Posts Tagged ‘Online Reputation Management’

Lindsay Lohan is yet again in news. The 23-year-old actress has filed a lawsuit against E-Trade for $100 million over a Super Bowl ad featuring a “milkaholic” baby named Lindsay. The controversial TV ad features a baby boy apologizing to his girlfriend for not calling her because he was busy trading stocks on E-Trade. Lohan alleged E-trade for breaching of civil rights and use of her name, ‘Lindsay’ and characterization without payment or permission.

This is nothing new for the glam doll who has the habit of being in news for all the wrong reasons; starting from spending a day in jail, her relationship with Samantha Ronson, being shooed away by enraged people in the Paris Fashion Week, Lindsay has it all in her to invite controversy.

If we look back, Tracy Palmer, the Director of Consumer Advertising Sprint, made no fuss when her name was used for the girls character in the sprint ad. So doubts are afloat if this whole controversy by Lindsay is a publicity stunt. The allegations levied by her lawyer also seems inappropriate to stand up in the court.

“Many celebrities are known by one name, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, said in a statement to the New York Post . “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

The whole drama has done a world of good for E-trade, with thousands of people searching for the controversial commercial online. Wonder why LiLo seems so offended, or is it a mere frustration of hers.  She is in real need of a quality PR and some strategic celebrity reputation management to be in place to regain her lost image as a celebrity rather than as a troubled star.

We, at  Reputation Management For.com, feel that Lindsay has to retain the confidence of the public and should work towards getting back her stardom.  Who will want to sponsor a celebrity who may turn round and sue them later, had she not mentioned anything for the best part the ad would have gone unnoticed, now even we are writing about it now!

The electronics giant Sony on Monday came up with a message for it’s millions of PlayStation3 users not to use their games consoles. The reason for such a call was due to a glitch in the older ‘fat’ PlayStation3 which stopped the players to connect to the PlayStation network. The bug in the clock system led the consoles to act as if 2010 is a leap year messing up the system’s internal clock. The bug though is said to be more serious for the PS3, which holds a better reliability than the rival Xbox360 of Microsoft.

Being a global name, Sony came up strongly and tackled the situation smartly making sure this glitch won’t torment its reputation. Showing signs of how to deal with crisis management, the company came up with an announcement on it’s blog, that the problem with its PS3 clock system has been resolved and gamers can adjust the date manually or by Internet.

Meanwhile setting an example for those big companies who fail to handle such critical situation, Sony showed the smart way to take control of the issue before it spiral out. Sony has sold over 33.5m PS3’s worldwide, with Microsoft which has sold out about 40m Xbox 360’s and Nintendo,which has sold 67mWiis.

Though its not the first time a Japanese company is facing such a situation, earlier Toyota was also seen battling out to safeguard its brand value and reputation. But Sony true to its reputation about quality and customer service has dealt with the situation brilliantly and not letting their reputation stink.

Related Posts :

• Toyota- Problems deepening
• Toyota- Damage control mode
• Toyota, Honda- Industry Jinxed?

Crisis management is the new buzz word now, everybody from Celebrities, Politicians, Automobile companies to Theme parks are in dire need to salvage their reputation from getting tarnished online.  No organization wants to be in a situation that would stimulate bad press against them and cause disruption to their business.

Some companies that are hard hit recently were not able to handle crisis efficiently. Toyota is one company that is finding it difficult to stop the embroiling situation, the quality crisis refuses to die down for them. This clearly shows that the company is not good at handling crisis. The initial slow response, the half-minded recall, poor communication had adverse effect on the reputation of the company.

Managing crisis is the second best thing you can do for a successful business. To deal with crisis needs accurate and  decisive action. Take for example ‘A Gun manufacturing company loses a gun while on transit and before the public or the media ever comes to know about this the company is able to find it and put it back into the inventory‘. So rapid and precise action saved the company from getting a bad name.

Some of the ways to handle crisis is as follows:

• Identify the problems: The first step towards crisis management is to identify the problems in clear terms, so that you can sort it out easily.

• Collective decision: Fighting crisis can never be a one-man-show, a collective decision and team work is always better. Consider the relevant team and their decisions pertaining to the risk factor and go with the best option.

• Leadership: Lead from the front and talk with everybody in the team. Monitor the function required to minimize the crisis.

• Communicate: The most sought after action is to have continuous communication with the public and media. It is always good idea for the company to have their own portal or hub to update their view.

• Segregate issues: Take the best team out and let them work on every piece of the issue, break the issue until you identify the grey areas. Hire a reputation management company, which has standard practices to deal with crisis related issues.

• Encourage feedback: Read customer/client online reaction, this will help you know the correct pulse of the general public and help you overcome crisis.

• Analyze the problems:  So you know from where it took shape and who is responsible and what corrective measures can be taken to get rid of it.

• Learn: Take a cue from your last experience, this will help you mold a better strategy in future.  Always keep your last crisis experience in perspective and put in place tools so that your company is safe from similar crisis.

A possible strike is in waiting for British Airways as the second ballot results of its 13,000 cabin crew members is to be announced shortly. After the first strike called by the cabin crew members was luckily overruled by the High Court due to the busy Christmas season, seems this time a sure strike is in the offing from March 1.

