In our last post, we looked at how Sainsbury’s, Smart Car and O2 handled social media criticism by stepping out of the corporate drone mentality and showing the world that there are actual living, breathing humans at the other end of the computer. It’s one thing to poke fun at, or in some cases pour abuse on, a faceless brand, but it takes a different kind of mentality to do the same to a person.

What’s more, humour can be a fantastic icebreaker, and help diffuse many tense situations.

It’s not just abuse or online mockery that brands have to watch out for. Social media and brands’ desire to engage have given customers opportunities to find new ways of asking for freebies. Logically, you’d think it would be fairly easy to say no to a customer that wanted a free product, but just ask Thomas Cook what happens then!

Samsung Canada faced this situation in May 2012, when a customer sent them a picture of a dragon on Facebook and asked for a free Galaxy S3.

The brand said no, but it succeeded in humanising the brand and used humour in the response. The customer was so impressed with the brands reply that he posted the exchange to Reddit, and it went viral, getting Samsung a tonne of good coverage.

Fast Forward to August 2012, and Samsung had not forgotten Shane. Out of the blue they sent him the free phone he requested, and they’d made his dragon drawing into a cover for the phone. Result: one happy customer and yet more positive coverage.

Perhaps the most successful brand response to a social media comment in 2012, was that made by Bodyform to the man that accused the brand of lying about parachuting ladies.

Bodyform responded with a hilarious video revealing the truth of the situation (it’s now had more than 3.6million views on YouTube). Again, this resulted in a massive amount of positive coverage for the brand, and Bodyform managed to engage far more people than its Facebook audience alone.

Lastly, although this doesn’t involve responding to a customer or fan, the Oreo vs. AMC Theatres twitter exchange shows how brands can play off each other to show personality, create engagement and generate buzz on social media.

As Shane Adams (the person behind the AMC Theatres Twitter account) pointed out, all of this activity happened in 24 hours and was the result of the brand trusting the official tweeter enough to create snappy, instant responses without needed to get approval first. The “Not cool, cookie” response alone got almost 2,000 retweets, and achieved coverage in advertising and marketing press.

Brands can achieve great success via social media, but only if they fully participate. Social media has to be about more than reputational firefighting, customer service and churning out news. It’s there to forge connections between people, and if brands want to reach their potential on social media, they need to:

•    Be human
•    Use the appropriate tone
•    Be creative
•    Engage
•    Trust the experience and expertise of the person managing the accounts
•    Be ready to respond in seconds or minutes

The post Six of the best social brand responses of 2012: part 2 appeared first on Carrot Communications.

It costs an impressive $4 million to buy a 30 second Super Bowl ad spot. It’s understandable that brands want to make the most of their investment. The ad has to be memorable, to tap into the zeitgeist, or just be funny. It needs to be talked about in the office, at home and online.

SodaStream used its ad ‘Game Changer’ to poke some fun at the two biggest brands in soft drinks. The ad was funny, made a good point, and has been banned (to be replaced by an ad free of rival brand names).

So, SodaStream posted the banned advert on YouTube, where it’s had more than 1.8 million views in 24 hours.

Not the first time…

Any adverts broadcast in the UK need to be approved by trade association Clearcast (which is funded by television companies). So when SodaStream tried to air a similar ad in December 2012, it was rejected for denigrating fizzy drinks companies (who, of course, spend a lot of money on TV ads – which I’m sure had nothing to do with the decision…) SodaStream is still trying to get the decision reversed.

Meanwhile, it launched a print campaign around censorship.

Brewing social media crisis

But there may be a fly in the social media ointment. SodaStream is pushing the environmentally friendly message hard, even sponsoring Climate Week 2013, and the publicity about the original Super Bowl ad being rejected is bringing out both social media friends and foes.

Calls are being made to boycott the brand for political reasons, and a competition has been set up to create a SodaStream Super Bowl ad spoof – hosted on the Boycott SodaStream YouTube channel of course. So far, the channel has had just over 2000 views, a fraction of the views gained in one day by the official banned ad. But it’s an on-going issue for the brand, and although it’s pretty low level at the moment – a few videos here, some tweets there, and a couple of comments on the official Facebook page –the buzz around the banned Super Bowl ad may just give the perfect opportunity for this protest to grow in strength.

The post SodaStream takes the fight to social appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Author: Gemma Storey

The post The Tale of the #HMVXFactorFiring appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Love it or loathe it, you certainly can’t get away from Valentine’s Day. Brands have come up with some cracking ways to celebrate the ‘special’ day and drive brand awareness. Here are four examples of campaigns that have caught my attention. Feel free to highlight your favourites (or highlight some stinkers…) in the comments.

IKEA Australia

Spotted on Google Plus, it just goes to show that even regional newspaper ads from the other side of the world can become social media hits. IKEA Australia is celebrating Valentine’s Day by allowing the owner of this newspaper coupon one free cot if their baby is born on 14th November.

I think IKEA are on to a good thing here, after all, not many people are going to think: “Oh, I’d like a free cot, let’s have sex on the 14th in order to get this smashing deal!” The odds are stacked in IKEA’s favour. It netted some good coverage, for not that much expense. (Plus, let’s face it, most people would lose the coupon in nine months anyway…)

Litter Genie

I had to include this. Dedicated to mad cat people everywhere.

This joyously bizarre video was made to promote American cat lit sanitizer brand, Litter Genie. As I say over at PR Examples, the video is proving to be a social media hit (it now has more than 100,000 views).

Domino’s

What’s more romantic than proposing on Valentine’s Day? How about proposing via pizza? Domino’s UK gave customers the opportunity to collaborate with their local store on popping the question via peperoni.

Truly, what girl (or guy, it is the 21st century after all) could refuse…

Meanwhile, over in Japan, Domino’s spent the day selling a special heart shaped pizza. (Come on, pizza can to be romantic!)

O2

Mobile operator – and Twitter legend – O2, used the hashtag #O2tweetheart to stream follower’s messages to in store screens across the country during the week before Valentine’s Day. It then selected Tweeters at random to receive prizes ranging from a romantic weekend getaway to £50 Bonus Bond vouchers.

Honourable mention has to go to GÜ, for its year’s supply of desserts for two Twitter competition.

No, of course I’m not jealous…

The post Four Valentine’s campaigns that warmed our hearts appeared first on Carrot Communications.

The horsemeat scandal isn’t really about food safety, it’s about trust. How can people trust the food that they’re eating? How can the brands involved reassure consumers that they’re taking the issue seriously and doing everything in their power to ensure the safety and quality of their food?

Tesco and Waitrose have both promised changes in the wake of the horsemeat contamination. Tesco stands out for communicating with its customers clearly and directly through the crisis.

But one supermarket stands out for different reasons: its CEO’s media appearances. The Iceland CEO, Malcolm Walker, appeared on the Andrew Marr Show on 17th February and Panorama on the 18th. Both interviews caused controversy.

He made some valid points in both interviews, but they were overlooked in favour of his more headline-worthy remarks. What can other spokespeople learn from these interviews?

Don’t blame someone else

“…supermarkets are visible because they’re on the high street, but supermarkets shouldn’t be blamed. British supermarkets have got a fantastic reputation for food safety and go to enormous lengths to protect their brand. If we’re going to blame someone, let’s start with local authorities, because there’s a whole  side to this industry which is invisible, that’s the catering industry, schools, hospitals, it’s a massive business for cheap food and local authorities award contracts based purely on one thing- price. So if you’re looking to blame somebody who’s driving down food quality, it’s invisible, it’s schools, it’s hospitals, it’s prisons, it’s local authorities who are driving this down.”

Then later in the interview…

“The real culprits in this it’s the catering industry, these dodgy cutting houses and backstreet manufacturers have been supplying products to the catering industry and a lot of that is bought by local authorities for schools and hospitals – that’s where the problem really lies.”

Malcolm Walker , BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February

Then, on Panorama:

CEO: “I know exactly what’s in our products.”

