Marketing Mojo With Stephanie Fierman

Wow, Chuck E. Cheese has a problem.

The Wall Street Journal ran a half-page story in Section A yesterday that would cause any parent to run for the hills.  While CEC describes itself as a place “where a kid can be a kid,” and the cover of its 2007 Annual Report boasts “The Evolution of Fun,” it appears that the actual stores have become a nexus of bad behavior and danger.  Police all over the U.S. have been dealing with fights, guests carrying weapons and boozed-up brawls.

When a public official describes his local Chuck E. Cheese as “something out of a Quentin Tarantino film,” you have a serious problem.  The picture at right shows the CEC in said politician’s Milwaukee neighborhood - with an armed guard out front.

A simple glance at Google tells the Web 2.0 tale.  Of 9 front-page search results for “Chuck E. Cheese,” 5 are negative.  Of 10 front-page results for “McDonalds,” 0 are negative.

So where is the crisis management and what is the company doing about this problem?  While the company’s head of marketing describes the fights and problems as “atypical,” the risk to a corporation is not always volume-based.  Only one child or parent needs to die in one of these melees for CEC to get sued into the ether. 

Not only is (a) taking aggressive action and then (b) broadly communicating your plan the “right thing to do,” it ultimately protects the bottom line and shareholder value.  Take the saddest, most base scenario: if the company gets sued over a child’s death, it will be in far better stead with the court if it can show an active, consistent and good-faith effort to address this problem.  Such a good-faith effort could very well include suffering a short-term revenue hit by closing the most troubled locations in the near 500-location chain.  And continuing to serve alcohol in most stores is a recipe for disaster.  What percentage of revenue coming from alcohol sales - at children’s birthday parties - is worth a legal disaster that effectively cripples the company?

I frequently refer to the Tylenol poisonings in 1982 and J&J’s decision to pull all U.S. product off the shelves even after the company had been determined to have no involvement in the tragedy.  This may well be the best example of a company taking the long view in memory.

There is a range of choices CEC can take.  At the lower end of the range, management needs to take action in its own backyard to resolve these issues.  At the higher end, welcome Alderman Zielinski in as a valued advisor.  Hold a press conference with him in Milwaukee where he ceremoniously padlocks his neighborhood location while you rightfully announce that no amount of money is worth putting people’s lives in danger.  Ask Zielinski to help you create a national “Having Fun Can Be Safe” campaign nationwide. 

Wherever CEC lands on this spectrum, it had better land quickly.  Or ol’ Chuck may be toast.

Chuck E. Cheese    

More than 25 years ago, Tylenol changed the “crisis management” business forever by taking decisive action to compromise profitability based on something that was not its fault.

In the fall of 1982, seven people in Chicago died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide.  A 12-year old girl was reportedly the first to die.  Panic ensued.  Police cars roved the streets in and around the Chicago area blasting warnings from PA systems.  When it was determined that the poisoned bottles had come from different factories, the possibility that Johnson & Johnson (Tylenol’s ultimate parent) was somehow to blame was decisively ruled out.  Officials came to believe that one or multiple criminals had instead removed bottles from stores, tampered with the contents and then surreptitiously returned the bottles to store shelves.

And yet, responsibility never entered into the decision-making process underway at J&J:  only public safety did.  The company stopped all Tylenol production and promotion.  It issued a national recall not after the episode was over, but while it was still very much underway.  The bottles returned to J&J as a result of the recall had a retail value of more than $100 million.  I shouldn’t say that J&J stopped all Tylenol promotion:  it paid for and issued new national advertising instructing individuals to avoid taking any products that contained Tylenol, and offering to reimburse anyone who sent in an existing bottle of Tylenol capsules.

Once both the crisis and J&J’s action plan were in full force, Tylenol’s market share dropped like a rock from 35% to 8%.  To be expected.  What was not expected was that share rebounded in less than one year:  a return widely credited to J&J’s immediate and decisive action to sacrifice its own well being for the health of - really - the entire country.   Since then, J&J’s response is widely considered to be the gold standard in crisis management.  Act now.  Ask later.

