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Claim Your Social Media Identity

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I just got and am fiddling with a Droid 2 smartphone and what a smarty it is. I’m truly amazed at the apps and functionality of these babies that work like a laptop and browse with ease. Now that I have both this phone and my Blackberry, there’s no comparison. I’m antsy to upgrade immediately.

Over the weekend, something happened to shock the pants off me – someone phoned me and instead of her photo popping up with her number, the image of another woman popped up (who also has the same name as the caller).  At first I was confused how the woman in the picture got this phone number, and then I realized the caller was really who she was supposed to be, and the woman whose image popped up when the call came through was the “impostor.”

It didn’t take me long to understand how this could happen. The woman with the image is on social media with a BlogSpot blog as well as Twitter account on which she’s active. In fact, through the day, the other woman’s tweets began to cultivate in the contacts list on the Droid for the woman who owns that mobile number.

What to do? I’m open for suggestions on this one, folks, as it’s my job to fix this conundrum. Here’s the social-media-claim-your-identity strategy I’m going to follow (REPEAT: I’m totally open for suggestions on what you’d do, please!):

  • Register the woman’s image on Gravatar. (I wrote about how you do this here.)
  • Set up a Twitter account with that same image and help her with a consistent Twitter strategy.
  • Set up an Open ID with that image, as well.
  • Set up a Disqus account, Friend Feed, Bing, and any other social media sites
  • Join Facebook and set up that account with that same image over her name.
  • Hit LinkedIn and update her profile and make it viewable to the public with the same image.
  • Set up a blog over her name and affix her gravatar with the blog and drive links and traffic to the blog.
  • Update her website, for which she owns the domain for her personal name and every possible extension, with Internet marketing to boost search engine rankings. The site, currently in flash, may need to be rebuilt in a content management system like Drupal so the engines will recognize the content and coding. (I don’t believe the search engines have begun to accept flash sites yet for SEO?)

Beyond this approach, I’m still not sure I can get the caller’s own photo to synch with her mobile number after my phone already has the image of another woman locked in. By actually establishing her presence for the first time and trying to help her claim her social media identity, we’ll be that much closer to fixing the problem.

What do you think people who have the same name as another ought to do when they’re not interested in social media engagement? When something like this occurs, there’s no time for complacency – it’s forced engagement to protect a personal, and in this case, professional brand.

Tell Your Story First

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One of my favorite business publications is Fast Company. I devoured the October 2010 issue and amassed various tear sheets for the to-blog-about pile one of which was “Not So Slick.” This story in the section “NEXT Social Media” is about the BP tweep imposter @BPGlobalPR who took the Twitterosphere for a ride poking fun at BP for its handling and mismanagement of the oil spill crisis.

Leroy Stick, a comedy writer, seized an opportunity to create an outlet for the public’s wrath, launched the faux BP Twitter account and off to the races. As of this writing, Leroy has 186,590 followers with only 493 tweets and 8,148 listed. In the scheme of tweeting, that’s not a ton of content delivery; but, listed on 8K+? That is amazing.

The real corporate account @bp_america, “languished at a tenth of that,” according to Fast Company.

So, what’s the lesson for the day?

Companies cannot control their brand in the age of social media i.e. word-of-mouth marketing, Facebook and Twitter et al.

When you think about the magnitude of that statement, it’s frightening. We’ve seen so many examples of corporations lost in the throes of a defensive game on social media that more often than not has failed.

I’ve written about these stories relating to Nestle, Pampers, Sun Chips, Gap, and BP. Soon after I began to engage on Twitter, Dominos debacle had just occurred (when two pizza makers jokingly blew their noses in the cheese pie captured on video). Watching the corporate giants struggle with word of mouth and social media may bring some laughs, but this hits close to home for any company attempting to promote brand awareness online.

When a brand touches millions of people, there’s no doubt the lightening speed of the Ethernet is uncontrollable. How can a company attempt to control its brand if a crisis erupts?