CEO: “78% beef. B.E.E.F Beef – that’s what’s in our burgers.”

BBC Reporter: “But the Irish say there is .1% H.O.R.S.E horse.”

CEO: “Well, that’s the Irish innit?”

The Chairman of the Local Government Authority and the Local Authorities Caterers Association objected to the portrayal, but it was only when the Food Safety Authority of Ireland objected to Mr Walker’s words that Iceland issue a statement:

“Iceland and our chief executive, Malcolm Walker, are deeply sorry for any offence caused by his TV interview last night.

His comments were not intended to be disrespectful to the Irish people, including our many Irish customers, colleagues and suppliers, or to the Irish food safety authorities. We hold all of these in the very highest regard.”

I’m not saying that you have to accept blame yourself, when you believe that you are not at fault, but understand that if you go out and blame others, you’re making your own brand a target. Resulting in headlines like this telegraph.co.uk one:

Don’t get sweary

CEO: “A supermarket will sell 10,000 products, they can’t test everything…if I turned up at the Kellogg’s factory and said ‘I’ve come to test your cornflakes’, they’d tell me to piss off wouldn’t they?”

Panorama 18th February

Don’t mention the pets (or hedgehogs)

Panorama – After saying that they constantly test their own brand products (great message), he continued:

“Did we test for horse? No, but we haven’t tested for dog or cat either. I mean, there might be dog or cat. You can’t test for everything.”

BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February, CEO:

“Supermarkets carry out an enormous range of testing procedures on every product that bares their name, and okay you can say that we haven’t been testing for horse, well, why would we? We don’t test for hedgehog either.”

This may seem like a clever way to get out of a tricky situation. Why would they think of testing for it? It’s as ridiculous to think that horse would be in a beef burger as thinking that any other non-bovine species would.

What I, (and I’m sure many others) heard, was. “We have no clue what goes into this food. You could be eating Fido and Snowball II.” That doesn’t make me want to run out and buy a ready meal.

Don’t minimise people’s concerns

In the Marr interview, Malcolm Walker distinguished horsemeat from horse DNA.

BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, 17th February, CEO:

“We’re talking about two different things here, we’re talking about horsemeat, or flesh, and contamination. Anybody who’s passing off horsemeat, horse carcases cut up and sold into the industry- that is not going to the supermarket business, but because it’s out there in the supply chain and in some of the factories, you’re getting minute amounts of contamination.”

You can understand why, he wanted to make clear that certain products may have been contaminated from being produced in a factory that had been unwittingly processing horsemeat, rather than there being great chunks of Black Beauty in your lasagne. But, it’s still something that unsettles people, and makes them question their trust in your word.

The Panorama interview just made things worse.

BBC: “Horsemeat has been a really big issue.”

CEO: “Well, you’re making it a big issue.”

BBC: “It’s not a big issue?”

CEO: “I don’t…not as much as you’re making it.”

Again, what I think the CEO is trying to say is, “Calm down dear, it’s only a microscopic amount of DNA, don’t be so precious.” Just because a person buys a ready meal rather than cooking a meal from scratch (using locally sourced, organic produce, natch), it doesn’t mean they’d be happy to eat road kill. They still have standards, and expect that the brand their buying from does, too.

Playing down the importance of the issue won’t help rebuild trust in the brand.

Don’t insult your customers (or your own products)

Here’s where things get murky. Walker gave Eddie Mair a good explanation of how food quality works in supermarkets, he said most supermarkets have premium, standard and economy ranges – but that Iceland did not have an economy range. He then explained Iceland’s food production process (the brand has its own meat-cutting house and the majority of its ready meals come from its own factory).

When Mair asked him if he would eat “other supermarket’s” economy ready meals, he said that personally he would not, because “they won’t contain much meat”. The Sun reported the statement, pointing out that Iceland sold eight burgers for £1 (in other words, the Iceland boss was casting aspersions on his own products).

When asked what he would say to British consumers he said: “Don’t panic. British supermarkets have got the best food safety standards in the world.”

Great message – it’s a shame it got lost amid the gaffs.

The post Five ways to alienate your customers appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Social shaming is becoming a bit of a problem for brands. They struggle with the question: how can you stop people from expressing themselves on social media? The answer: you can’t. Clear communication, excellent levels of customer service and a cohort of loyal brand advocates are really the only defence for brands.

What is social shaming?

The most recent (and talked about) example didn’t involve brands, but people attending the PyCon conference. Adria Richards overheard a couple of guys chatting about “forking the repo” (which apparently means contributing to, or continuing to develop an existing coding project), when, according to her blog post on the incident (well worth a read by the way), one of them started to make rather juvenile dongle jokes.

Now, Adria was clearly offended by these comments, but rather than take the guys to one side and explain to them how inappropriate they were being, she decided to take their pictures and tweet about their conduct.

Pixelated image from ABCNews

PyCon, which had a strict code of conduct, saw the tweet and pulled them out of the hall. Adria, proud of what she had achieved, then blogged about the incident, and included the tweet with the pictures in her post. Tech blogs reported on the post, and Adria fell victim to some vile abuse on Twitter. In the end, both one of the men and Adria were fired.

It wasn’t until I read the original blog post that I felt I could understand more about what had gone on. It was a ‘last straw’ moment, something that had been building up throughout the conference. Okay, she chose to use social shaming, rather than confronting them about their language, but bad behaviour has to be stopped, right?

How did we get here?

The PyCon tweet is part of a larger public shaming trend. Twitter’s now used by popular blogs, such as Jezebel and BuzzFeed, to put the spotlight on people who express anything from an inability to spell, to using racist language. Brands can’t escape this either. From campaigning groups, to disgruntled individuals, people are increasingly turning to social media channels as their first port of call when they have a bone to pick with a brand.

Traditionally when a customer had a complaint, they could call the customer care line, or email customer services amongst other options (although somewhere around the sixth minute of listening to Justin Bieber on a loop, interspersed with a robotic woman telling them that their call is very important – the customer is likely to be extremely frustrated). Now, they take the problem to social media channels. All well and good, if they’re contacting the brand directly on its dedicated Twitter account. But if that doesn’t work, then it’s all too easy to call out the brand publicly.

A customer complaint used to be just that. A private matter raised and resolved between the customer and the business (maybe extending out to friends and family of the customer). Now, if a complaint isn’t resolved quickly (or is handled badly), the resulting social media name and shame can represent a reputational issue for brands.

There’s no time-delay on social media: it’s all too easy to shame a company, expecting them to pick up the mention and respond quickly. Perhaps it’s understandable when it’s the last ditch attempt to get someone to take notice, or when the company’s done something stupid.

Brand public shaming in action

United Airlines

I don’t know if this is the first example of a brand being publically shamed on social media, but it’s arguably the best. For anyone that missed it, in 2009, musician Dave Carroll took a United Airlines flight, during which the airline broke his guitar. In this case, Dave did the right thing. He tried to get the airline to recognise its responsibility and compensate him for the damage – in fact he tried for nine months. But when United failed to get the compensation, he and his band (Sons of Maxwell) made the now famous United Breaks Guitars (which now has almost 13 million views).

The success of the first song led to a second one, recorded in August 2009, charting the continuing saga. It seems that United hadn’t learnt its lesson yet.

I’m inclined to call this fair play. The airline broke something valuable and necessary to the musicians livelihood. It was unresponsive and dismissive. Yet, I think this is an extreme example, not just of how far someone can go to publically shame a brand, but of how bad a brand’s customer service can actually be.

DKNY

The most recent example of a brand being publically shamed that I can think of is that of DKNY. It approached a photographer for permission to use his work in their store window displays, but he turned down their offer of $15,000 and requested more. They declined. A few months later, he was sent a picture of a DKNY storefront in Bangkok displaying his images. Rather than contact the brand directly, he posted a call to arms on his Facebook page.

Almost 30,000 people shared his post in under five hours. DKNY apologised, saying it was a genuine mistake that the display was produced for internal use only, and it promised to pay the YMCA $25,000 as recompense. A good result all round.

