort getaway in Phoenix, this time only about one-third of a million dollars' worth. The most damning thing Ross presents is that the hotel staff was instructed to keep the so-called educational seminar quiet. No "Welcome AIG" signs here. The ostensible goal: to keep AIG out of the news.
The key values that need to be addressed here are honesty and transparency. If AIG is going to be a quasi-public company, it needs to do business in an honest manner. You don't need to be a genius to know this: good performance begats good PR. It's easy to tell your story when you've nothing to hide.
If you're going to sell high-end financial products to financial analysts, a luxury resort may be in order. But lying about it - failing to disclose publicly that it's your event - is wrong. It breeds mistrust. It hurts the company, both long- and short-term.
AIG needs to entirely reboot its communications process.
The company needs to operate in the sunshine. The company should hire - at the highest level - an ombudsman to represent its public ownership. This person would have to train the executives to operate under this new paradigm, and should have unfettered access to daily activities. This new approach would have to be practiced at every level of the company.
The company should publish its aggressive plans to pay back our $150 billion. It needs to proactively tell the story of its good stewardship of our money. It needs to show gratitude.
All across America, people are losing their jobs and companies are closing their doors. We're hurting. AIG needs to hurt, too. Its guests may enjoy the resort, but AIG employees need to sleep at the Ramada. Salaries need to be reined in and made public. Bonuses, which may be necessary to attract some top talent, need to be linked to actual long-term high performance, and they need to be deferred.
AIG has created a big hole to climb out of. We're provided a ladder. We should be cheering for their success. It's not such a far-fetched concept.
Remember when Lee Iacocca became the voice of Chrysler after receiving a Federal bailout?
He gave a bravura performance as the conscience, the brains, the drive of the New Chrysler.
AIG needs its own Iacocca: someone to to talk to us, reassure us, and show the company's relentless effort to repay us for our faith in the company. This individual should probably be an outsider, someone with a stellar reputation, probably from a service industry. Perhaps a respected legislator or judge.
The message needs to be, "no more business as usual at AIG. We're a new company with a new set of rules, and all that bad behavior is in the past."
And then they have to do the work.
---------------
How can AIG mend its image? What can the company do to better tell its story?
Resources for discussion:
AIG website (includes video links of CEO Edward Liddy and a statement on the meeting in Phoenix)
Barack Obama climbed almost insurmountable odds in his bid to become our next president. As candidates go, he was inexperienced. He had to face down a powerful opponent - Hillary Clinton - and then maintain momentum against the Republican machine and John McCain. His race was undoubtably a negative for some voters.
To be sure, Obama is a gifted and charismatic speaker. And Bush's dismal failures made America ready for change.
But Obama won because he ran an expert campaign. I think it's the largest and most successful social media campaign ever. Through it, he engaged voters and raised an unprecedented amount of money.
I attended an Obama event in March, and my name and email address entered the campaign system. After that, I received timely - almost daily - messages from the campaign. They were personalized, relevant, and tactically addressed issues as they arose. Each missive included an easy way to donate, and encouraged even modest contributions. Multiply that by the millions who engaged with Obama, and you've got a genuine groundswell of social equity.
Make note of these names: David Axelrod, chief strategist. And David Plouffe, campaign manager. These are the geniuses who led Obama to victory.
Learn more about how they did it: Todd Defren's post on Plouffe, the CMO of the Obama campaign. And Mike Chapman, of FG Squared, on how MyBarackObama.com served as home base for engagement in the campaign.
Posts like these will have to hold you until someone writes a book documenting the strategy and tactics that elected Obama. That will be THE book about the 2008 presidential election.
Attention public relations/marketing/IMC students: Here's a click that's worth your time. Brad J. Ward of Butler University asked his Twitter followers the question above. Here are the answers that came back. It's a lovely mosaic of truly useful information.
This kind of search is possible through the Twitter hashtag, which is frequently used for live tweeting of events. Everyone agrees to use a short alphanumeric code, preceded by the pound sign (#), so Twitter Search can find them all. Just enter the hastag as your search term. That way, you can read the tweets, even if you don't follow all of the individuals who are participating.
Sure enough, there's a website that keeps track of hashtags.
