Just last week, I wrote a post in AGBeat in which I called out National Car Rental for deleting posts from their Facebook page.  More disturbing than the fact that the posts were deleted was their Facebook policy, which states that they reserve the right to remove content that “…disparages, slanders, criticizes, or maligns National.”  In essence, angry people were posting comments and people were deleting them. This is not just bad social media policy, it is bad communications and business policy to blatantly avoid dialogue with potentially unhappy customers/campers.  And it is a sign either or organizational dysfunction, disempowered social media staff or both.

And right on cue last week, the brand Chapstick got involved in what Advertising Week called both a “social media death spiral” as well as “war against their fans.”  Ouch.

Ad Week has a very good summary:

ChapStick posts weird image on Facebook of a woman, backside in the air, looking for her ChapStick behind a couch. Blogger is disgusted, blogs about it. Blogger tries to reply on Facebook too. ChapStick deletes her comments. Others object to the image. ChapStick deletes their comments. ChapStick’s ads with the line “Be heard at Facebook.com/ChapStick” start to look foolish. Peoplekeep commenting. ChapStick keeps deleting. People get angry. ChapStick gets worried. The image isn’t even that big of a deal—it’s ChapStick’s reaction to the criticism that galls. “What asses,” people say of ChapStick (get it?). People start commenting about why they can’t see their old comments. ChapStick can’t keep up with all the deleting. Comments are getting through, and they’re nasty. (People who aren’t even fans of the brand can comment nowadays, of course.) ChapStick for some weird reason doesn’t just delete the image, apologize, or even acknowledge the issue, beyond its infuriating deleting of comments. ChapStick apparently thinks the whole thing will just go away if it can silence enough of its “fans.” Why is ChapStick so stupid? It’s not a total mess, though.

Same channel, same self-inflicted wound.  A major brand asks people to “like” them, follow them, interact with them, adore them and then when things turn ugly (or just plain weird), the conversation goes out the window and the dialogue is censored.  (”Be my friend!  Except when I don’t want you criticizing me.”) And yes, both companies got busted, lost credibility with fans and were taken to the social media woodshed.

The real problem

These examples are not solely social media problems.  They are not solely communications and public relations problems.  They are organizational problems gone public. Any brand that wishes to be successful or even taken seriously should have a social media head/evangelist who is empowered to make good decisions using social media channels – and smart enough to do it.  But more importantly, this individual needs to be empowered to veto stupid behavior when it is suggested by people who don’t understand social media – like censoring comments and then stonewalling.  I am operating under the assumption that both National and Chapstick have competent heads of social media who were shouted down, outvoted or vetoed with this idiotic behavior.  Censoring where you have invited dialogue and you will get busted.

So operating under the assumption that the social media people or agencies are competent, both of these situations suggest that there are larger organizational problems within the brands.  You don’t put someone in charge of directing a bunch of engineers who is a librarian.  Nor do you counteract the (again, supposedly) good advice from your social media evangelist –  who knows what will happen.

My final point is best illustrated by a story that I love to tell.  When I was in the agency world, our firm was retained by a gentleman who was the head of a company who apparently had a crack cocaine problem. He was arrested a couple of times, but the most recent (when we were hired) was because he was caught (literally) with his pants down in his car with a prostitute and a crack pipe between them. I drew the short straw and flew into the city to meet with him.  In our first meeting, he railed about how the local newspapers were out to get him, how his good name was being defamed and said that he needed an agency to help him solve his “Google problem.”  Potential business partners were Googling the name of his company – that carried his name – and finding articles about his arrests and other embarrassing episodes.

In one of those “I wish that I had kept my mouth shut but had fun not doing so,” when Mr. Client was finished blaming the media, bloggers, his competitors and Google for his troubles, he asked me for my advice on how to solve his search engine optimization problems.  Most people would have salivated at the billable hours required to get his booking photo off the first page of Google.

Client:  ”So are you going to help me solve my Google problem?”

Me: “Mr. XYZ, I can’t help you solve your Google problem until someone helps you solve your drug problem.”

Despite my smart-ass remark, the comment seemed to cut through the clutter in this man’s mind.  We got hired.  He never paid us, but that should be in the “duh” category.

National Car Rental and Chapstick do not have “Facebook problems,” or “social media death spirals.”  They likely have organizational structures where the social media people who really know what to do are not empowered an in charge.  THAT is likely the real problem.

Mark

I have been doing some freelance work for AgentGenius/AGBeat run my my friend, Lani Rosales, and last week wrote and article about how NOT to do social media on Facebook.

According to Scott Monty of Ford, National Car Rental was deleting negative posts about their brand from their Facebook page.

Bad, bad, bad.  Whole article is here.

Happy reading.

Mark

In this morning’s Washington Post there is an article entitled “Tweets tweet our emotional status.”  This article is both mundane and presents and screamingly firm grasp of the obvious.

The premise of the article is as our moods change, so do the tone of our tweets.  Well, duh.  An excerpt:

Optimism is reborn with each new day and slowly erodes as we work, study and go about our quotidian affairs. Our mood lifts as we head home to friends, family, entertainment and beer. Our outlook tends to be sunnier on weekends. And speaking of sun, when it starts to pile up in the spring or disappear in the fall, that affects our mood, too.

Well, there’s some groundbreaking news.  We hate work, errands, and love to party.  I know very few people who, on their deathbeds would say “Gosh, I wish I had done just one more day at work…[cue EKG sound of flat-lining].

There are a couple of things that caught my eye in the article, which to be honest, is not really worth reading unless you have not make the connection that we tend to share our emotions with others – or are perhaps more likely to do so via social media.  But here’s something interesting:

A new study in the journal Science examined the contents of more than 500 million tweets sent in 84 countries over two years, looking for signs of good moods and bad. It found what a lot of us could tell by looking at our own lives.