Megadeth vs Men’s Warehouse

When Dave Mustaine’s (the lead singer of Megadeth) Christmas gift to his manager did not arrive, he contacted the brand for an answer. They couldn’t give him one, so he posted a long rant about it on the bands Facebook page. It attracted more than 1,400 comments, including one from Men’s Warehouse:

While it can be seen as petulant for a band with 5.8 million Facebook fans to post about a customer service issue like this, it’s a perfect example of the problem. Dave couldn’t get a satisfactory response to his problem via conventional means, and therefore, frustrated, he turned to social media. ‘Lo! he gets a rapid response.

#hmvXFactorFiring

Okay, the HMV Twitter take-over wasn’t a customer service issue, but it was an incident of public shaming. The employee who live tweeted the redundancy process explained that she had repeatedly tried to make her managers understand how important social media was, and why they needed to know more about it. They didn’t listen to her.

Has social shaming gone too far?

The first port of call, in my view, should be to contact a brand – whether that’s on social media or any other channel. But when that fails, the new issue facing brands is the social name and shame. And it’s not going away any time soon.

The post Is there a place for social shaming of brands? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

We were in New York at the end of last month, running a series of social media crisis simulations and workshops for brands and agencies.

Last year, Carrot and eModeration teamed up to combine our experience in PR, social media and crisis management to create a social media simulator. We did this because we both believe that experiencing a crisis – or a realistic simulation of one – gives you the best possible preparation for facing the real thing.

Most of us will, at some point, have to deal with an angry mob on Twitter or Facebook. If you’re in the business of reputation management, you’ll understand the damage that a real crisis, playing out on social media, can cause if it’s handled badly.

When we ran a simulation event in New York, we were lucky enough to have representatives from some serious name brands and agencies in the room. For most, their brand is one of their company’s most valuable assets.

Social media has completely changed how an issue breaks. When I started in PR, I worked mostly in the travel industry. In those days, controlling a crisis was relatively straightforward. Usually, we got to hear about the issue before the media did. We could advise our clients to ensure that their passengers and holidaymakers were treated well, and adequately compensated for any trouble they’d been through ahead of them talking to the media, so that when they did, they’d have some positive things to say about the way the crisis had been handled by the company. This was before smartphones, before Twitter and Facebook, and before TripAdvisor. It’s unthinkable now that the brand would be able to control the message to that extent today.

The first reporter to the scene of any major event today is an ordinary citizen with a mobile phone. The first videos to emerge from the devastating tornadoes in Oklahoma, or the Tsunami in Japan, or the miracle air landing on the Hudson River, were all taken on mobile phones. Everyone with a phone camera and a social media account is a reporter in a crisis.

So while brands are used to talking to journalists – those who are commissioned by a medium to report on a story, as opposed to our new citizen journalists – it’s a harder thing to speak directly to people involved, which is what social media means. When you talk direct – rather than through the conduit of a news site, or an ad campaign for example – you’re pretty exposed. You can’t get away with a corporate press statement, the first response to a ‘traditional’ crisis situation.

And this is when a brand can find itself in hot water. If you’re not used to talking direct to your customers, it shows. And it’s fairly obvious when the familiar style of your community managers is supplanted by a corporate voice talking in statements which have been through a long legal approval process, and this statement is blanket-posted on every social channel.

It’s one of the reasons that practicing your response to a crisis situation is so appealing to brands. When you make those mistakes, far better to do it in a safe, simulated environment, than to learn for the first time when a crisis hits for real.

The post Rehearsing a social media crisis: talking direct to consumers appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Manhattan. “You’ll fall in love with it the moment you step off the plane.” They said.

Well, no.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, a seven hour flight across the Atlantic, followed by a two hour queue to get shouted at by a mean person, does not a happy traveller make. Combine that with the jet lag of someone who had never even been on a plane before and you have one unimpressed individual. (Okay, I admit it, I’m always very hard to impress but the travelling didn’t help.)

It was towards the end of our week there that the city started taking hold. To be honest, to me it’s just a city like any other. Yes, it has some tall buildings but really, meh. It’s when I started going to the parks, visiting local delis and hearing about the history of the city that I really appreciated the place. Suddenly it wasn’t just about tall buildings, it was about the heritage, culture and lifestyle.

So, how does this relate to brands?

Brands may want to emphasise how revolutionary their product is, how they are the best in the business, or have designed the finest looking widget, but most people can’t really connect with that. If brands want people to connect, and maybe engage (rather than drop in, complete a transaction, and leave) they need to look at ways to make them want to come back for more.

Brands can do this by using:

Narrative: What makes your brand different? How did the business develop? (For example, the inspiration for setting up YouTube in 2005 was the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction at the previous year’s Super Bowl, and the Boxing Day Tsunami. Personally, I can’t imagine that YouTube didn’t exist when these events happened.)

Ethos: What’s important to your brand? How do you show this? (One of our clients, Fluidata, takes part in regular team endurance events for charity.)

Personality: What’s it like to work for your business? When people think of your brand, do they think of something dry and corporate, or something more vibrant? (Good examples of brands with personality include Innocent Drinks and Graze.)

People: Most businesses are people centric. It helps people connect to the brand if they can talk to a person. Is the brands Twitter account a faceless icon tweeting company news, or a person with the authority to inject some personality into social media? (Meet the team pages can offer a lot of insight into company culture as well, just look at Pinterest’s page, or that of one of our clients Periscopix.)

There’s nothing wrong with being the kind of business that provides an excellent service and/or product. People don’t have to love a brand to use it. I don’t like Apple that much, but I still want a MacBook, meanwhile I love the brand identity of Innocent Drinks, but I wouldn’t drink one of their smoothies.

But if one of the businesses goals is to develop a community around the brand, there has to be something that people can connect with. Something that reaches beyond corporate speak and allows people to see what makes the brand tick.

The post Brands: creating a connection appeared first on Carrot Communications.

The food and drinks industry has a particularly tough job. A mistake made in food preparation or manufacturing can threaten public health. Twenty years ago, if a customer found a foreign object in their loaf of bread they’d complain to the store (and possibly tell the local paper). These days you can bet that the picture will get posted on Reddit or Facebook and become a viral sensation in less than a day.

This is understandably scary for brands. There’s no control. The next attack can come from anywhere, at any time.

Food safety

Purveyor of finger lickin’ fast food, KFC, has had its fair share of high profile customer complaints over recent years (such as the 2012 photo of a raw chicken burger posted by a Canadian customer on Reddit). So far in 2013:

• An Essex based redditor posted a picture of what appeared to be deep fried offal in their box of chicken (January).
• A couple from Hull found offal in several chicken pieces (March).

In the January case, KFC responded to press enquiries by agreeing that it looked like offal, but saying that while it was unsightly, there was no health risk. It provided a similar response in March, this time adding that it sold an impressive 200 million pieces of chicken a year.

The problem is, when these mistakes keep happening, and continue to be widely shared on social media, the brand appears to be learning little from them.

The last thing a brand in the business of selling food wants is customers to be revolted by their products. Findus understood this principle when it faced its own reputational crisis back in February. When some of its beef products were found to be up to 100% horse, it released a statement which showed that it understood why this was an important issue.

The horsemeat may not have been dangerous, but if people buy beef lasagne they kind of expect it to be made of cow.

Finally, we have Jersey Joe’s Pizzeria (do not click this link if you’re eating – or in fact, ever intend to eat again). The proprietor of this particular pizzeria landed in hot water when a 4Chan user posted links to webcams allegedly into the pizzeria kitchen. The images captured there were…not pleasant.

The owner has been confronted by customers (with his reaction live streamed), and the establishment has been mocked on Yelp. The owner says that it’s not his kitchen in the video, and that he’s the subject of a vendetta.

Unfortunately, a picture is sometimes all it takes to put people off their food.

