Case Study in Crisis Management via Blogging

A few weeks ago, ValleyWag and others brought a story about how some blogger found out that certain Adobe software seemed to secretly send data to Omniture via an obscure looking URL. Of course, anything about company spying took off in a frenzy.

Interestingly, John Nack, Senior PM for Adobe, has been responding to the negative Word-of-Mouth via his blog on the Adobe domain, which is not technically an official Adobe Blog (so the disclaimer says).

However, he’s been the main spokesperson to address the issues and notice how non-PR the titles of the blog post are, e.g. “What’s with Adobe & the shady server name?”

The response to his blog post vary, but are relatively positive and open. Questions: How much did the tone of his blog post helped influenced a more tame and positive response? Would a traditional PR spokesperson be able to help do the same? And how much of John Nack’s blog postings have to be cleared by PR, Marketing or Legal?

• “Adobe and Omniture: Further details“
• “What’s with Adobe & the shady server name?“
• “Adobe ate me baby!!“

PS: And yes, after a 2-3 month hiatus, I’m back on Emergence-Media blogging! Yay!

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Along with the tidal wave of Social Media buzzwords hitting marketing and PR departments, “blogger outreach campaigns” is a big one. Blogger Outreach Campaigns are seen as the new “word of mouth” campaign, which is being looked at as a way to virally increase brand awareness and even help drive sales, all at a lower cost than other channels.

Moving Beyond a One-Time Blog Outreach Campaign

As David Wilson pointed out, Social Media Marketing is not a one-time event. David was using a Digg Article submission for an example, but the same applies for Blogger Community Outreach .

Don’t contact bloggers just when you have something to promote. Bloggers will catch to this very quickly. Just as your PR team keeps a steady relationship with reporters, keep a steady relationship with A-List, B-List and Upcoming bloggers and community beyond promotional emails: asking for feedback on your product/service, invite them for small get-togethers dinners, etc.

But companies will say: “But that takes too much resources to maintain blogger relationships, let’s do a one-time campaign”. Sure but keep in mind the following:

1. Blogs are apart of the your Brand’s Ecosystem
   For the brand Spirit Airlines, a blog post with the title “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines” ranks 3 on Google and below it is a blog post on a very damning alleged leak from the Spirit Airlines CEO
2. Restoring a Brand is Difficulty and Lengthy
   According to BtoB, nearly 1 of 5 brands takes 2 years to recover from a crisis affect their brand image, sales or profits.
3. Customers probably Trust Bloggers more than you
   According to Nielsen, 66% of North Americans find Consumer Generated Media, like blogs, as reliable source of news. What are those blogs saying about your brand?

Conclusion: Social Media is Bigger than a Single Campaign

Social Media has opened up a whole new world for marketers and PR folks, which requires a long-term strategy beyond a one-off campaign: Community Marketing & Relation needs to be part of a companies normal PR and Marketing function.

Blogger Outreach campaigns have their place, but they must take place within a larger strategy of maintaining communications with bloggers and reaching out to those discussing your brand on forums, blogs and elsewhere.

See below for more details on those three points

1. The Community is Part of your Brand Ecosystem

When I’m asked by companies, “Why should we talk to bloggers or listen to what they say?” I make it clear that they, their brand and even their CEOs, are already being talked about by bloggers. They can join and help shape the conversation or let it shape them.

A quick search for “Paypal” on Google will show “PayPalSucks.com” as #2 on Google. I believe it was Dave McClure that mentioned that while PayPal was reluctant to promote a forum for their users to talk to Paypal, users were going to the PayPalSucks forum instead.
Stephen Spencer of CNET noted how Bloggers were increasingly present brand search results:

a. For Zappos

In the top Google Search Results, a search for “Zappos” presented “I Heart Zappos” blog post and a blog post by Start-Up Review rank top 10.