Let me see if I get this straight:  it took people or Cornell University two years, 500 million tweets and 84 countries to prove that people have emotions that go up and down and are shared via Twitter?  Wow!  And if you are a Cornell alumni donor, I would think carefully about where your money is going before writing the next check.  I doubt that you are getting a new basketball arena any time soon.

But it was the last part of the article that caused me to spit out my (expensive) Starbucks coffee:

“This is a stone in the foundation of a new social science that is being built,” said Nicholas A. Christakis, a sociologist at Harvard University who was not involved in the research. “We’re in a similar place that we were in in the 17th century with the discovery of the telescope and microscope.”

Telescope.  Microscope.  17th century?  I suppose that sending a man to the moon, working on discovering a cure for cancer or eradicating such diseases as polio are way down on the list.

I think what chafes my saddle sores is that first, this is viewed as serious research rather than a firm grasp of the obvious, or second, a formerly great newspaper like the Washington Post found it newsworthy – in the A section, no less.

What’s next?  ”One billion dollar study from the University of Phoenix shows that giving someone the middle finger in traffic may be tied to annoyance?”

Yeah.  Annoyance like reading this steaming pile of  pseudo-journalism.

Mark

P.S. – I would normally state something here like “Image source:  Washington Post,”  but I am pretty sure they would kick my ass if they read this post.

For those three of you who used to read this blog regularly, you’ll know that I wrote a lot.  Three time or more here, and both other publications as well.  I also did For Immediate Release as a correspondent.  Then, it stopped.

But so did I.  The picture to the right tells the story of where I was on February 23, 2011 and September 24, 2011.  It was the journey that took me from a near-death experience to living every day like I were dying.

The details don’t matter a ton, but in February, I discovered that I had big time problems with my heart and

Before and After - and Minus 40 Pounds

underwent an emergency (read: next morning) angioplasty.  Three blocked arteries, one of which had been blocked for so long that the docs didn’t even try to fix it.  I escaped both a heart attack and bypass surgery by the skin of my teeth.

A lot of people said that I was the “luckiest man alive,” and it was true, but what I did not anticipate was the aftershock of coronary artery disease and the pnemonia that came after.  So I spent a lot of time in the fetal position sucking my thumb.  To be honest, it took me three months or so before I shook it off.

It was then that I decided that I could either take control of my health and live life or let circumstances be decided for me.  Forgive the slogan, but I chose life.

Over the summer, I started taking long walks in my neighborhood in West Virginia.  Those walks turned into hikes up and down our 1,500-foot elevation mountain.  The hikes then turned into short runs. The short runs turned into longer runs.  And into runs at home in DC, and not just in West Virginia.

Then (and there is no particular significance to this date), I really started running on July 30th.  Since that time, I have run a 5k, and 8k (the before and after picture above) and done about 102 miles.  Not a ton by others’ standards, but for an old, fat white guy, not bad.

I had to use all of my energy and focus on getting healthy;  to ensure that I would be around for a long time for my  children.  So I would not become a burden for my whole family.

Having done the 8k, I am now signed up for a 10k and plan to continue to 40-pound weight loss.  And now that I feel like I have things under control, I imagine that you’ll be hearing more from me in this space – and others.  I have more time and energy to focus.

That’s where I’ve been, but I think I’m back.

Mark

This is a repost of an entry that I wrote on year ago today.  The emotions are still as raw;  the sadness still as deep.

I am sitting in my nice, comfortable house as I compose this on September 11, 2010.  It troubles me that so many people seem to have forgotten the tragedy that befell our country nine years ago today.  They want to “move on.”  It’s “issue fatigue.”

Bullshit.

My memories of that day nine years ago are as clear as a bell.  I worked in Washington, DC at 1615 L Street, NW.  The part that is important about that is “16,” as in “1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”  I worked two blocks from the White House.

Like many people, I was glued to the television at work and saw the second tower hit.  I saw the both towers burning. My mind could not comprehend what was happening inside of the buildings as people opted to jump out of the windows.  When you choose certain death – a terrifying end to your life – and that is a better option than what is going on inside, it speaks to the unimaginable horror of being in the burning towers.

I remember the Pentagon in flames a mere three miles from my office.

I remember (when we were forced to evacuate Washington, DC) the Humvees and soldiers with assault rifles on many street corners.

I remember the stories of heroes who stayed with co-workers or even strangers to comfort them in what they knew was their impending death.

I remember the heroes of the Pentagon as ordinary people dashed inside a burning, crumbling building to save others.

And I remember Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

You see, the “16″ is important because of the proximity to the White House.  We will never know where the United Air Lines flight 73 , the airplane that was taken back by heroes, was headed.  But if it was the White House, who knows what would have happened to me and my colleagues.  We’ll never know, but the sacrifice of others on that plane made possible my not knowing.

I remember being in New York City a scant two weeks after the towers fell.  I remember putting my not one-year-old son in the stroller and walking to the area of what used to be the World Trade Center.

I remember the desperate pleas reaching out from hand-drawn signs in Penn Station, aching with the pictures of loved ones.  I remember the smell.  Of drywall.  Of fallen buildings.  Of death.

I remember a grieving and angered nation.  I remember wanting revenge.

I remember finally making it home from work late in the afternoon, picking up my baby boy and sobbing.  I was grieving for the others – just like me – who got dressed, went to the office and worked.  Normalcy.  And all they wanted was to come home to their loved ones.

I did.  They didn’t.

I remember.

Mark