Communication

Back in March, I blogged about the communications #fail that Iceland experienced when its charismatic, but possibly too ‘say what you think’, CEO Malcolm Walker gave his TV interviews on horsemeat. Looking back, maybe this was the plan all along. Divert attention away from the horsemeat scandal by giving people something else to talk about – your straight talking CEO.

A recent Starbucks example shows just how important clear communication is on any channel. The Facebook community management team posted an idea they had for customers to ask for – a vanilla bean Frappuccino with a shot of raspberry syrup. On Facebook, they compared it to a cotton candy treat, and used the hashtag #cottoncandy.

Some customers, excited at the ‘new flavour’, started asking for the Cotton Candy Frappuccino in stores, but frustrated barristers had no idea what they were talking about.It may be fun to post creative updates to Facebook, but if all they end up doing is confusing fans and annoying employees, there’s not much value in it.

McDonalds has had at least two communications problems so far this year. In April, adverts for the brand started appearing on Boston mass transit. Ads parodying mental health posters. People started tweeting and blogging about how outraged they were, and McDonalds quickly issued a statement saying that the ad had been created by an agency without sign-off. It apologised and got the ad pulled.

The second issue involved its response to a national news story. After the Cleveland kidnap victims were rescued in May, the man that responded to their cries for help happened to mention that he had been eating some McDonalds when he made the discovery. In response, the brand tweeted:

So you could say response was mixed. It can be viewed as a brand trying to do a nice thing, but many saw it as a brand taking the opportunity to get some national coverage.

Other food brands have had issues with managing social media. Burger King had its Twitter account hacked and the hacker added McDonalds branding to it. It took BK three hours after Twitter suspended its account, to release a statement.

US food website, Epicurious, posted insensitive Tweets which promoted its food using during the Boston Bombing.

It took the brand hours to Tweet an apology for the earlier tweets, and then posted nothing at all on Twitter for a few days.

And then there was the notorious Amy’s Baking Company fighting (or starting – depending on who you believe) social media fires, and Mexican food chain, Chipotle, hacking its own Twitter account (really badly – if there’s a good way to hack your own Twitter account that is).

Sometimes, people make mistakes. Brands are no different. Yes, a business will have policies and procedures in place to mitigate the damage, but mistakes will happen.

The key considerations for a brand are:

• How quickly will the brand respond?
• How effective will the response be?
• How will the brand get the message out?
• How will it prove that it’s changed?

And most of all, if you apologise, mean it.

The post Eat, drink and prepare for a social media crisis appeared first on Carrot Communications.

We’re always advising brands that they need to be open, honest and down to earth on social media. That there needs to be a real person behind the account responding to people as individuals and creating a connection with followers.

Question and answer sessions give followers the chance to get their voices heard by someone in charge, and allows the brand to demonstrate how in-touch it is with customers. What can possibly go wrong?

Timing

In October, British Gas announced a price hike of more than 10 per cent, causing outrage in the media and from consumers. To combat this, the company held a Twitter Q&A the next day.

Its customer services director would be making himself available to answer questions. That’s a nice way for a company to show customers that it cares about their concerns, right?

We are here with our Customer Service Director, Bert Pijls, answering your questions until 2pm #AskBG pic.twitter.com/csbaqTfWwu

— British Gas (@BritishGas) October 17, 2013

With an emotive topic like price rises, many people aren’t going to be polite or reasonable. Those that take the time to participate in a Q&A will be bristling with indignation and ready to deliver a verbal kicking to the brand, or to make a point, which is what happened with #AskBG.

.@BritishGas #AskBG What is the best temperature to thaw an elderly relative at and what seasoning would you use with one?

— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) October 17, 2013

#AskBG Maybe change the advertising on your website? pic.twitter.com/NuCFDRq5hY

— Lisa (@BiscuitAhoy) October 17, 2013

Does today’s @BritishGas price rise show it’s time to #freezethatbill? #askBG — The Labour Party (@UKLabour) October 17, 2013

I actually managed to capture my granddads reaction to British Gas price rise on camera… #askBG pic.twitter.com/dD3rJZ49RL — George Aylett (@georgeayl) October 18, 2013

Dear British Gas Have you had to put your prices up so much because you paid 5 bosses £16m this year? #AskBG — Juicy Jon (@Juicy_Jon) October 17, 2013

The timing of this Twitter Q&A was insensitive, and made the company look out of touch, not with customers concerns, but with the reality of social media. How did they think this wasn’t going to be a huge mess, reputation wise?

Likeability

Soon after the British Gas Twitter Q&A, came Ryanair’s turn. Now, Ryanair seems to thrive on getting bad PR, so it’s not that much of a shock that they decided to do a Q&A themselves. Using the hashtag #GRILLMOLL, tweeters could ask the CEO anything they liked.

Here we go! #GrillMOL pic.twitter.com/yz1UdxnNro — Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2013

It started off…not very well.

Whoever is behind this @Ryanair is so lame. #TellMOL he needs therapy. #NotImpressed (@Claire_Phipps@EverydaySexism) pic.twitter.com/oyOYEZhU3D — Aakriti Kaushik (@aakritik) October 21, 2013

But then, you know exactly what you’re going to get with the CEO of Ryanair.

@alexkitch Not seats but beds. Mile high club anyone? #GrillMOL — Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2013

@OriginalRogue@StuartMRobinson Dat’s an outrageous slur. All four of four RYR flights are fuelled with Lep wee and my bulls**t! #GrillMOL — Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2013

That doesn’t mean people have to like it (or him):

Were you born an arsehole or has it progressed throughout your life? @Ryanair#GrillMOL — Darragh Cawley (@Darragh121) October 21, 2013

But some liked his sense of humour:

@Ryanair#AskMOL Flew last November with a broken ankle, thanks to all staff who made my journey a lot easier. — Ciara (@Ciara_Pioneer) October 25, 2013

Ryanair held the Q&A after announcing improvements to some of its rather stringent policies, so this could have been one of the rare occasions where the company bagged some good PR. Instead, it got lots of coverage for its CEO having a bit of a laugh getting people riled on Twitter.

Celebrity Q&As

Celebrities (or, more accurately, their social media teams) tend to do Twitter Q&A’s well, but the one of the best so far in 2013 was that held by the rapper Jay-Z back in July. He managed to answer questions, be authentic and highlight the need for Twitter to introduce a better conversation function.

RT @iMSexierDenU Jay Z hasn’t gone to twitter jail yet? [I have 5 passports I'm never going.....] — Mr. Carter (@S_C_) July 8, 2013

Even Paul McCartney’s been getting in on the act.

Cheers @JacksonBeatles The last albums I bought were by @kanyewest@The_National@thecivilwars and @s_c_ (Jay Z) #askMacca — Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) October 3, 2013

Brands have been known to ask questions during a celebrity Q&A – which is one way of getting noticed on Twitter without the risk of running a Q&A.

Organisations & Government

Organisations like the National Union of Students have held Twitter Q&As, in the case of the NUS, to give new students free advice. The Foreign and Commonwealth office holds Q&As under the hashtag #askFCO.

.@myraemacdonald@DFID_UK aid over the next 4 yrs will benefit 4m Pakistani children in school, recruit & train 45,000 new teachers #askfco

— Sayeeda Warsi (@SayeedaWarsi) October 16, 2013

And of course, there’s President Obama’s famous Twitter Q&A of December 2012.

Businesses shouldn’t get involved in social media without knowing why they’re doing it. What’s the goal? What does a win look like? Twitter Q&As need to be approached with the same questions. In the case of British Gas, it looks like the aim may have been to offer some accountability and try to mitigate the reputational damage – but it just made things worse. As for Ryanair – well, your guess is as good as mine.

The post Do brands belong in Twitter Q&As? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

You may have noticed the sudden glut of people posting glowing, natural beauty type selfies to their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. Okay, so you will have noticed this because it has been such a success that it’s now all over the news.

The #nomakeupselfie campaign is one of those rare beasts that started with regular social media users, rather than a brand or charity. Participants upload a selfie of themselves – make-up free – and encourage people to text ‘beat’ to donate £3 to Cancer Research UK.