First Page Google Result for “Zappos”:
A business blog on Zappos and posting called “I Heart Zappos”

b. For Spirit Airline

Zappos received stunning reviews by the two blogs in the brand search, but not so for Spirit Airlines. A search for “Spirit Airlines” in Google led us to a blog post called “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines” and a blog that posted an alledged leaked memo from the CEO, stating “Let them tell the world how bad we are” in response to a customer complaint.

A search for Spirit Airlines reveals some severe customer/PR relations issues.

2. Does Your Customers Trust Bloggers More Than You?

Recently, Nielsen conducted a global survey on people’s attitudes towards different advertising channels. Unsurprisingly, Word Of Mouth is king and online banner is second to the bottom.

qasd

3. Your Reputation is at Stake

Dave Wilson recently wrote on a BtoB report that reveal that 57% of marketing executives say they do not have a crisis plan in place in case of any crisis that can lead to negative coverage, declining sales, or reduced profitability. And 53% have experienced such crises.

More telling is how long it took to recover from such crises

• 23% of respondents said it took three months to a year for their brand to fully recover from a crisis
• 13.3% said it took more than two years to recover
• 17.7% said they have yet to recover after two years.

As part of crisis plan, it helps to have the ear to the ground – understanding what bloggers, reviewers on Amazon and forum members are saying – to look out for potential crises and know how to handle bloggers and others when it happens. You need to keep your ear to the community.

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Last night I attended the Social Media Club “Talking About Disclosure” roundtable discussion, which took place in the CNET headquarters in San Francisco.

The discussion was on the issue of disclosure on social media content (blogs, podcasts etc), especially in the light of issues surrounding Edelman and their Wal-Marting Across America campaign and other recent controversy surrounding Pay-Per-Post blogging.

In attendance was yours truly along with Tantek Celik (Technorati), Mike Arrington (Tech Crunch), Brian Solis (FutureWorks PR), Shannon Clark (JigZaw), CNET folks and a few others.

Overall, the discussions were very interesting and even a little lively at some points, but its great to have such engaged group of people discussing and addressing this topic. Kristi Wells have Fickr Photos here.

Quickie Notes from the Roundtable

General Discussions Old Dot-Com: 3Cs of Content, Commerce and Community New Dot-Com: 3Ts of Truthfulness, Transparency and Trust Learning from the Edelman and Walmart scenario: Do immediate acknowledge that there are issues and investigations are underway Try not to keep silent for days while waiting for internal investigations to be completed Everyone agreed that publishers (bloggers, podcasters) have a duty to disclose, but to what extent? Disclosure on reviewing a product/service/company that your friend works for? How good of a friend? Retroactive disclosure: if you invest in a company you posted about 6 months ago? If you heard about the company over a free drink? The Audience (Blog readers) and active reading responsibility. Just like any media (newspapers to radios), to what extent should readers fall under Caveat Emptor when reading blogs? How can blog readers (especially those new to blogs) discern how and if a blog is credible? Next Steps for the Social Media Club SMC to push for Greater Media Literacy for both bloggers and the audience: Open guideline system (wiki as Tantek suggested) to both educate: The Bloggers on “blogger ethics” and proper disclosure The Audience on understanding how to better discern Building a Common Blogging Ethics Document Draft a Blogging Ethics Guidelines setting down strong, but common values and guidelines Discuss what happens when a blogger who claims to uphold the guidelines violate it (Similar to Edelman violation of WOMMA guidelines)

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Via Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion, eMarketer released a report stating that only 1.5% of the 200 companies on Forbes’ “Best Small Company” list have a blog, compared to 5.8% of the Fortune 500.

Quick Analysis

While eMarketer’s statistics are interesting, there are two issues to consider:

1. Resource-wise, larger companies can afford to blog, while smaller businesses are pushed for resources and may feel that resources spent on traditional advertising and marketing is more effective than blogging.
2. What the excerpt of this eMarketer report fails to states is if these large corp. blogs are genuinely embracing blogging with honesty, openness and transparency, or are they just hyped versions of press releases?

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