The Intersection of Online and Offline

I don’t usually blog about the same topic on two consecutive days, but there has been so much intelligent discussion out there, that I thought I would add this to the mix.

Peter Shankman, he of the “HARO” - Help a Reporter Out, blogged this morning with a different perspective, one of not blaming the ad itself, but stating, correctly, that they messed up with one of the most connected, viral and powerful online communities - mommy bloggers. And I would even broaden the term from “mommy bloggers” to “moms online,” because while many of them comment and connect, not all of them blog.  I love Peter’s take (as well as HARO):

Let’s be honest - when a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia rocks the house, yet search.twitter.com pulls up #Motrinmoms as the lead story, somewhere, there’s a disconnect. But it’s a disconnect that, when you think about it, makes perfect sense.

I’m not siding with Motrin. They messed up, granted. I’m ok with that. Companies mess up all the time. They fix the problem, and it usually doesn’t make the radar screen. The problem is, Motrin happened to mess up at the expense, and in the face of, one of the most vocal, quickest-to-blog, “strongest-to-band-together-and-form-one-opinion-like-the-Borg” collectives out there - The Mommy-Blogging community.

Now I am NOT slagging on Mommy-Bloggers. Not in the slightest. Nor, am I saying they’re over-reacting to the commercial, which, by rights, was stupid and patronizing. What I AM saying though, is that Motrin will pay a MUCH bigger price, as opposed to if they’d messed up in front of say, “Construction-Worker-Bloggers.” Mommy-Bloggers are not a voice to be messed with, probably because they’re one of the most clearly identifiable voices on the web. You have a kid? You blog about said kid? You’re a Mommy-blogger. You don’t need an advanced degree in particle physics to see what these bloggers have in common.

Dear Ad Agency (I am not calling them out because so many others have and will):  if you are going to eff up with a group, make sure you have your act together.  Make sure that your targeted online community will will respond at least positively, and at worst, not organize a campaign AGAINST you.

P.S. - and in the “totally weak” category, www.motrin.com is DOWN (as of 7:45am EST).  I guess there were not enough people to simply restore the ad.  Weak, weak, weak, guys.   Where is the dark or backup site?  Is Tylenol a case study that does not still resonate?  You can do better, Motrin.

Jesus, I have a headache just reading this.

Mark

Happened to stumble across this today on Laura Fitton’s Pistachio Consulting Blog, but I have found another reason to toss on the heaping pile of why companies should have robust reputation management programs that include Twitter feeds.  An ad on the Motrin site has a running monologue of a mother essentially complaining of back pain from carrying her baby.

I did not find the ad particularly offensive, but there are a whole lot of people who did.  When you read this, go to Twitter search and look for #motrinmoms.  These guys are getting barbecued like a rack of ribs on the 4th of July.  And guess what?

• The ad is still up.
• Now there is an “anti” video that sprung up in Internet time (below).  The ad shows negative Tweets AND HAPPY MOMS CARRYING THEIR BABIES. Oh - and it was not lost on me that the soundtrack of the “anti” clip was “Danny Boy.” Heh.

If this does not make the case for robust online issues management, I don’t know what does.  Remains to be seen what impact this can have on sales, but geez, a multimillion dollar company in a highly competitive space does not need to have this stuff hanging out there, even as a write this on a Sunday night.

Mark

At the request of my pal and blogger extraordinaire, David Wescott (wow - I’m not one line into this post and already I have used five French words - touche!) I wanted to offer some thoughts and open up a discussion thread for how the Obama administration may change “things.” I have put “things” in quotes because I want to keep the floor open for comments and ideas.  Since I get to go first, here’s my thinking:

Social media, social media, social media.

Am I clear?  Good.

Just last week, I did a Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable on “the First Internet Election,” and while we are several months away from getting hard numbers, one can draw a dotted line (in pencil) to social media and voter turnout.  Don’t put it in pen, yet because we don’t have any hard numbers yet. This morning’s Boston Globe reported that voter turnout was NOT at an all time high:

Turnout in last week’s election increased from four years ago but fell far short of some forecasts largely because many Republican voters either stayed home or left blank the presidential section of their ballots.”

So what will change?  Well, by now, we have all seen Change.gov, “..for the Office of the President-elect and Office of the Vice President-elect, as recognized by the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, as amended (3 USC 102 note).  There’s a first and an indication that President-elect Obama will turn more to delivering information to an increasingly Internet-savvy populace via social media.  Cool.  But here’s what I wonder.  You can’t just go and register a political site (let alone build it) in a day, so someone was working on this puppy for a long time.  Within the government, because that is the only way that you can get a .gov domain.

