Overview

Motrin recently rolled out a campaign addressing the pain caused by carrying babies. A well-intentioned but ill-informed decision, which led to a Twitter revolt, complete with it’s own hash tag, #motrinmom. Motrin’s failure to respond to consumers online led to the story moving offline to the mainstream press.

Response

Motrin waited several days before pulling the ad, and addressing the feedback on their website. However, by this time, the story had already bubbled over and moved to main- stream media.

Outcome

-Motrin neglected to properly research their audience prior to rolling out a campaign that was clearly offensive to a highly influential group of women, newly empowered by social media.

-Johnson & Johnson, parent company to Motrin, had to pull the multi-million dollar ad campaign just days after it launched, losing millions in potential revenue.

-Motrin neglected to monitor the feedback online so customers increased the volume to a point where it was picked up in mainstream media.

-This event actually helped Twitter move into the mainstream, and the jury is still out regarding the lasting effects of this situation for Motrin.

Key Takeaways

-LISTEN FIRST: Monitor the conversations happening on social media every day, as it relates to the brand. We started a monitoring program regarding the Marsh situation and the initial results are included.

-RESEARCH: Understand  how and why your customer is using social media, and how your brand plays a role in their lives. Not just their age cell, purchase habits, zip code, and household income. Knowing how they think and feel, and how they live, is critical to creating messaging that works, and at the very least, doesn’t incite a virtual riot.

-CONSUMER GENERATED CONTENT: Marketers and agencies are not the only ones who can develop and execute messaging effectively with video.

-RESPOND QUICKLY: Don’t let the situation boil over – respond quickly and decisively, and openly. Admit your mistakes.

Research for this article came from Disrpuptology, WebStrategist.com, and jnjbtw.com

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Contrary to recent reports in the news, Facebook cares about user privacy. In regard to web analytics, proof of this comes in the form of two major safeguards. The first safeguard is the disconnect between demographic and behavior data regarding ad targeting. The second is the “Allow Access” screen which appears whenever a third party application wants to access user data (see the image below for an example of one such screen). With those two privacy safeguards in mind, it’s difficult to gather useful Facebook analytics data.

To help businesses get a richer understanding of their fan page visitors and ad success, Facebook provides Insights and Ads Manager, respectively. However, these two tools are still limited by Facebook’s privacy safeguards; i.e. you can’t see who clicked what. In addition to these tools, Facebook is also beta testing tracking code called, “Conversion Tracking.” The strategy behind this code is that businesses will install it on their own web pages and then be able to track conversions from Facebook users. However, this solution does not track conversions happening on Facebook fan pages.

To remedy the above shortcoming of “who clicked what,” three web analytics companies, Omniture, CoreMetrics, and Webtrends, have recently announced solutions that work within Facebook’s privacy framework. Of these new Facebook analytics solutions, Webtrends has perhaps taken the most novel approach to gathering behavior data despite Facebook’s privacy safeguards.

Basically, the Webtrends solution is this; direct Facebook visitors to custom, default landing tabs that have tracking code written in a language allowed by the Facebook framework. If a Facebook page is implemented accordingly, businesses can track behavior without knowing a user’s identity or circumventing Facebook’s privacy safeguards. It’s a clever compromise. With the Webtrends solution, companies can now more fully track the success of marketing tactics and users don’t have to give up any of their private information.

In order for Facebook to maintain the level of trust it has earned with its users, it must keep user privacy as a central concern of its business. However, in order to grow, it must also develop its ability to generate revenue. Clearly, this revenue will come from paid advertisements. With the recent advancements in Facebook analytics, user privacy will be maintained while businesses will be able to more clearly track the investments they’re making in Facebook advertising.

Overview

In the Spring of 2008, United Airlines customer, Dave Carroll, witnessed baggage handlers throwing his $3,500 Taylor guitar. When Carroll finally reached his destination he opened his guitar case to find the guitar had in-fact been broken. For nine months he called customer support to receive compensation for his broken instrument. Finally, when he received his final “no” he vowed to make a music video about his negative experience and post it on the web for all to see.