With the BA cabin crew strike still looming on the UK travelers, things even got worse when the pilots union of Lufthansa started a strike today over worries of pay and job security. BA which lost over £400m is planning for a layoff for its present staff and a salary freeze this year in order to save £140m a year. It’s crunch time for BA with nothing less than an acid test ahead.

Things can’t get any worse for BA with the ongoing unrest among the cabin crew and the airline, at the same time comes the threatened walkout, seems like nothing is going well for BA. All this unrest is also damaging the reputation of the airline. Well, the extent of damage on BA is widely seen with the internal bickering proving out to be a PR disaster for the airline specially when BA is really struggling to survive. This is not the first time this inner conflicts is proving fatal for the airlines online reputation, in the past also few disgruntled employees of London Heathrow airport Terminal 5 aired their anger on Facebook,with rude comments about passengers.

Being a top airline company BA seems failing to make both the ends meet, the airline should give a thought on repairing its reputation and getting back the lost faith of its customers by putting into act the effective tools of reputation management. As the adage goes, A stitch in time saves nine!

The real question is how many people won’t be booking a flight with BA over the summer period with fear of the staff threatening about going on strike again. The staff have 2 choices, either get over it and realise in order for a business to survive then they need to streamline  or watch BA come to a disastrous end.  BA is a global company and needs to be able to compete on a global scale, it can’t if there is a lot of wastage, might be unfair but unfortunately a fact of life for open global market.

Related BA Posts

• BA – Glug Glug Glug
• BA – Is this strike all bad
• BA – What lies behind the strike
• BA – Legal action to save reputation

One of the problem with many review sites across the Internet is that the reviews are presented in a timeless zone. Although reviews are dated, it is easy to forget that a critical review is actually two years old rather than last month. As a result changes in quality are difficult to assess without careful analysis of the different reviews and their dates.

One way to solve this would be to introduce reputation trend graphs which show how quality ratings are varying over time. Sure it was bad two years, but all the recent reviews demonstrate that this place/service is much better now.  Since most review site collect metrics over time it would be easy to represent them in graphical form.  Great for consumers and great for the businesses themselves.

Alert, that’s the word, in today’s world of online reputation management.

At a time when your online reputation is so fragile and delicate that it can be handled and mishandled by anyone and everyone in the big bad world out there, it’s really important for you to keep alert and highly vigilant. Monitoring one’s own online reputation is thus accorded top priority by individuals and companies who have a public reputation worth managing and mismanaging as well.

Monitoring online reputation is in fact done with the help of some easy and useful online tools including google alerts and technorati among others. Let’s take a look at what these different tools do for us when in comes to monitoring online reputation:
Google Alerts: Setting google alerts is something that everyone who spends a considerable time online does, based on their interests and hobbies. Setting google alerts also helps you monitor your online reputation and at the same time keep track of what your rivals, competitors, peers and detractors are thinking or saying.
Technorati: The blogosphere has evolved to be a big thing. Lots of things are being thought and said there, by people who may or may not have something to do with you or your company. Technorati is one search engine that helps you keep track of what’s being written on blogs. If someone is bent on writing against you or your company, you can get to know it at the earliest through Technorati and then do the needful to repair the damages done. Technorati also helps you track photos, videos etc posted on blogs.
Trackur: Trackur is a new tool which helps you scour sites, blogs, video-hosting sites etc and thus track your name, company’s name or brand name. You can search for keywords and also filter searches to find keywords coupled with other words.
Monitor This: Monitor This, as a tool, lets you monitor results from 22 different search engines. Almost all the major search engines come under the scanner of Monitor This, a tool which is now widely used by people everywhere.
Keotag: Keotag makes available different search engines and helps you search for your keywords in the search engine(s) of your choice. Help is also rendered in subscribing to those results as an RSS feed or in saving them as OPML files.

With technology advancing so fast and with so many different tools coming to your aid, it’s as easy to salvage your online reputation as is for your adversary to mar it. Just keep alert, keep abreast of all these and much more in the offing and make it all tick as per your wishes. Your online reputation will be safe, unaffected and undamaged; this is our advice as experts in the field.

Van Morrison is furiously telling the world that his page was hacked and the claims, that he is a father at 64, is completely false. In this day and age a celebrity wanting to hold dear his/her privacy will find things quite difficult.

The Van Morrison website on Tuesday claimed he had become a dad to George Ivan Morrison III at the age of 64. Producer Gigi was named the mother and that the baby boy was the spitting image of his famous father.

“Totally false, its a hoax” say the new reports from Van, who lives with his wife who is the mother of his two children, today. To have hackers break into your website twice in two months and put out false news about you with the right amount of shock value is just what it takes to get even the most reclusive people come out and defend their reputation.

This story asks these questions – “Can you be a famous recluse these days?” Can a celebrity for reasons known only to them pull a Greta Garbo on the public these days? Can someone simply hack into your site and make shocking claims and force you back into the limelight? Granted Van Morrison was not a recluse, but the prospects of getting a JD Salinger out of his house and into the open is going to be the mother of all scoops, right?