I cannot overemphasize how I feel today about J&J’s behavior that long-ago autumn when I was still a kid.  It made an impression that has lasted my entire career:  one that influences how I measure companies and my own conduct as a business executive to this very day. 

So when I see a company disregard such a lesson for no other reason than financial gain, I am not just nonplussed - I’m disgusted.

SFCA Inc. purchased the assets of Simplicity Inc., a baby bassinet manufacturer, earlier this year after Simplicity went out of business.  SFCA is an affiliate of the private equity firm, Blackstreet Capital.  Two weeks ago, fifteen retailers - including Target, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, Amazon and Kmart - halted the sale of certain Simplicity bassinets that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said could be hazardous to babies after two baby girls died (from strangulation in their bassinets).  The Wall Street Journal reported that Toys R Us were selling eight of the 66 models affected by the warning; the chain pulled the products anyway.  And all the retailers affected agreed to permit consumers to return the bassinets for a refund or store credit, regardless of how long ago the product had been purchased.  These retailers heeded the lessons learned from the shining example set by Johnson & Johnson.  Act now. 

SFCA, on the other hand, is doing nothing, holding fast to its claim that it bears no legal responsibility for the hazardous bassinets.  The USCPC couldn’t even issue a product recall, because SFCA would not cooperate.  Rick Locker, a lawyer representing SFCA has declared the company unwilling to recall  ”a product that it did not make and sell.”  The blog Daddy Types reports that - while SFCA may have hired Locker to assist with this matter - Locker is also paid as counsel for the Juvenile Product Manufacturers Association:  the lobbying organization that helps protect the makers of children’s products.  

Ironically, the JPMA’s website is currently heralding September as “Baby Safety Month.” In July, the association tooted its own horn for “reaffirm[ing] its commitment of safety.”  The communications contact on the July press release isn’t someone at a real PR or crisis management firm:  it’s a woman at Association Headquarters, Inc., an organization whose lone means of support is selling services to organizations such as… JPMA.  You can’t make this stuff up.

Henceforth, SFCA has taken a “Who, me?” approach to its products killing children.  The company claims that it might go out of business if it took all the offending bassinets back.  I find this particularly ironic and outdated in our Web 2.o world.  If SFCA came out on the Web and announced a recall (even though they were not legally responsible), the company’s future would be far more secure.  The company would be a hero.  Parents would rave and remember the company when they went shopping the next time.  They would tell one another, at a time in history when spreading the word is easier than ever.  Their marketing folks would get college and business school cases written. 

Isn’t this exactly what Tylenol did and exactly what happened as a result (in a decidedly Web 0.0 world)?  But then again, it’s not hard to imagine those meetings in 1982 where well-meaning lawyers warned that a recall could take down the company and J&J’s top management said, So be it.  We’re not going to stand by and let people die.  Short-sighted greed and bad lawyering are in full control at SFCA.  The drawbridge is up.  SFCA is not legally required to take back the affected bassinets, there are no mandatory standards for safety in the category and the USCPSC cannot bring legal charges against SFCA.

No matter.  There is a higher standard for working and living on this planet that J&J set and by which all corporations should live.  As an aside, I’ll say once again that it’s just good business: (a) the positive halo effect for J&J post-crisis was and still is phenomenal, and (b) not doing the right thing will get you in the end.  You can expect boycotts and bad press at minimum: perhaps a crazed parent manufacturing a terrible happening to take you down if you’re really unlucky.  Permanently disastrous online search results.  But aside from it being good business, it’s about acting human, like someone whose own child or grandchild was killed by your product.

There is no exception - and if there is, I haven’t heard about it and SFCA most definitely does not qualify.  This is capitalism run right into the ground, taking humanity and business ethics down with it.

SFCA  Simplicity bassinets   Blackstreet Capital  JPMA 
Johnson & Johnson 1982 Tylenol   Rick Locker  

The teenage jury is in: Abercrombie & Fitch’s cross-channel marketing/ hype machine leaves just about everyone else in the dust.  Launched in 1892, I suspect that former shoppers Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Amelia Earhart and Clark Gable would scarcely recognize the clothier whose soft-core porn advertising/experience that has turned the chain into a cultural icon (well, maybe Gable would feel at home…).

