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Reputation Management
Google suggests- Gordon Brown Bigoted Woman
April 29, 2010 | 
Author 
When I began my Gordon Brown post yesterday and typed ‘Gordon Brown’, Google, the ever helpful imp that it is, suggested “Gordon Brown bigoted woman”!!! The news had just broke and there it was picked up and urged by Google for all to see. In a matter of hours the Labour campaign is shaking under the onslaught of this gaffe. Questions are being raised about the character of the PM who is a week-away from election.
This is a great example of how biased Google can be when it comes to negative news. To illustrate the damning effect, here are two screen shots of both Google.com and Google.uk when you type ‘Gordon Brown’.
This is the kind of damage a negative news can do to your carefully built reputation. Still grabbing headlines and soaring on social networking sites, Gordon Brown will have to face Google’s suggestion horror for quite a few days and with elections a week away this can be a total disaster.
Now, this brings us to what it can do to affect companies that face serious negative issues. There is Google suggesting your worst nightmare to millions of people around the globe. In short, news in any form directly has an effect on Google’s suggested queries.
This is another reason why negative press always seem to have an effect on Google. It’s a vicious cycle and for now Gordon Brown will have to hope for something really big and positive probably in the debates today to stop this negative effect.
Gordon Brown – ‘Bigoted woman’ gaffe & Reputation management
Gordon Brown had to answer to 65-year-old Labour loyalist, Gillian Duffy, during his election campaign, and boy, did she have a thing or two to say about lost Labour glories!!
Wired still with the Sky News microphone, Brown unwittingly made a couple of comments that were promptly caught on tape and re-run all across the media ad nauseam. And this is what he said…
“That was a disaster – they should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? Ridiculous.”Asked what she had said, he replied: “Everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman.”
On a day when the Labour electioneers were hoping to talk policy, this incident took over. More so, when Ms Duffy was heard saying that Gordon Brown is a very nice man and that she has and will continue to vote for Labour.
So, what did Gordon Brown do for damage control?
- Dash off to Duffy’s house for a personal apology…speak to the media about it so…
“I am mortified by what has happened,” Brown added. “I have given her my sincere apologies. I misunderstood what she said. She has accepted that there was a misunderstanding, and she has accepted my apology. If you like, I am a penitent sinner.”
- Continue appearing in the media to show that he is not afraid to meet people after the incident and
- Have his wife give an interview showing her support to him
From a reputation management view – this was the only thing he could have done to save face. Though grinning from ear to ear may not have been the right expression to show while exiting Duffy’s house.
The words were chosen right and damage control was quick, but, Gordon Brown would look to see this die down quickly, and hope like hell more Labour loyalists don’t get disillusioned with this gaffe.
As for his PR team this is a lesson in the unthinkable happening! They have to remember that there are microphones, cameras and other gadgets out there to pick the most unimaginable things and throw it under the spotlight.
For politicians in particular a reputation crisis is always just around the corner, like the proverbial sword it’s just a matter of ‘when’!
So will Gillian Duffy bring down Gordon Brown? What’s your take?
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Shashi Tharoor’s Controversial Pandora and his Reputation
Regardless of his impeccable credentials as a diplomat and him being the emerging face of Indian politics, Shashi Tharoor was recently made to resign from his post of Minister of State for External Affairs, on the grounds of illegal use of his office. Being a writer, sportsman, politician and above all a top UN diplomat, Tharoor was in a soup with nothing much to prove his part clean.
Ousted by Congress, Tharoor might not have ever dreamt of such an exit with allegation from all sides including no support for him from his very own ruling party. Well, seems Tharoor failed to score when it came to build a good PR internally in his party, though he enjoys over 700,000 followers in Twitter. Alleged for being involved in the auction of the Kochi team in the IPL, Tharoor never thought in his scariest dream, that his love for Kerala will turn up to him in such a fashion.
Being an ardent twitterer Tharoor’s (@ShashiTharoor) message have irked his party for a couple of occasions in the past, he was the first minister who came out open via Twitter and tried to connect with the masses. If Mr Tharoor would have used his social networking and twittering skills which is something new to Indian politics, to clear the air about the alleged scandal, then he would not have landed in such a mess, and the damage would have been minimized. Tharoor’s flamboyant persona and cool attitude had enough supporters on twitter, but being a politician Tharoor needed to distinguish his private and public life, before flaunting his girlfriend openly. All this has raised several repercussion, with the big question, whether Shashi Tharoor is a mis-fit in the Indian political scenario?
Claiming innocence in Lok Sabha Tharoor said, “My conscience is clear and I know I have done nothing improper or unethical”
Whatever be the case, we at Reputation Management For.com strongly feel that Shashi Tharoor needs to make sure that he comes up strong over all these controversies and restructure his political reputation. He needs a well defined PR strategy in parliament to successfully make up for his lost glory.