The charity, which admitted that it wasn’t the creator of the campaign (but has given it its full support) has received more than £1 million from the 800,000+ text donations – and that was just in the first 24-hours.

Even men (gasp!) are getting involved, either by taking regular selfies, or posting pictures of themselves in full make-up.

Why is it so successful?

The #humblebrag

Celebrities use the #nomakeupselfie to display how amazing they look – even without layers of make-up, lighting crews and Photoshop. It also helps them to appear self-confident, ‘brave’, and girl next doorish. The #nomakeupselfie taps into the inner Narcissus of all of us, encouraging us to share our natural good looks with friends and followers. (I’m assuming, I think rightly, that most people would choose to post their best no make-up photo, rather than the 6am hungover/ road kill look.)

Peer influence

By nominating friends to be the next person to take a #nomakeupselfie, participants are including powerful calls to action in their posts. It’s not just, ‘like this photo if you hate cancer/share if you want to find a cure’ – which is one of the more useless posts that floats around Facebook.

A powerful cause

As I said, there’s nothing new about the no make-up selfie. Now and then random people will pop-up in one of my social streams with a glorious make-up free picture of themselves and a small note about the lack of chemical gak on their faces (you may have gathered, I have strong views about make-up). Well, hurrah for you, we say. But most people won’t share it, because most won’t care.

Using #letsbeatcancer, #beatcancersooner and “txt beat to 70099 to donate £3”, attaches a worthy cause to the photo, and compels people to share it and donate.

What can brands learn from this?

“Make it go viral!”

Alas, no one can make something “go viral”. It either catches the zeitgeist, or it doesn’t. More often than not, it’s the mistakes, or ill-advised social media posts, that get the public’s attention.

#budget2014 cuts bingo & beer tax helping hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy. RT to spread the word pic.twitter.com/5vbL7RDAg5

— Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) March 19, 2014

For something to be shared by a huge number of social media users, it needs to be something that unites people in a particular emotion. Something that tells a story.

You're not a regular listener, are you? RT @holyykidrahul: @BBCRadio4 Hi, please play "Confident" by Justin Bieber!!!

— BBC Radio 4 (@BBCRadio4) December 9, 2013

Luke Lewis from Buzzfeed said that its most popular articles were the funny, positive ones such as 27 Middle –Class Problems.

“We’ve opened our new Slough office! Pls RT!”

Unless you’re about to recruit hundreds of people in the local area, no one will care. That’s not to say this news isn’t a big step forward for your company, and that you shouldn’t be proud. But it would be like a regular social media user Tweeting: “The council has approved my kitchen extension! Pls RT!” – news of great importance to them, but not significant to anyone else. Give people a reason to care.

A recent non-brand example of this was the TwitPic of the Prime Minister. Although he was (apparently) in the middle of a serious conversation with the US President about the Ukraine crisis, it didn’t really serve a purpose…well, not the one it intended to serve.

I've been speaking to @BarackObama about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in condemnation of Russia's actions. pic.twitter.com/7Rk2k8iOIK

— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 5, 2014

.@robdelaney @David_Cameron @BarackObama I'm now patched in as well. Sorry for the delay. pic.twitter.com/elLQcKcV3w

— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) March 5, 2014

“Talk to us about this latest crisis!”

We’ve seen past examples where brands get in wrong, and by trying to show that they care about an unfolding disaster, they just look cold hearted and cynical. Remember Bing?

How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K.

— Bing (@bing) March 12, 2011

Some brands also have the tendency to want to jump on social media trending topics, and get involved in the conversation.

But these attempts can, and usually do, backfire. The #nomakeupselfie campaign works because it started with individuals who, collectively, have the sole motivation of raising money for cancer research.

Organisations don’t need to comment on everything that happens in the news. When they do, it often feels inappropriate.

*

By focusing on creating a vibrant online community, organisations can foster and harness the creativity of its members, encouraging and supporting them as they create content and maybe start trends of their own (for example, an Australian YouTube user started the Harlem Shake phenomenon.)

A brand social media campaign that focuses on how many likes and shares it can get just isn’t going to cut it. There needs to be a story behind the post, a reason it exists, if brands want to it to make a significant impact.

The post What can brands learn from the #nomakeupselfie campaign? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

It’s easy enough for a business to ditch a troublesome employee for tarnishing the company name, but what do you do when it’s the owner who’s caused the problem?

What happened?

In April, Los Angeles Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, was recorded telling his mistress not to bring black guests to Clippers games (after she posted a photo of herself with Magic Johnson on Instagram).

A four-day crisis for the LA Clippers brand

26th April

When celebrity news site, TMZ, reported racist remarks made by a the owner of an NBA team – and posted the audio recording to prove its allegations, it kicked off months of controversy for the team and the greater organisation.

.@cjbycookie and I will never go to a Clippers game again as long as Donald Sterling is the owner.

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) April 26, 2014

Celebrities and high-profile basketball players came out in opposition to his statements and called for the NBA to take the Clippers away from him.

The NBA released a statement calling the remarks disturbing and offensive and saying that it had launched an investigation.

Jesse Jackson called for a symbolic protest, and Clippers player, Deandre Jordan, posted this:

Reports followed of players considering not playing as a form of protest, and Magic Johnson suggested that rather than the players boycotting the games, the fans should. Calls for Sterling to be removed from the NBA continued throughout the day, and he agreed not to attend the team’s playoff game.

27th April

President Obama commented on the issue, saying that the comments were, “incredibly offensive racist statements,” and: “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk.”

The Clippers team staged a protest by wearing their team shirts inside out to hide the logo. Fans made sure their voices were heard by bringing signs to the game.

Spectacular Donald Sterling signs (via @JeremySF) http://t.co/XBCVj9r7Pq pic.twitter.com/70IYbp4uW4

— SB Nation (@SBNation) April 27, 2014

In a somewhat unexpected move, the lead singer of the Village People banned the Clippers from playing YMCA at any of their events.

Sterling, you're banned from playing "Y.M.C.A." or any of my music @LAClippers games. And I mean it! #Clippers #BoycottClippers

— Victor Willis (@victorwillis) April 27, 2014

28th April

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was due to give Sterling an award, announced that it would be improving its vetting process in light of the revelations.

R&B singer, Tank, who was due to sing the national anthem at a Clippers game the next day, announced that he would be boycotting the game, and would not work with the NBA until it had completed its investigation.

L.A. Clippers sponsors started to distance themselves from the team. CarMax, announced that it was ending its nine-year relationship with the team due to the comments. State Farm announced that it was suspending its relationship with the team.

Virgin America became the third sponsor to drop the team, followed in quick order by Kia, which said it was suspending sponsorship. Mercedes-Benz dropped its sponsorship, and other potential sponsors put deals on hold.

The owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, a Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen commented that if Sterling had spoken the statements attributed to him, he wasn’t fit to be an NBA team owner.

The Miami Heat showed its support to the Clippers by also wearing shirts inside out. (Effectively punishing sponsors that may have had nothing to do with the LA Clippers.)

Echoing Clippers yesterday, Heat come out for warmups, throw logo shirts down at midcourt & wear warm ups inside out pic.twitter.com/3bNQEd8woq

— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) April 28, 2014

29th April

Oprah Winfrey commented on the controversy.

Clothes chain, Kitson LA, pulled LA Clippers merchandise from sale.

The NBA banned Donald Sterling from NBA games for life, saying that he would be forced to sell the team and issuing him with a fine of $2.5m – which is the maximum amount it’s allowed to fine someone.

After the ban, the Clippers released a powerful message on social channels, and its website. Clippers coach, Doc Rivers wrote the message “we are one” in the locker room on the 27th, and the team embraced this messaged. It became the team’s new slogan, as was pushed out to the website and social media presences on the 29th. The team’s Twitter account gained more than 4.5k followers in one day.