Since rebooting the brand in 1988, A&F has broken from the teen pack by courting controversy everywhere it goes.  Let us count the ways…

Because just about every retailer has a catalog and everyone’s catalog is free (ho-hum), A&F created a separate lifestyle magazine full of black-and-white photographs taken by Bruce Weber, the photographer best known for highlighting ”the beauty of youth in male nude photography” (as taken verbatim from his own website).   There were so many protests over A&F Quarterly (which the company sells - further stoking desire among teens)  that the company suspended publication for awhile; it’s hard to say whether it was the magalog’s porn star interviews or the b&w shots of Santa and Mrs. Santa Claus in flagrante that pushed thousands of parents and a few governors and attorneys general over the edge… who’s to say?

Such outrage, of course, only pushed the Quarterly to greater, more mythical heights, stoking the company’s good-but-bad-boy (emphasis on ”boy”) reputation.  Go online right now to witness the hysteria it generated in 2003. Totally un-cool Bill O’Reilly, a series of religious organizations and others called for boycotts, and articles concerned with “cultural decay” screamed out with headlines like “Abercrombie & Fitch Stops Selling Porn.“  Parental boycotts? Porn?  Thongs for pre-teens, according to Bill O’Reilly? [Don’t think too much about that one.]  All like catnip to your underage kitty.  Meee-ow!

A&F Quarterly has recently been reintroduced (in Europe, not the US) with a promise from the company that it would no longer be sold to individuals under the age of 18 and that there would be less of everything that made it hot in the first place.  Nevertheless, I wouldn’t expect any A&F articles on the virtues of abstinence anytime soon.

On the ground, it appears that the company used the Quarterly’s hiatus period to begin focusing on customer service and the stores.  A new CEO was brought in from Gucci which - at 46,000 feet - now boasts the largest luxury store in the world right here on New York’s Fifth Avenue.  Gucci knows how to push the rags.  The CEO beefed up store staffing and there are now greeters at the front of every store, in addition to at least one employee inside covering each sales section.  But what is A&F’s spin?  A&F hires male models as greeters, who may literally be standing out on the sideway, stirring up - whatever.  The company further inflates the aspiration by “casting” for such greeters on its website, where the pages pulsate with club music accompanying a video of store events where the models are decidedly half-naked and the customers are clearly under 18.  If you are interested in becoming a model for A&F, you’re asked for a photo, your height, your weight… and the name of the mall nearest you.   ‘Cuz you may be pretty, but don’t ever forget why you’re here.

A&F’s been knocking around in my head for some time, but the impetus for this post was an experience this past Labor Day weekend.  Marketing Mojo was merrily cruising down NYC’s Fifth Avenue until running headlong into a case of gridlock at 57th Street.  What could it be?  Celebrities (pretty typical in these here parts…)?  No, it was a huge mass of people standing in front of A&F’s flagship store, waiting to get in and taking pictures of what definitely seemed to be a highlight of their day.  There were two beautiful young male models standing at the door controlling entry, and a line of people behind a velvet rope that snaked around the corner.  A velvet rope.  2008’s version of Studio 54/Limelight/China Club (all of which the Mojo’s under-18 friends snuck into) is… Abercrombie & Fitch. 

There is no question that A&F has made some wrong moves, particularly in the area of diversity.  Several years ago, the company made t-shirts that it considered fun and tongue-in-cheek.  Just about everyone else, including many college student organizations, considered them racist.  And in 2004, the company settled a $50 million class action lawsuit brought by former employees who claimed that the company was happy to hire African-Americans, Asians, Filipinos and other minorities… as long as they worked in the stores’ stockrooms and not out on the selling floor.   

Ergo, the stupid, screwed up (and illegal) side of presenting the ”Caucasian, football-looking, blonde-hair, blue-eyed, skinny, tall male” as everyone’s ideal.  