Posted in Damage Limitation, National Reputation, Online PR, politicians, PR / Public Relations, Reputation Management, Reputation Online, RM Commentary | 
Tags: Indian politicians, Indian Politics, Online Reputation Management, politicians, politicians reputation management, PR / Public Relations, Reputation Management, Shashi Tharoor | 
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Goldman Sachs, time to defend their brand and reputation
The civil fraud charges has dented the reputation of the already bruised Goldman Sach Group, putting it into yet another PR loop, and this time it going to get worse. The group’s announcement about it’s revenue crossing way beyond $3.5 billion was a bit flamboyant
Though Goldman Sach has refuted the charges made by the SEC’s about selling off risky mortgage investments without intimating the buyers. It has already been said that this looking to be one of the most controversial of financial irregularities in the recent times. Law may take its own course, but it has to be seen how they are going to win back the lost confidence in public.
The company doesn’t have much time to seriously think about the difficult situation it is in now. The online news doing the rounds 24/7 and in the cyber age where information reaches faster, you cannot take that luxury to sit back and let it cool by itself. As of now unless proven guilty against the SEC’s fraud charges, company will maintain silence, but this will not be a good move. The silence might be mistaken to be hiding something. Goldman Sach needs to chalk out a strategic crisis management to be in place to shield it’s brand reputation, which it has taken years to build.
At Reputation Management For.com, we feel it is the right time for the right action – Goldman Sach should utilize this opportunity and sharpen it’s PR skills, and send out the message loud and clear about how sincere they are with investors.
Brand Reputation Management is imperative
Brand Reputation Management - it all starts with social websites. The content on Social websites are consumer generated, more people use social media to share their agony about a service or product. So watch out, the CGC (Consumer Generated Content) on social media may be different from your company’s policy, and if left unattended it will have a huge impact on your brand. So there is a need to track what is being said about your product.
We at Reputation Management For.com understand that brand is the foremost important thing for every company. When we talk about brand reputation management…
- It’s a strategic approach to reinstate your online image, to turn negative into positive that allow customers to vest faith in your brand, and
- A tactical approach with search engine optimization targeting keywords, to help businesses in the long run to give you an edge over others.
At times targeted keyword SEO also fail to get the desired results and then pushing down negative content can be quite challenging. Most successful online reputation manager sometimes find it hard to get rid of bad press despite pumping heavy finance. This is probably because of the nature of the content that sounds more like advising business owners on how to reform their business or brand. So dealing with negative content can be a nightmare.
Secondly, as the number of visitors on such social website increase it tends to rank high on search engines, unfortunately it will be above your official website. This results in the need for brand reputation management.
How do you go about this? Never think brand reputation will improve by itself. There are plenty of opportunities and you just have to pick the right ones. A few things you need to be doing.
- Company needs to be a Media Socialite, it needs to on top of the latest thats happening in the social media circles and update itself,
- Hands-on experience with technical blogs and internet marketing skills will add value to your initiative,
- Promoting your brand online through blogs, articles, discussion forums and press releases, is also a great way of letting your voice be heard, and
- Monitor your brand reputation by setting Google alerts, which is easy and free to keep track of your brand. The company can even start a parallel website to counter bad press and allegations if any.
Brand Reputation Management is all about the expertise in promoting your company’s brand and apply preventive tactics accordingly for the long-term. Brand reputation management, after all your business hinges on it.
So why outsource your reputation management
The cost to employ our services would normally cost the equivalent of hiring 1 content writer, but instead you get an experienced team to help guide and protect you from the pitfalls of the Internet. It is for this same reason that Heinz Backed Beans don’t set up their own supermarket like Tesco or Walmart, it just does not make practical sense. Often we have clients who have tried to handle reputation management in house only to end up making things much worse.
Reputation management should be treated in the same way as branding, you cant necessarily measure the results directly. In a recent listing of the world’s best valued brands by Business Week and Interbrand, the report reveals an astonishing impact and influence of brand equity on the market value of a company.
Branding is about the product or services, reputation management is about how you deliver on that promise, one element cannot work without the other. If you spend 1 million dollars on re branding then it it crucial that you also allow a budget to protect it through Online PR.
If you need help with reputation management and crisis marketing then please contact us directly in complete confidence.
Posted in Online PR, PR / Public Relations, Reputation Management, Reputation Online | Tags: Outsource, Reputation Management | No Comments »
Twitter Monetization & the Reputation Management Angle
Twitter monetization began officially on April 13th 2010 and finally the Ad-free service is looking at promoted tweets and their resonance among tweeple to be the deciding factor in value. So this means according to Biz Stone on his blog,
Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.
So deals have been made with Starbucks, Virgin America, Sony Pictures, Red Bull etc and their tweets will soon be featured as promoted tweets. Promoted Tweets end up right on top of a search pile so search for something like ‘coffee’ on twitter will take you to the promoted tweet by Starbucks right on top of the search result.
From what I see @Starbucks is certainly doing quite well with the resonance thing, with most promoted tweets being Re-tweeted by the hundreds. Mashable finds that Virgin America is capitalising on “Red hot Tweets” with their offers.
However its still only a day old and in a matter of time we could have a better picture as to how effective a Reputation Management Tool this can be in the future.