  • First things first…prior to a crisis, marketing public relations needs to make everything tight – messaging, stories, training of spokespeople, collateral, websites, social networking sites, and regular engagement on social media, etc.
  • In the can should be approved corporate messages that senior leadership can dust off and easily update in the event that social media is the impetus behind the storm.
  • There needs to be a highly strategic social media team in place who can call the shots on the fly 24/7 across all time zones.
  • A pre-approved team of spokespeople need to have the media training to address all types of media at any time of the day; this means bloggers, Twitter chats, Facebookers, LinkedIn groups, and traditional media, too.
  • Accessibility is so critical during a crisis; the more the doors remain closed the more others win an offensive posture. So, be accessible to at least control the message and attempt to manage the brand at the same time. 

I don’t have all the answers; apparently, no one does. Sustainability expert Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com said it well in Fast Company, “It really comes down to storytelling—if you don’t tell your story well, someone else will tell it for you.”

Former H-P CEO Hires PR Firm; Lesson for Tiger

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Mark Hurd in 2009 (Credit: Mark Peterson)

By now, you’ve read the unfolding story of former H-P CEO Mark Hurd asked to resign a week ago due to some “I-did-not-have- sex-with-that-woman” snafu. What you likely haven’t heard about Hurd is the truth. The H-P board of directors is already bored with the entire scandal, and instead of releasing the truth behind the untruth, everyone is left to guess why the lack of transparency.

In the wake of the crisis, Mark Hurd hired Sitrick Public Relations of Los Angeles to help influence his brand and maintain his positive image as we await the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

Is Hurd’s hiring of the PR firm Paris Hilton uses a smart thing? Or, is it squarely an admission of guilt? If anyone needed to hire a PR firm, it’s former-presidential-hopeful -now-fallen-star John Edwards or Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford.

That’s an interesting move by Hurd to hire my peers in Los Angeles. Stories in the Wall Street Journal suggest he did it to pave the way for future employment and to set the unbalanced record straight.

My first impression was that Hurd is hiding something and that his decision to hire PR is an admission of guilt beyond a faulty expense account and a “close personal relationship” with Jodie Fisher, actress turned hostess. Let’s use Tiger Woods as an example.

Tiger’s crisis unfolded via a front-man gatekeeper who was a criminal attorney. No PR team in place to help craft the message in the immediate aftermath of Tiger’s early morning crash turned sex scandal extraordinaire.  If Tiger had hired a public relations team to help with his horrendous image, perhaps he’d be farther along on the pathway to repair than where he’s floundering now.

Back to Mark Hurd. At the time of this writing, the man is apparently not that guilty; yet, he hires a public relations firm to be the frontline spokespeople on his behalf. EXTREMELY SMART.

I love that Hurd turned immediately to PR as his frontline support and crisis team. I expect Hurd’s lawyer is also on that team, but the Wall Street Journal prominently featured a Sitrick spokesperson in its story and not a lawyer.

The “Smart Money” column in the Wall Street Journal by James B. Stewart on August 11, 2010 is a can’t-miss read.  I appreciate Stewart’s candor and blunt talk about transparency at H-P, “Hewlett-Packard Still Can’t Handle the Truth” on August 11, 2010. Nothing for H-P to be happy about, Stewart suggests investors avoid H-P stock. The $35 million exit package paid to the fired Hurd, the lack of transparency by H-P, and ridiculous way this situation is being handled have all created a nose dive for H-P stock. This week, $8.7 billion was shaved off H-P’s market value. (Seriously?)

I hope H-P is taking lessons from its former CEO. It should have a full-court press in investor relations, public relations, crisis communications along with social media strategies front and center to reverse its embarrassing downward spiral.  

What’s your impression of yet another sex scandal plaguing corporate America and government?

Pull Sales to Push Social Media

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The July 12, 2010 Advertising Age features an interview with LG’s CMO Kwan Sup Lee. He is formerly of P&G and also worked pizza in Korea. LG owns a broad portfolio of consumer electronics products including microwaves and TVs. It is branding itself as a lifestyle company.

The more I study the influence of social media on sales, the more I realize the missing link IS sales. Just like public relations has yet to influence sales directly (we’re on peripheral vision), social media is not touching frontline sales, either.