Fast forward to 2008, and the company is making progress.  Today, the company claims that minorities make up 32% of its sales staff.  It also has a  huge “Diversity” section on its website.  Of course this is A&F, so the section plays a video loop that features Asians, Latinos and African-Americans - all of whom are gorgeous and (most of whom are) in some state of undress.  The company can’t give up everything!

[Nota bene: An employee recently claimed that A&F has simply shifted its discriminatory ways toward not hiring ”ugly” people, with the company’s ”hierarchy of hotness” dictating just about everything.  And not hiring unattractive people (across all ethnic groups) is very hard to outlaw, according to a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs in the original 2004 case.] 

Based on 20 years of business experience, the Mojo has absolutely no doubt that A&F’s lawyers and senior management are fully cognizant of what they’re doing, and believe that a nuisance lawsuit or two is worth preserving the highly profitable fantasy world they’ve created.  And by doing so, A&F taps into its target consumer’s impressionable zeitgeist like few others do - or have the nerve to do.
Abercrombie & Fitch  back to school shopping  clothing retail

I’ve written at least one post on corporate blogging before, but I gave them a little more thought this week.

This was because I ran a break-out group at this week’s CMO Club summit on PR 2.0, which I would loosely define as the new practices, policies and opportunities available to individuals and companies based on the digital innovations we all fondly call Web 2.0.

So I created a hand-out, which included such items such as how to track blogs, monitor Twitter tweets, figure out when to social(ly) network and so on.

One of the more active conversations focused on the topic of corporate blogs - notably, when should a company consider creating one? My top rules are that a corporation might consider a corporate blog when:

1. Two-way, honest conversations between senior management and both employees as well as consumers are already part of the company culture (think Sun and Stonyfield Farm)

2. Roles and responsibilities for the blog are clear and there is genuine commitment to (a) constant maintenance and (b) responding immediately (or at least promptly) to a problem

3. The company is prepared – both short-term and long-term – for what Kathy Sierra calls “the physics of passion.”

[NOTE: The famous corporate blogger Robert Scoble delivers the corporate blog manifesto here]

I guess I neglected what should be Rule #4: Your CEO isn’t a looney tune or, at minimum, far to colorful for public consumption.

Case in point: Dov Charney, Founder and CEO of American Apparel. Today’s WSJ includes an article on how American Apparel’s CFO has resigned after Charney called him “a complete loser” while sitting for a WSJ interview in March. Now that’s a bad performance appraisal!

In the past, Charney has gotten into hot water for engaging in completely inappropriate behavior during magazine interviews, having inappropriate (there’s that word again) encounters with company employee, hiring models from local strip bars, having scantily-clad employees serve him meals (at home), running around the office in his underwear and referring to women in ways that even he says he wouldn’t use with his mother.  His claim to fame (that, in my opinion, unfortunately outshines his philanthropy and US manufacturing-centric ethos) is that he’s been sued for sexual harassment more times than Joe Francis.

The photo is from an American Apparel “Apres Ski” advertisement. That’s Dov on the left.

It remains to be seen how he does once several quarters as a public company sinks in. In the meantime: no corporate blogs, please!

There is an article in today’s WSJ highlighting the difficulty of maintaining charitable giving in a challenging economic environment. This particular piece highlights Arpad Busson’s ARK, or Absolute Return For Kids, and its upcoming annual dinner. Tables sell for as much as $200,000 apiece and sold out several weeks in advance. Still, Busson is concerned.

He should be. A recent US-based study of 30,000 families indicated that a reduction in annual income leads to an equivalent or higher reduction in giving.

I’ve always been curious as to why non-profits don’t get more creative when it comes to holding events that could demonstrate the true value of every dollar donated: my thesis being that the rich will give no matter what (or certainly would not give less), and the average person would be inclined to give more if she could really see and feel what her contribution means to recipients.

The example I’d offer is one that I personally experienced several years ago when volunteering for an arts organization. This organization has intensely loyal grant recipients and a devoted community, but its fundraising efforts were/are challenged (particularly after 2001). This non-profit holds events of the standard variety: dinners, galas, etc.