#WeAreOne #Clippers pic.twitter.com/b25mYzllvG

— Los Angeles Clippers (@LAClippers) April 29, 2014

Over the following days, the message was shared by other NBA teams:

#WeAreOne pic.twitter.com/hMFOurp9na

— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) April 29, 2014

As the #Warriors prepare for tonight's playoff game, we share in the spirit of this league-wide message. #WeAreOne pic.twitter.com/k07HbGS1r3

— Golden St. Warriors (@warriors) April 30, 2014

#WeAreOne pic.twitter.com/a6PVBrPJ0h

— Chicago Bulls (@chicagobulls) April 29, 2014

Days later, the NBA started merchandising this message, with profits going to anti-discrimination charities.

RT @Hudson_News: Get ur @LAClippers @NBA #WeAreOne tshirts @flyLAXairport T5 Proceeds: anti-discrimination charities pic.twitter.com/csmLzltuqG

— LAX Airport (@flyLAXairport) May 23, 2014

Where they are now

Months later, and the issue hasn’t gone away. Shelly Sterling (the team’s co-owner) almost sold it to ex-Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, but her husband blocked the deal. As for Donald Sterling, he’s reportedly suing the NBA for bullying him out of the league.

While the issues are still simmering, the actions of those in the LA Clippers team, their fans, and the NBA, succeeded in bringing the team in from the storm, and leaving the disgraced owner to deal with the issues he created, himself.

The post Anatomy of a crisis: LA Clippers appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Batman: Arkham Knight is one of the most anticipated games of the year, yet its release has been met with a tide of social media scorn as many PC players find significant issues with performance. It turns out that the developer, Rocksteady, worked with an external development partner for the PC port of the title, and it’s now working with it to fix the issues.

That hasn’t stopped people from taking to social media to criticise the developer, or to Steam and Amazon to leave negative reviews of the game.

“Some players had expected issues after Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment adjusted its system requirements, leaving with it a warning about AMD compatibility problems.” gamespot.com

Arkham Knight is trending, and it’s not for the right reasons.

Is there anything the developer could have done to prevent this situation? How should they handle it now?

Most gamers realise that new titles often experience glitches at launch, some of which aren’t patched until months later, but significant performance issues are different. Fans that have eagerly anticipated a game for months, and have paid a good chunk of money to play the game, find themselves unable to do so because software issues make the game unplayable.

It’s great when publishers release a game across multiple platforms, allowing as many people to enjoy it as possible, but should a game be released for a platform if it’s just regarded as an added extra? Shouldn’t the product get the same love and attention on PC as it gets on PS4, and vice versa?

This isn’t a new issue, and it will more than likely happen again, but it will be interesting to see how Warner Brothers and Rocksteady handle the current controversy.

The post Broken promises: what happens when brands let fans down? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

At the Trust and Reputation conference in London on Thursday, the focus was very much on action-led communication. To establish a reputation, you have to do stuff, not just talk about it.

In her opening remarks, conference chair (and chairman of Populus) Rita Clifton called reputation “reality with a time lag”. Communication is important, but action has to come first.

This was borne out by the experience of the speakers.

Nick Hindle, SVP UK Corporate Affairs at McDonald’s summarized the problem McDonald’s had in the wake of McJobs, McLibel and Supersize Me: “We took our eyes off the fries”. McDonald’s had seen sales dip directly in proportion to a dip in consumer trust, and knew it had to take action. The brand focused first on improving its product. It started by making changes in the food – things like sourcing meat locally, insisting on higher welfare standards from farmers, using only organic milk. Next came the big ideas: reimaging restaurants; recycling restaurant cooking oil to make biofuel for McDonald’s vehicles; offering nutrition information; offering free WiFi (McDonalds was one of the first places to do this).

Great slide from @NickHindle at #trustrep15 on 'Action led communications' pic.twitter.com/9UWnNazuTg

— Andrew Ross (@AJMRoss) July 2, 2015

Only then came communications, telling the story of change. Bold campaigns (such as the recruitment drive “Not bad for a McJob”) showed that this was a brand with renewed confidence. Consumer trust increased; and sales increased in direct proportion.

We also heard from Nationwide’s chief executive Graham Beale. Nationwide is a fascinating example of how a company can maintain its trust and reputation and remain stable, even in the face of a global banking crisis. This year, Nationwide has been shortlisted to be the most responsible business in the UK – extraordinary for a financial services company in this market.

How do you do this? Beale talked about the importance of doing the right thing by customers, of ‘never knowingly misleading’, and of putting employees at the centre of communications. They are, after all, the first point of contact for customers. They have to live and breathe your values. And they have to be proud of where they work.

Nationwide shows the Importance of employees in building trust and reputation. #trustrep15 pic.twitter.com/SQdyvwbxKb

— Polpeo (@Polpeo) July 2, 2015

Nationwide has, according to Beale, high rates of engagement and belief from employees. 95% of its team believe Nationwide makes a positive difference to customers (Nationwide campaigns on industry-wide issues such as reforming credit card charges); and 96% understand and believe in the company’s business strategy.

How did they do this? Beale listed 7 points at the heart of the business:

1. Be true to your heritage (Nationwide is still proud to be a building society)
2. Clear vision
3. Strategy with a human touch
4. Customer centric
5. Win hearts and minds of employees
6. Leadership of both thought and action
7. Embed citizenship.

The overall message from the conference was clear: it is actions communicated, not communications alone, that will change reputation and build trust.

The post Actions, not words, build reputation appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Research from Populus and Reputation.com (presented at the recent Trust and Reputation conference in London) shows that 64% of people in the UK think that big business will rip people off, if given the opportunity. Perhaps because of that, 71% of people think that big business should be more closely regulated by government. 68% of the public would support a government-imposed maximum wage (of no more than 10 times the average staff wage). 75% support capping bonuses at 50% of salary.

51% of British adults believe that big businesses in the UK prioritise investors (and giving investors a return on their money) over providing the service people need. Paying tax comes pretty low down on the list.

A reduction in trust should worry anyone in business. Increased demand for a more heavily regulated business environment can only have a negative impact on our economy, making the UK a less inviting location for business, and putting off potential investors.

It is not surprising, though. In the wake of so many scandals – from LIBOR fixing to numerous tax avoidance schemes – and in an environment of austerity, people feel business is getting away without doing its share.

This feeling that corporate = bad is spreading to the third sector. Sir Brendon Gormley (until recently CEO of the DEC), says that the newest threat to NGOs and charities is a perception that they are becoming too corporate, and losing their values. Salaries and money spent on good management are seen as a bad thing, rather than a good thing.

That’s not to say companies shouldn’t make money. Simon Walker, Director General of the Institute of Directors, summed it up nicely by quoting Theodore Roosevelt: “We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.”

It can be a fine line to walk between what’s right, and what’s legal. As Margaret Hodge said in her select committee grilling of Google on the issue of tax avoidance: “We’re not accusing you of being illegal, we’re accusing you of being immoral.” Perhaps morality will become more important if it has an impact on trust, and on reputation, and that in turn translates to profit.

A number of speakers at the Trust and Reputation conference talked about their belief that behaving responsibly will gain trust and build reputation, which in turn has a positive impact on the bottom line.

Nigel Knowles, Global Co-Chairman of DLA Piper, said that “Companies who take genuine action to change [disreputable] practices and rehabilitate their reputation will gain market share.” That means taking action. As Mark Pendlington, Group Director at Anglian Water, said: “We need to rid industry of the few bad apples, stand up and inspire people to take action.”

And once there’s been action, business needs to communicate that action: why success matters not just for the individual company, but for us all.

The post The reputation of business matters to everyone appeared first on Carrot Communications.

I’ve just finished reading Trust me, PR is Dead.

As someone who’s only ever worked in a small PR agency, and one which operates and thinks along the same lines as the author does, the arguments made in the book just seem like common sense to me. Why would anyone not want to run an organisation by the values it claims to adhere to? Why would they not back up their words with actions?

Unfortunately, I know that many big businesses don’t operate that way. As shown by the examples in the book, business leaders often want to know what the right thing to say is – they key words that will get the brand out of trouble, or suddenly make it okay for the CEO to take a massive pay rise while the business is making redundancies due to poor performance.