Quick bipartisan note:  The Republicans have a site, too: Republican for a Reason.

Second,  the Wall Street Journal reported in November on how President-elect Obama made tremendous use of many social media tools during the election, including Twitter, Facebook and email and text alerts.  As someone who draws a paycheck from Uncle Sam, this is harder to do from within government, but I think that President-elect Obama at least grasps the concept that government can be more efficient by delivering information to the populace via social media tools.

Well, memes are supposed to be short, so I’ll stop here and leave it to other, smarter minds to continue to conversation.  So consider yourself tagged:

• David Wescott of “It’s Not a Lecture“
• Jenn Zingsheim of Custom Scoop
• Geoff Livingston of the “Buzz Bin”
• Cheryl Contee of “Jack and Jill Politics”

Start memming, folks.  And the one, super-smart guy who I left off of my list is my pal, Jason Falls, who last time I tagged him for a meme, wrote “My Hatred of the Memes is Overcome Only by my Liking the Memer.“  Lesson learned, Jason.  One bitch-slap is all I need to get the message.

C’est bon!

Mark

I have a love-hate relationship with politics, and I get jazzed about social media.  In the Media Bullseye Radio Roundtable I did last week, all of us predicted that we won’t have solid analysis for probably a few months in terms of the “youth vote” - what so many people are attributing to the rise of social media.

I have been watching the tea leaves a little, and thanks to Neville Hobson’s Tweet today, discovered that according to Valleywag, Obama’s Twitter account has gone silent since Election Day.  So before you guys start jumping all over me about transition, etc., don’t think for a minute that President-elect Obama was himself tweeting over a cup of joe (the plumber?) in the morning.  Valleywag says:

He didn’t even use Twitter to announce his transition website, change.gov — and what is Twitter for, really, if not spamming your friends with your latest URL? There’s no better sign that his 127,196 followers have been pumped and dumped.”

What I found equally interesting is that Newt Gingrich now has a Twitter account.  By all accounts in the use of social media, the political Left is WAY ahead of the political Right, but the next two years are going to be interesting.

Imitation is the best form of flattery.

Mark

As reported in PR Week, the insurance (and shrinking) giant, AIG, has recently employed the services of one of the largest public relations agencies in the country.

According to the article, an AIG spokesperson,Peter Tulupman, responded:

“We have hired Burson-Marsteller to help us respond to the huge volume of requests for information we are receiving from customers, employees, and the media,” Tulupman said in an e-mail to PRWeek. “We have more than offset the cost by canceling advertising and sponsorships.”

I get the second part of the quote, that being in reference to the recent “scandal” that erupted a couple of weeks ago in which members on congress (small caps on purpose) responded with “outrage” that B/M had the stones to move forward with “…$440,000 on a posh California retreat for its executives, complete with spa treatments, banquets and golf outings.”

That’s sensationalistic crap.  If you dig below the surface, which few outlets have done during this nation’s financial crisis, you will discover that this was not just for executives, but was a pre-planned event that the top performers earned before the crisis. For any of you who know folks or have been in sales, you know that often, companies dangle a trip to Hawaii or something of the like as an incentive for performance.

My controversial ten cents?  The AIG top-performers should be left alone because they had already earned the reward.  Keep top performers motivated when company morale is likely at an all-time low is more important than ever.  What AIG could have done differently is gotten ahead of the story;  one would think that someone in public relations would have thought to get in front of this. Maybe they did, but got quashed.  Who knows.  But back to my main point.

AIG announcing that they have hired Burson Marsteller to handle “huge volume of requests for information we are receiving from customers, employees, and the media” is like saying that you have hired ten rabid German Shepherds to guard a lollipop that fell on the floor.  I competed against B/M for a long time, and I can tell you that their rep is for gloves-off, hand-to-hand combat for clients.  There will be the inevitable information that B/M is the agency of record for Philip Morris, USA, but that is irrelevant.  The point is that if you want someone to deal with the “huge volume of requests for information we are receiving from customers, employees, and the media,” hire a firm in India to answer the phones.

AIG suggesting that Burson is going to help them answer inquiries is disingenuous.  Hiring B/M to help them stem the flow of both negative publicity the the outflow of capital would be a more honest answer. I wonder who is calling the communications shots within the company.

Whoever it is should be smarter.

Mark