To tow the line of resonance of the promoted tweet and its effect on people… could Tiger Woods or Toyota actually use this as a feature for re-building reputation and PR?
Twitter has largely been based on the large amount of content that it has been highlighting through tweets. Content is clearly King for Twitter and for now promoted tweets only appear on top of searches of relevant searches and will remain there and not disappear into oblivion as new tweets come up.
So if Toyota were to go in for a promoted tweet offering free accessories for a Prius or even some useful information on the car call-back it can probably get more visibility being right on top of the search list. Interesting???
While copywriters and Twitter users conjure up the right phrases and set this new tool in motion, we here at Reputation Management For.com feel there could be something here for ORM.
Early days yet but Twitter’s got our attention for sure and this could very well be an avenue to explore for effective crisis management and PR that comes under the purview of Online Reputation Management.
Gordon Brown’s Reputation Management skills the need of the hour
With elections in the UK only a few weeks away, Reputation management and reputation campaigns have been the hottest buzz words doing the rounds. The speculation of a hung parliament this year might set off innovative reputation management tactics from both the ruling front and the opposition camps.
The election, which is the first to be faced by the Labour leader Gordon Brown as Prime Minister will be a hotly contested affair with many popular names including the opposition party leaders, David Cameron of the Conservatives and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats in the fray. Reputation management will play a key role in this election for Gordon Brown, as No.10 Downing Street has been abuzz with speculations of the alleged bullying tactics of the British PM for quite some time now.
It would mean that the PM and his party workers start working on their online reputation to mend the damage caused by negative comments and bad reviews, which have been influencing the search results. No politician can afford to see his name tagged to something unsavoury during the crucial phase of general elections. Politicians should rope in campaign managers as well to clean up the mess and to project their ratings in the online media.
Unlike PR , Reputation managemett takes its own time to show the results. The party should embrace Gordon Brown’s reputation as a man of principle who is undeterred by confrontation and willing to bring change, same for David Cameron. Voters are going to bank heavily on what they read online. Gordon Brown and his team has to work out a sure shot reputation management plan that would spell out their policies and preferences apart from making their stand clear in the murkier issues clouding their repute!
Greenpeace, iPad and Global Warming
Greenpeace, in its effort to “ensure the earth’s ability to nurture life in all its diversity” is now pinning on its efforts for some very important issues. By gunning for Nestle’s palm oil source and naming their popular product as Killer (Kitkat), Greenpeace has raised its voice for literally anything it feels is just non-earth-friendly.
Greenpeace is now aiming to highlight Apple’s ipad mobile devices which according to them rely on cloud computing and may contribute to global warming. It has also taken on other IT giants like Google, Facebook, MSN to be contributing their share towards critical climate-change. As of now it seems that Greenpeace has drawn a dotted line between the Apple’s ipad and global warming.
Greenpeace acknowledges the fact that if both the data centers and the telecommunication networks that are the two key components of the cloud continue to grow at current alarming rates, then by 2020 the electricity consumption would be half the current in the United States or more than France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined. So with the growing cloud-computing needs in preparation for the iPad and with Apple purchasing a data center in South Carolina which is much larger than its existing facilities, Greenpeace feels that it needs to ask some important questions.
“Apple is the master of promotion, and while we marvel at the sleek unpolluted design of the iPad, we need to think about where this is all leading and how like all good surfers we can make sure our environment stays clean and green.”
Greenpeace seems to be going for a double-dip by either picking the largest brands when they are getting an exposure in the market and thereby earning another green money or is it that as an original green company it is focusing on the world issues like global warming that raises environmental issues to public knowledge? From a reputation management point of view, we feel that Greenpeace need to come out clearly on social platform that it’s not after “Apple” or “iPad,” but want to debate something very important; Global Warming.
Reputation Management For All
Is online Reputation Management vital for ordinary people? I mean for people who don’t own a business or website and need not have to worry about their online reputation. How important it is for them to have reputation management?
Most of the time people are not bothered if it really makes any difference or affects them in their daily life. But to be frank, it makes a lot of difference to have a perfect online reputation especially if your are a professional in any core area. The reason is today potential employers/companies will search for you on internet to get a first hand information before they hire you. This means somebody is looking at your online presence.
One search and your profile on Myspace or Facebook appears, and thus the details. As expected you should be on Twitter by now and they will see how often you tweet. All this makes a fine preliminary package for anybody to get an overview about you. So the fact is, either take it or leave it, somebody is monitoring your online reputation.
Call it ego surfing, but most of the searches on Google and Yahoo is done for peoples’ name and their email addresses, sometime that includes even phone numbers.
Why such searches are done? To get an overview of the person.
And who does this kind of search? It can be anybody; someone who wants to date you, or a person wanting to partner you for business or as said above an employer.
This shows how important it is to have an online presence and positive reputation, just one click and there you have a whole lot of information.
If searching for your name returns negative results on the first page of the search engine, you may need reputation management. It will only help you have a clear online image and get you onto new ventures.