Celebrities are lucky people, but unfortunately very vulnerable to attacks from hackers to paparazzi and from malicious web sites to extortion attempts from people looking to make quick money. People in their employment or trust can any day threaten to reveal their secrets to a tabloid. It’s always the proverbial sword over the head situation.

Celebrity reputation management is serious and round-the-clock work. Online reputation management for celebrities is double the trouble. Unlike the new breed of celebritieswho thrive on shock value and planned wardrobe malfunction just to be in the spotlight, celebrities who have cult status can find the world is a voyeuristic place these days.

A reclusive celebrity may just be a thing of the past, stuff of legends even!

What’s reputation management got to do with a guy who rarely goes out of his house, you may wonder. But, then like all great ideas that go ka-ching ka-ching and rakes in the money, this one is  so simple that you’re going to kick yourself for not having thought about it first.

Drum-rolls for Jason Sadler, a guy who wears T-shirts for a living and has made $85,000 this year doing just that. Jason wears T-shirts for all kinds of people – people like you and me, celebrities who have a new line of products to promote and even companies looking to get the word out about their products. He blogs about it, Tweets about it and even does live video streaming wearing the T-shirt with logos his clients have paid him to wear on YouTube.

Talk about having a light bulb moment and even as you say “why didn’t I think of that” Jason labours on for his clients who can get him to wear a T-shirt for $1 on Jan 1 and $2 for Jan 2 and so on till Dec 31 he gets paid $365. He is so busy that he plans to recruit an assistant in 2010 and expand to Europe and South America and is going to charge $2 for Jan 1 and $4 for Jan 2 and so on in 2010 with the – “two dudes in your shirt” marketing tag as he calls it.

Here’s a guy who will Tweet your grandmother’s birthday wishes wearing a T-shirt or inform the public of new line of products or even get your online reputation given a quick boost like Bill Cosby did with Jason’s help. 

Online reputation management has found for itself a new dude in Jason Sadler and his quirky idea and he works hard for his clients on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. I give a thumbs up for this great idea.

Neat acronym for the process of online reputation management:

• L = Listen
• E = Engage
• A = Address
• R = Respond
• N = Next…

Companies need to start with listening about what people are saying before they respond (aka that does not mean REACT)

Response needs to be thought through and considered and addresses the problem.

Step 1 – Listen…

Try Google Alert (www.google.com/alert) and subscribe for alerts for your company name or key product names. A good way to stay on top of discussions on a daily basis via email. You can then track those comments and remarks back to the source and if appropriate leave a comment yourself. This is free and easy to manage. You can move on to trackur or distilled for more coherent reporting tools.

(Keotag is another good free service – www.keotag.com)

Step 2 – Engage

Reach out to critics and engage with them. Most important, you have to ADDRESS the underlying issue. They have to feel that they have been HEARD and also UNDERSTOOD. You need to know what has happened and what has gone wrong and why. Some criticisms can be unfounded, but many times, criticism has due cause and can be resolved.

Step 3  - Address

Before you can respond to online conversations, you need to address the underlying problems or incidents within your organisation. Criticism offers a learning process, but it is wasted if you dont make use of it. A customer problem can be a one-off or can turn out to be a symptom of a much wider systemic problem that the company needs to work on.

Step 4 – Respond

It is important that the response carries some weight and not be a low level customer-service operative. It should carry executive weight, acknowledge, apologise and then correct . If you give a meaningful and authoritative response then your critic can become an evangelist.

Step 5 – Next…

Move onto next issue… or in other words restart the process. Too many marketing and reputation managers tend to work from crisis to crisis and do not develop a systematic approach to their online reputation management.  An iterative, patient process that builds up a real knowledge of the online enviroment, who’s talking and where and why allows you to shape and join important conversations rather than always being caught out by emerging threads.

Coda:

Executives within the organisation need to understand the brand and its message, but most importantly have a strong sympathy for the reputation. It needs to be important for them what people say about and experience with your company.

Consultancy BrandReputation research suggests as much as 84% of online users now turn to the net for reviews before making purchase decisions.  But few marketing executives are either aware of the fact or equipped to manage these reviews which are often negative or mis-informed.

• Consumer electronics 56%
• Home Furnishings 33%
• Apparel 21%
• White Goods 45%
• DIY & Garden 18%
• Entertainment Products 12%
• Sports Goods 9%
• Food 2%

As consumers become more savvy about using the Net, so they will increasingly turn to 3rd parties for advice rather than trusting the brand owner who is seen as dishonest and opaque.

Marketing executives need to rethink brand reputation and who constitutes the owners of the brand.  As Dr John Sullivan described it, “the new owners (of your brand) are a complicated mix of individuals who use a variety of communication channels to influence your brand without your knowledge, consent, or guidance.” As more consumers turn to reviewers, so their first experience of the brand comes through third hands, these opinion formers are now meaningful stakeholders in the brand, but few marketing executives actually pay them much attention.

It has been a truism of brand marketing that you talk to the heart rather than the head, but if the warm fuzy communications are taking place in an ocean of negativity, you will get no traction.