Words aren’t enough to foster trust

Robert Phillips speaks truths that people in big PR agencies need to hear, but, as he points out several times in the book, if people are unwilling to listen and to act on what you say, nothing is going to change.

Trust isn’t built overnight; neither is it built through words alone – but through action.

• Vision can’t just be some creative ideal that those in the business reach for. It has to be real. It has to be based on what the business has done, and what it aspires to do. It has to be realistic, achievable and measurable.
• Leaders must be accountable to customers and employees alike. Only then can a business begin to develop a culture of accountability, where everyone in the organisation accounts for their actions – which means everything we do has to be measurable.
• Business leaders have to trust those they work with. They need to build them up, empower them to make decisions for themselves. To trust them to do what they say they’ll do.
• Phillips also argues that trusted leaders are advocates for change. They don’t fester in the corner office, desperately trying to keep things as they are. They push forward, look at where business and society as a whole is going, or where they think it should go, and they encourage innovation, even if it ultimately does more good for others than it does themselves.

The PR industry

Phillips maintains that large PR consultancy models are broken. I’ve only ever worked for one small agency – Carrot. Phillips argues that PR is facing several threats:

1. Businesses are starting to become familiar to using data to gain insight into key areas of operation. In the world of big data, AVEs just don’t cut it. Decision makers want to see what works and what doesn’t, not some abstract, archaic guess at value.
2. Business leaders care about the outcome more than outputs. Creative content, award winning social media campaigns and excellent copywriting is essential, but what did these things achieve for the business?
3. Phillips says that “PR currently speaks to hierarchies in a world of networks.” Agencies need to realise that, in the world of social media, power lies with the average person, and their network of friends and influencers, not with the opinion makers of old.
4. PR campaigns suffer from too narrow a focus; like redecorating the flat when the roof’s about to fall in. PR needs to look at wider issues and ideas.
5. Jack of all trades, master of none. PR agencies need specialists, not just generalists. There are many areas of PR that most people can pick up easily, but not everyone is cut out to be a media manager and we can’t all write compelling copy. Some skills can’t be taught, they need to be brought in.

Trust Me, PR is Dead examines how the PR industry, and its clients, can adapt to an age where honesty and transparency is more valued than pure storytelling and spin. It’s easy to be cynical these days, and most people can tell when they’re being spun the corporate line. To run a successful PR agency in the future, and a growing business, decision makers need to show, rather than tell. They need to act.

The post Trust and PR: is PR dead? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

When does a bad reputation just not matter very much?

Amazon is no stranger to controversy over its working practices. A few years ago, it was various global media outlets raking the online retailer over the coals for the working conditions faced by warehouse employees. Last month, it was Amazon’s office workers that took the spotlight when the New York Times published an article lamenting the fates of its white-collar workforce.

Christmas 2013 saw campaigners issuing a rallying cry for an Amazon boycott over the way it handled tax in the UK, while the holiday period of 2014 saw the same campaigners urge a boycott over Amazon’s low paid workers. The group claimed that its 2014 campaign took away £5m of potential business from the web giant. But that potential loss was dwarfed by the £5.3bn in sales that Amazon UK took in 2014.

Back in February 2015, a minor social media storm kicked off when Giles Coren discovered that the Amazon Prime 30 day free trial he signed up for in 2012 automatically signed him up for Prime at the end of it – charging him £79 a year, which he’d only just discovered. This news resulted in a tide of tweets from other customers who felt they’d been “conned” the same way.

What damage have these issues done?

The NYT article was published on 15th August, but didn’t appear to have much of an impact on Amazon’s stock, which only took a tumble after the China crash, which hit many major US tech companies.

In fact, if you look at the company’s share price over the course of five years, it keeps climbing and is now stronger than ever, despite the reputational blows delivered by various unflattering articles and boycott campaigns.

Why people don’t boycott Amazon

The impact of brand loyalty

Amazon does a great job of trying to weave itself into new areas of its customer’s lives. You start off buying the odd book from Amazon, eventually graduating to Prime Membership so you get the delivery perks. Suddenly, you’re having new services thrown at you – it starts with movie streaming, exclusive TV shows, music voucher codes and free kindle books, and soon you see that Amazon also does groceries and pet supplies, and oooh! there’s a nifty new thing called Amazon Underground that gives customers free apps.

Amazon also owns sites like Audible, Goodreads and IMDb, as well as hosting many business services on its AWS cloud platform (an interesting fact when you consider that the Guardian published an article supporting the boycott, when it uses AWS itself).

The power of habit

For some people, especially Prime members, Amazon is deeply engrained into their lives. It’s not necessarily about money either, but convenience. Long-time customers have developed daily and weekly routines where they don’t need to run out and buy the latest book, game or movie, they can just click a button and get it delivered through their letter box in the morning (or downloaded to their PC in minutes). It’s now rolling out Dash Buttons in the US, which you can set up to instantly order a specific item when you press it.

People have to want to change a habit for a reason that resonates with them. They may be outraged by a news story, and give themselves a kind of “dry January” month off from Amazon, but suddenly they’ve forgotten aunt Paula’s birthday and it’s Amazon to the rescue.

“What would you even boycott? How can you clean yourself from Amazon unless you take yourself off the grid entirely?”

Sucharita Mulpuru-Kodali, analyst, Forrester Research

Reputation isn’t black and white

The truth is, reputation isn’t a fixed asset, and many crises aren’t clear cut. It depends on your perspective. In the wake of the most recent crisis, some Amazon employees leapt to the brand’s defence, offering a different perspective to those mentioned in the New York Times.

If you buy one book a year from Amazon, you’ll have much less invested in it than a Prime Member who visits the site multiple times a week. Crises are always filtered through the personal experience we have with the brand. While Amazon certainly has areas it needs to improve on, it would take something pretty major for many of its customers to boycott it.

The post Reputation Audit: Amazon appeared first on Carrot Communications.

On 19th July 2015 a hacking group calling itself the Impact Team hacked into a few websites owned by Avid Life Media. One of the websites being the notorious adultery-loving website, Ashley Madison.

In the months since then, the media has been full of stories about reality TV stars who’ve had their cheating ways exposed, allegations that the fabled $19 full delete of user data didn’t actually delete data, and revelations that there are considerably more men on the site than women (oh, and that a good chunk of the women are/were robots of some kind, a fact which users would have know had they examined the Ts and Cs).

A class action lawsuit has been filed against Ashley Madison, because, well, people are mad. They’re mad that they paid the site $19 and appeared not to have had a full delete of their data. They feel betrayed (oh, irony).

In the business of secrets

Ashley Madison is in the business of keeping secrets.

It’s entire M.O. is focused on providing a safe, secure space for men and women to run to when they want to do something that societal norms and values view as wrong (to have an affair). If these people are caught out, they not only risk their relationship, but their standing in society.

They risk being castigated as liars and cheats. They risk having friends, family and associates looking at them in a different light (one may say that this is, in fact, their own fault, but it doesn’t detract from the implicit pact they entered into with the site “you can be sneaky here” the site whispered, “we’ll watch your back”).

Oddly, for a site that deals in betraying trust, trust is its key selling point. Users need to be able to trust the site to keep the secret safe. The hack, and the continuing fall out from it, has punched a hole through that.

“But, we’ve got more users now!”

In late August, Ashley Madison claimed that more than 87,000 women signed up for the site in a week (well, there was a lot of publicity about the overwhelming numbers of male users of the site). The publicity introduced the site to people who could never even fathom such a site existing, people who were willing to take the risk and sign up.

Whether this was a temporary blip due the publicity, or is part of a larger resurgence for the site, remains to be seen.

Public vs. private

At around the same time as the spike in user numbers, the CEO of Ashley Madison’s parent company resigned. Although he had initially been bullish in his response to the hacker’s demands, when they started leaking his own emails, possibly revealing affairs of his own and contradicting his own public image, he stepped down.