The story listed five marketing challenges LG faces:

1. Focus on creating great products and then let marketing showcase them.

2. Forget about “one upmanship game” of tech features.

3. Use a broad product portfolio as a strength.

4. …understand your business, your consumers and your brand.

5. Don’t be intimidated by the competition.

Pretty basic and areas of concern by all companies, right? What’s blatantly missing is any mention of sales. The first challenge above is where I paused longest. How I’d like to edit #1 is:

Create great products supported by even greater marketing strategy and arm frontline sales with marketing tools and education about public relations and social media to influence a buy.

Public relations strategy provides a conduit to the customer, and social media channels allow direct, outside-in customer communication. The sales team, however, is WITH the customer face-t0-face whether B2B or B2C!

This strength of position by sales can help influence consumers to:

1. “Like” a Facebook page and subscribe to RSS feeds.

2.  Comment on a blog post or YouTube video with positive product feedback.

3. Ask for a Yelp comment.

4. Eliminate the blasted surveys with evey transaction we make and instead drive traffic to social media networks.

A flexible and nimble sales and management culture can make this happen and positively influence consumers’ buys. What do you think? Does this resonate with your thinking about what’s possible?

BP, PR and The Fall

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It’s not too often public relations is visibly on the frontlines of a national crisis. When the client, BP in this case, is less than transparent and is deep into a situation (since April 10, 2010) with no immediate resolution and none foreseen until perhaps August, it is imperative public relations does everything possible to position a solution as genuine, train the spokespeople to be genuine,  and execute action-oriented and timely response.

In the June 7, 2010 Advertising Age, the story “Brunswick put to ultimate test as BP grows increasingly toxic,” references a global public relations firm that is most comfy as a financial communications agency and not an environmental- disaster crisis-communications shop.

Reporter Michael Bush references the good relationship with an early start in London 23 years ago between Brunswick and BP while suggesting the Washington D.C. office of the former is ill equipped to manage the crisis and perhaps its New York office would fare slightly better.

It was only a matter of time before the finger pointing began to swing in PR’s direction.

The work we public relations practitioners do on behalf of clients indeed includes counsel for behavior on the frontlines of a crisis. (Not sure why BP President Tony Hayward forgot his media training half of the time; was it due to pure exhaustion?)

No PR firm the size of Brunswick with HQ in London should manage a crisis of this proportion independently, regardless of the D.C. politicos on staff from the U.S. Treasury and White House who have foreign policy expertise.

This situation is similar to what happens to a past president of the United States. With all the earned expertise, he is relegated to the back burner to build a presidential library and author books rather than aid and abet the new admnistration. There are public relations agencies galore on the global scale with crisis communications expertise who can help the current situation with a fresh approach.

I am not one of these agencies nor am I a crisis communications expert who would even consider tackling a situation of this magnitude. (Levick Strategic Communications is doing a bang-up job with its own PR about this debacle; I’m seeing the firm quoted in a number of stories proffering counsel to BP on how it ought to manage this crisis.)

You can bet, however, that were I in the shoes of a Brunswick and internal BP corporate communications department, I’d scramble to invite illustrious public relations leaders to the boardroom to propose high-level solutions to this never-ending crisis.

It’s ludicrous local public relations firms in Texas at command central and the Gulf states have not been invited to the table to strategize strictly about regional people affected by this calamity who have lost their generations-old livelihood. How do you elect politicians? Karl Rove knows. You erupt the grassroots machine, one vote at a time.

Now that the pendulum has swung into anti-BP mode and it’s sticking, public relations is going to suffer trying to make change in this ever non-transparent debacle.

 For what it’s worth, BP and Brunswick, at this late date:

  • Call in the PR experts for some fresh ideas and begin to repair the damage that will take 10 times as long because your public face has been under water.
  • Invite regional PR expertise to the table to develop a Gulf States public relations campaign directed at the locals who live day to day off the sea for food and tourism.
  • Swallow your pride, cough up the dough, and tap the global PR community who work with oil companies on a daily basis. In fact, contact the Exxon-Valdez PR team for counsel on this situation. They’re still out there waiting, I’m sure.

And, if you’ve already done all this and I just don’t know about it, well, forgive me. Glad to hear it.