His “United Breaks Guitars” video was released in July 2009 and has had over 7,000,000 views on his band’s YouTube page.

Response

United Airlines took a week to react to the video and by that time it had “gone viral.” Finally, when United Airlines did call to compensate for the damages, Carroll declined because the exposure was worth more than the $1,200 it cost for him to fix the instrument.

Outcome

-United Airlines stock price plunged 10% costing shareholders $180 million.

-United Airlines neglected to respond quickly to this video and suffered the consequences
when it eventually went viral and has had over 7,000,000 views to date.

Key Takeaways

-QUICK RESPONSE IS CRUCIAL: Diffusing the situation early can keep it from getting out of control and into mainstream media.

-ADDRESS ALL AVAILABLE CHANNELS: Don’t assume that because the situation is happening due to an action on one network, that it isn’t being discussed elsewhere. It most likely is.

-CONSUMER GENERATED CONTENT: Marketers and agencies are not the only ones who can develop and execute messaging effectively with video.

Background research came from:

SEOoptimise.com and SocialMediaToday

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Overview

As a prank, two Domino’s employees engaged in several health department violations, re- corded their activities and posted them to YouTube. The videos quickly “went viral” and consumers all over the web were exposed to Domino’s employees doing a variety of unseemly things to their pizza.

Response

Domino’s, in an effort to not draw attention to the video, waited days to respond, and did not bring on additional resources to help. Eventually they started a Twitter account and published an apology video on YouTube, but the damage was already done. Domino’s eventually was able to get the videos removed from YouTube, but did not realize that a majority of the dialogue related to the story was actually happening on Twitter.

Outcome

-Domino’s stock price dropped 10% over the week costing shareholders millions.

- With 65% of respondents in a follow up study indicating that they were less likely to order from Domino’s after the release of the video, Domino’s sales suffered.

- Additionally, follow up investigations revealed that the store owner was a sex offender, and this news ex- tended the story’s life even further.

Key Takeaways

-QUICK RESPONSE IS CRUCIAL: Diffusing the situation early can keep it from getting out of control and into mainstream media.

-ADDRESS ALL AVAILABLE CHANNELS: Don’t assume that because the situation is happening due to an action on one network, that it isn’t being discussed elsewhere. It most likely is.

-HAVE AN EMPLOYEE POLICY ON SOCIAL MEDIA: This is a tough issue to address with employees, but having a the right policy in place can help prevent actions like these before they happen.

Research for this post came from Wall Street Journal

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I just got an email from Radian6, a groundbreaking social media monitoring company. They announced a new enterprise desktop version of their software that will allow multiple people to monitor and respond to online dialog.

My first thought was – “Awesome! Incredible! I love it!”. I immediately sent a link to this YouTube video to a client of ours, who we’ve been helping with planning, governance, and content development.

Then I thought about it some more. All of a sudden, people throughout the organization will have access to respond to customers and engaged consumers in real time. This could be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s like nuclear power – it can change the world in some really good ways, or it could totally destroy everything your brand has worked for.

It depends on the people wielding this powerful technology.

If there is no response plan in place… if there is not a strategy behind the tool… if there is no governance or moderation structure…. some very, very bad things could happen. Imagine an under-informed, untrained staff with little understanding of social media, marketing strategy, or customer service attempting to use a tool like this. It’s enough to turn your chief legal counsel and your compliance team white with fear.

This is a stellar tool for social media monitoring and moderation, and it is easy to get really excited about the possibilities – but before you invest in any tool, make sure you have a plan in place. Make sure roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. Ensure that everyone in the organization understands the approval and governance guardrails. Build an FAQ for common inquiries, and call center-style flow charts for response planning.

You may also want to enlist the services of someone who has experience with the tool – like a Radian6 reseller / service company to help you put a plan in place to deal with your social media planning and execution. There are very few companies with real-world experience in this space, but my company, Raidious (similar name, but no relation) is one of them.

All that being said, Radian6’s tool is the industry standard for monitoring and moderation – and I would agree with their video – this desktop app is the biggest game changer yet. Just be careful where you point that thing.