Avid Life Media released the following statement (as reported by Wired):

“This change is in the best interest of the company and allows us to continue to provide support to our members and dedicated employees. We are steadfast in our commitment to our customer base.”

Aftermath

The crisis has now reached the stage where other brands and businesses can have a little fun with it, and use it for their own marketing purposes.

But for those who trusted Ashley Madison with their secrets (and data), the crisis continues. Other people may decide to take the risk and sign up, but there’s no doubt that the brand will be fighting the after effects of this crisis for some time to come.

The post Reputation Audit: Ashley Madison appeared first on Carrot Communications.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg published his ‘Building Global Community’ open letter – or, as the BBC called it – his “manifesto to re-boot globalisation”. At first glance, it may seem hypocritical for the man who says he isn’t interested in being a politician to jump feet first into one of the biggest political issues out there, but is it?

Politics and business really aren’t that different

When business leaders brainstorm what their brand values will be, they shouldn’t just focus on what sounds good, but what they are willing to work to achieve.

Facebook’s CEO is often outspoken on social issues, but he’s supposed to be. His company’s values promise boldness, building social value, transparency, action and creating maximum impact. If Facebook said and did nothing in response to the social and political challenges of today, we would know that it’s so called ‘core values’ were empty promises.

Business leaders can’t escape the values they created, they have a responsibility to act on them even if their actions will have nowhere near the impact of Facebook’s.

“Hold on, I’m in business, not politics!”

Don’t panic. I’m not arguing that every SME owner in the land needs to polish up their oratory and start going door-to-door.

Brands – and their leaders – don’t need to choose a political ideology to make a difference. They need to identify the values that matter to the business – values that everyone in the business supports – and commit to act on them.

Like Facebook, Starbucks has values that leaves the brand plenty of leeway. But taken together, the values mean that you can be pretty sure what stance the brand will take on major social issues. Of course Starbucks was going to do something in response to the immigration executive order (pledging to create jobs from 10,000 refugees), staying silent and doing nothing would go against all of its values.

It’s not the ideology that brands need to worry about, but the issues. Being seen to take a side may alienate some customers (#BoycottStarbucks / #AdiosStarbucks), but if these people are angry at you for doing the right thing and sticking to your values, what’s the problem? You’ll often find that just as many, if not more people rally to the brand’s cause (#DrinkStarbucksToFightBigotry / #BuyStarbucks).

Do brands really have a choice?

Business leaders may feel okay about keeping their heads down. These values just apply to how we run our business anyway – not how we want the rest of the world to work!

But that’s becoming increasingly difficult to do.

Last December, Lockheed Martin’s share price tumbled when Donald Trump tweeted:

The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016

When Nordstrom decided to pull his daughter’s fashion line from stores (due to declining sales), the President made his feelings known:

My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person — always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017

Yet, the brand’s share price ended the day up, and people rallied behind it on social media.

The President has the power to drag brands kicking and screaming into the political arena. But so do regular customers – who are uniting to give their voices a greater impact on brands. Take a look at grabyourwallet.org. It features a huge list of businesses (of various sizes) that have links with Trump, that stock the family’s products or that advertise on The Apprentice.

Some of these businesses have been forced to make statements, or take action, because of political activism.

CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg don’t need to run for President to be passionate about social change. They’re a reminder that each of us has the power, and responsibility, to do all that we can to share and act on our values.

You may shake your head at the man shouting at you on the TV and say “I don’t like anything he’s saying” or read an article the lack of women in the boardroom in your industry and think “that’s shockingly bad, isn’t it?” but what did you do as a result? Did you express an opinion? Did you look at how your executive board could become more diverse?

Values are meaningless unless lived. That’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing, and that’s what all of us need to emulate.

The post Are brands inherently political? appeared first on Carrot Communications.

The Edelman Trust Barometer had some interesting insights into how media is perceived and defined in 2018. We seem confused about what classifies as media, but we’re clearer about where we place our trust.

While we all respond to influence in different ways, what really influences our choices is the trust we have in the word of the person speaking. Even if we know them well, they may not be able to influence us unless we trust their experience and / or share their tastes.

The report shows that we’re receiving information from a variety of sources, but we’re often sceptical of what we’re told. How can businesses address this in 2018?

What is media?

While 89% of people said that journalists where what they thought of when asked what “media in general” was, 40% said brands and 23% thought of influencers.

As far as platforms were concerned, 48% of respondents defined social media as “media in general”, 41% selected actual news apps, and 25% thought that search was media.

Is it trusted?

The global results showed that trust in social media and search had declined since 2017, while trust in traditional and online-only media had increased by five percent.

Most people believed that large media organisations were more concerned with their brand than the veracity (#truthiness) of their news.

• 66% said they cared more about audience figures
• 65% felt that they willingly sacrificed accuracy to be the first with breaking news
• 59% believed that large news organisations were fixated on supporting a specific ideology in preference to informing the public

Sixty-three percent of people said that they couldn’t distinguish good journalism from fake news or general speculation.

The report found that media was the least trusted institution (the others being business, the Government and NGOs). Out of the 28 countries in the survey, 22 actively distrusted the media. (UK figures were the same as 2017, but in the US, trust in the media fell by five percent.)

The impact on business

There’s been a rebound in trust in experts. Sixty-three percent of respondents said that they trusted the information that they received about a business when it came from a technical expert (up three percent from 2017), and 61% trusted an academic expert.

However, trust in information from “people like yourself” dropped by six percent to an all-time low of 54%.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said that CEOs needed to lead on change, not wait for the government to act. For 69% of people, the most important task of the CEO is to build trust.

Practical implications

1. We don’t place blind trust in influencers.

A stranger on the internet may think something is great, but that doesn’t mean we agree, even if we’re fans of their content.

We weigh their words against a combination of their expertise and our relationship with them. Do we trust them? Have we enough experience of their content to know that their enthusiasm is genuine?

Brands need to consider this when selecting the right influencer to work with.

Yes, they may have hundreds of thousands of subscribers in your target demographic, but how many watch their videos? What’s their relationship with their audience like? Do the people who follow them take action on their recommendations?

The most successful influencer-brand relationships are natural and frictionless. There’s a clear trust between the brand and the influencer. The influencer has a natural enthusiasm for what they’re doing; giving even sponsored content greater authenticity.

As a fan, you can see the trust between the brand and the influencer, and your trust in both (and the information they’re providing) increases.

Influencer marketing technology platform (and Carrot client), ZINE, examines the influencer / brand relationship in more detail in its new report: Influencer Marketing: Science, Strategy and Success.

2. Bring out your experts.

CEOs can help promote trust in their businesses by supporting and giving a platform to their experts. They can focus on the ‘why’ of the business; on telling people about its story and mission. Experts can concentrate on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ aspects.

They should be honest about their struggles. ‘We want to create X change in the world, we’ve had some setbacks, but this is what we’re doing to overcome them’.

‘Fake news’ may be a real thing, but it’s also used to keep people questioning what they’re being told. The world is being gaslighted by global leaders. We all need to know that we can trust the information brands are giving us.

3. Communicate clearly and directly.

Trust in traditional media has increased, but many people are confused about what ‘media’ is. I see media as news channels, sites, papers and journalists. Others include search, social and influencers in the media mix.

But traditional media is regulated. A lot of what search, social and influencers do is not.

We’re questioning what we see on these platforms. Is it real, is it a hoax? Is this going to embarrass me if I share it?

Whatever platforms brands choose to communicate on, that communication has to be clear and direct. Focus on building the authority of not just the CEO, but your experts. Work with influencers who are experts in their area and in their own communities. Use social media and search to make your message easy to find and understand.

Trust has always been vital in communication and deal-making. If I can’t trust you to keep your word, why would I want to work with you again?

As the Edelman report shows, people are looking to businesses, and their experts, to lead and change the world for the better. That’s the most important thing any of us can work towards.

–

Featured image by Pete Bellis on Unsplash

The post Trust and the power of expert influence in 2018 appeared first on Carrot Communications.