Online Reputation: Why Jane Corwin’s Social Media Person Should be Waterboarded
Politics is a mean, nasty, filthy business. Trust me, I know – I have been around it most of my working life. Much of the process of getting elected is pushing your candidate’s positives while attempting to raise the negatives of your opponent. But a Cardinal rule is don’t help the person opposing you by doing something stupid (read: don’t be Michael Dukakis riding in a tank).
As I have stated again and again in this space, the first rule of crisis communications is to avoid the crisis to begin with. Anticipate contingencies. Plan for FUBARs. Don’t step in it.
And above all, don’t leave yourself open to attack – and don’t shoot yourself in the foot. And all of this is why Congressional candidate Jane Corwin’s social media person should be waterboarded.
Jane is running for Congress in New York’s 26th district special election. Good for her. She has a pretty nice looking Web site that, when you get past the usual campaign-speak is attractive and fairly informative.

Done, right?
Nope.
One of Jane opponents must have did a little background research of his own and discovered that the campaign’s social media person neglected to register all of the possible domains, leaving them exposed to a parody site. And that’s exactly what happened. The campaign staffer registered .com, not .org.
Hence, meet the parody site, www.janecorwin.org. Consider that this URL is just a hair from being the URL of the campaign site – AND – many campaign sites have .org domains because they are not considered companies.

Both sites have a virtually identical look and feel and navigation, so if one is not paying attention, until you carefully read the copy, it’s hard to tell them apart. Here are some comparisons:
On the campaign site:
- “Challenging the status quo and protecting your tax dollars.”
Parody site:
- “Protecting the status quo and taking your tax dollars.”
And it goes on and on. You can read all about the real campaign site here, but the embarrassing and (to be honest) gut-bustingly funny items on the parody site include:
- The welcome pop-up screen: “Together, we can make delicious soup from the bones of the poor. Sign up now to be served by Jane Corwin.”
- The lead campaign news item on the home page: “In response to her heroic support for Paul Ryan’s budget plan, which would end Medicare in favor of an innovative program called ‘widespread human suffering,’ Jane Corwin has been given an award by Pat Boone, spokesman
for the 60-Plus association. Boone was a famous singer in the days before it was learned that music could convey human emotions.” - Instead of “volunteer,” “donate now” and “contact” on the campaign site, the parody site lists “surrender,” “give us your money,” or “get brain implant.”
Finally, the real campaign site does, in fact, integrate Facebook. As I write this, 809 “like” Jane. On the parody site, instead of the “like” button, it is replaced by “coronate,” and those who like Jane include Kim Jong Il, Donald Trump and Muamar Gadaffi.
Yes, this is funnier than hell, but it’s serious too. When someone sent me this article, I got curious to see how much coverage this has gotten beyond Jane’s district. Jane: ouch.
No less than the online version of Time magazine wrote about the parody site on May 6, calling it “ruthless,” but nonetheless, quoting some of the funnier lines. The Atlantic wrote about it, calling it “…in fact, a parody site that rips the state assemblywoman as a corporate shill and hilariously mocks the stock photography and conventional political imagery on her campaign’s actual website, JaneCorwin.com.”
Double ouch. And the irony is no lost on me that this special election is taking place to replace Rep. Chris Lee (R), who resigned from Congress in February after half-naked photos of him surfaced on Craigslist.
Going back to my original point, the best way to carry out crisis communciations is to avoid the crisis to begin with. I mean, it’s what, like $39 bucks a year to register a domain? When I was in the agency world, we once spent about $2,000 registering all possible domains (and I mean ALL) for the company, it’s senior executives, and even those that could represent acronyms. Any time that a client balked, I would ask if they have business insurance. The answer was inevitably “yes,” and I would tell them that while they cannot stop web sites that attack them, they can make it harder for people to quickly and easily find the negative information. That’s your online reputation management insurance.
So dear social media person at Jane Corwin’s campaign: your mistake to spend maybe an extra $150 bucks got your candidate lampooned online and created an echo chamber in Time magazine, the Atlantic, as well as others.
As for punishment, here’s my idea: there have to be some out-of-work waterboarders just hanging around the faucets at Guantanamo – and – information to whack Osama may have come from one of the enhanced interrogation techniques, so why not waterboard the idiot whose neglect caused this flap? Negative aqua-reinforcement. Or have “.com, .org, .net., .info. and .tv” tatooed on his/her forehead.
Just think: we could video it and make it into a parody site.
Mark
I can’t tell you how many times I have had to engage in a battle for software, a faster computer, access to social media tools through the firewall, or even back in the day, a LAPTOP so I could actually do work during non-work hours. So here’s a few bits of advice aimed at the employer:
business application, like
episode in which their soon-to-be correspondent,
who process people.Mr. Capozzi: with all due respect, you might remember the
shorts with a camera and his hat turned to the side walkin’ down the Champs Elysee. We just aren’t as sensitive as we need to be to the way that we conduct ourselves.” Ok. So the world hates America because of our Bermuda shorts and the way that we wear a baseball cap? Come on. Come up with a better reason than this. Say that we should learn a few phrases in French. Say that we could or should study some French culture before traveling to Paris. But to state – and I quote – “Picture the guy in Bermuda shorts with a camera and his hat turned to the side walkin’ down the Champs Elysee” is beyond oversimplification. It’s just downright stupid. Maybe Mr. Capozzi could offer American tourists some sartorial advice, but one must think that the Chairman Emeritus of Publicis Public Relations and Corporate Communications Group likely has more spare cash to spend on clothing that is, presumably, less offensive to our French brethren out for a stroll on the Champs Elysee.
couple of weeks ago, I sat next to a senior executive at one of the few remaining, solvent investment houses and the conversation drifted to social media.