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Managing your reputation isn’t what it used to be. It’s not about winning fistfights on the playground to protect your street credibility, or a business issuing carefully-worded media releases to spin stories about their latest foibles.

Now it’s all about online reputation management (ORM), a concept that has become an industry unto itself with all the accompanying accoutrements–experts, gurus, online tools–one expects from the modern internet.

ORM is “the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media” (Wikipedia). You may have your own personal website and blog, Facebook and Twitter profiles, and professional site and writing all out there on the internet, and it all has a story to tell about you.

One of the oldest tricks in the ORM playbook is the practice of purchasing top level domains (TLDs) associated with your name or products. There have been many instances over the last decade of companies suing to gain control of TLDs that reflect trademarked names, including the recent example at Apple. TLDs rank highly in search, as do official pages on social network sites.

ORM is important not just for business but for politicians as well. Politicos are the masters of reputation management and spin, and anything they can do to massage their reputations should be a priority.

Case in point: U.K. Prime Minster and Labour Party leader Gordon Brown and David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative Party. A post on the Econsultancy blog outlines the issues the two party leaders have with search and ORM. When searches were performed on google.co.uk for “David Cameron” and “Gordon Brown,” the official sites underperformed on search results pages compared to other sites, especially a real estate agent also named Gordon Brown.

Additionally Econsultancy found that neither has an official Twitter account bearing their name, hampering their search relevancy. Even more damaging is the fact that each has an unofficial blog, but the blogs are produced by outsiders and are critical of the two leaders.

Opening an account on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook takes almost no time whatsoever. Even if those sites aren’t put to use, it prevents others from squatting on your brand or using it for nefarious or critical purposes. Businesses and politicians alike, whether or not they’re attuned to the real issues of today’s internet, should be receptive to the notion that their online reputations are very real and manageable.

Or they could meet under the monkey bars after school.

Selected Resources

• WebProNews
• Sitepoint
• Online Rep Management
• Duct Tape Marketing

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Social Media Risk: 30 things every PR Pro should know.

Please take a quick moment and Google the name of your company and several of your clients.  If your company website has been around for a while you should be top of the list, and at first glance this may seem like all that should matter.  Possible clients can easily find your website on Google.

But now grab the scroll bar and view some of the other listings that Google has chosen to indiscriminately represent your otherwise tightly controlled brand.  Hopefully you only find positive listings, but unfortunately many find that a story about an argument with a past client or a lawsuit (they happened to win) is listed on the first page of Google under their company’s website.  Regardless of the merit of these negative listings about their company, Google has chosen to display them.  This is because Google and other search engines do not determine the credibility of a source based upon whether it is right or wrong.  Google determines the credibility of a source by analyzing it’s SEO or search engine optimization.

These negative listings do not only affect a company’s reputation, but can have a negative impact on the percentage of searchers that click on a company’s search listing and the percentage of searchers that end up becoming customers.  In Slingshot SEO’s presentation on January 13th to PRSA’s Indiana Chapter about how to manage social media risk on search engines, we will be discussing the most effective method for using social media to clean up a company’s reputation on search engines.  You will learn how to force these negative search listings to the 2nd page of search results and beyond.  We also look forward to interesting presentations from Ice Miller and Raidious about how to manage other forms of social media related risk.

Got more than a few questions this week regarding the recent Facebook bra color phenomenon. I have not found any answers to who was behind the campaign, apparently designed to raise awareness for breast cancer. It officially was not the Susan G. Komen foundation, according to Business Week.

Have any insights on this, or know who started it? Share with the group – just click on Submit a Post!

So – what does this have to do with risk management in social media? Everything. This is a prime example of how – whether brands like it or not – anyone can instigate dialog on a national or international basis. It’s no longer the sole domain of the CNN’s and NBC’s of the world.

And the bigger question – was it effective? It made me spend a lot of time thinking about breast cancer, and I heard about it from several different women. At least anecdotally, there was a lot more awareness and dialog around breast cancer than normal.

Hopefully this translates to more mammograms and lives saved. Great example of using social media to mitigate an entirely different, and much more important kind of risk.