But this non-profit creates unique, palpable value in that its grants are literally perceived as sustenance by its recipients. Artist after artist told me (along with a pro-bono brand strategy team I organized) that the money meant he could pay his rent on his studio for x number of months - so he could create something and sell it - or that the cash let her buy food that she could not have otherwise afforded. Many artists, in fact, mentioned that they used the grant to eat: often at McDonald’s, in order to make their dollars go further. These were not hoity-toidy “let’s-hold-a-dinner-at-the-Waldorf stories: they were tales of real life - human life - and the difference this non-profit was making for artists.

As a result, we made a somewhat unorthodox recommendation to the non-profit’s board: hold your next “gala” at a McDonald’s. Approach McDonald’s as a partner. Close down the biggest, nicest McD’s in Manhattan for one night and host a fanciful black-tie party there. Serve McDonald’s food: food that represented the true value the non-profit was delivering. Have artists/grant recipients tell the crowd what the extra money meant to them - and how intimately familiar they’d become with the dollar and extra value menus…

And we proposed, by the way, that - done right - this would be the “it” event of the season in New York.   The local news coverage alone would have been hugely valuable to raise the organization’s profile in a unique and intriguing way.

In other words: show the enormous impact every dollar makes. The following year? Hold the party at a big paint/art supply store - because in addition to food, we heard a lot of stories about how the money was the only way the artist could buy supplies.

This recommendation was not approved by the board - a little too avant-garde (and, in hindsight, not adequately pre-sold prior to the presentation!). But the idea is still as real as ever - the worse the economy, the more a non-profit must go out of its way to demonstrate value in a way that touches people:  whether they give $5 or $5 million.
”non profit””charitable giving””fundraising”

 Readers:  please check out my new blog at http://www.stephaniefiermanmarketingdaily.blogspot.com.

I can’t believe I haven’t written about Mona Shaw before, because she’s become a hero to frustrated consumers everywhere who must cope with companies that have a virtual monopoly on some corner of our lives, such as the providers of trash pick-up, energy, phone and cable service – companies that hold you practically hostage, because you have nowhere else to go.

I had my own experience with one of these companies in the past week – Time Warner Cable – and once again I was reminded that all the marketing in the universe cannot make up for one poorly-trained customer service representative who treats me like I just fell off the turnip truck.

The short version is that, for over a week, I had intermittent high-speed cable service. Do you understand? No Internet connection. I mean, didn’t I come out of the womb with an Internet connection? No? Inconceivable!

I spoke to many representatives. Those that treated me like an idiot made me mad – not at them, necessarily, but at Time Warner Cable. Then the second representative who had to come out in person restored my belief in humanity by fixing the problem, cleaning up after himself, validating my feelings of frustration and wishing me a good day.

Why do consumers have wild “mood swings” like this? How can one person in a call center destroy years of corporate spending and goodwill?
 
                         
It’s because it’s not about the product. It’s about a much deeper human need for respect, understanding and honesty.

So back to Mona “The Hammer” Shaw of Bristow, VA. Certainly Mona was reacting to lousy service from Comcast when she entered a local office and began bashing phones, keyboards and monitors with a hammer, but her words indicate that what really made her angry was how she and her husband were treated: “[Comcast] thought [that] just because we’re old enough to get Social Security that we lack both brains and backbone.” In other words, a little respect goes a long way. Tara Hunt writes a great post on this very topic, triggered by a recent experience she had with a rental car company.

What’s most interesting to me is that the traits Tara assigns to companies that make customers happy vs. those that make them crazy once again have nothing to do with product quality. In old direct marketing-speak, decent product execution is almost “hygiene,” and consumers do understand that a product or service may not work sometimes. No one takes a hammer to your phone because your product failed: they do so because (a) you put them in a corner with no choice, (b) you duped them (Mona and her husband waited two hours in Comcast’s local office only to be told that the person for whom they were waiting had left) and (c) you treated them poorly.

Companies in these one-choice industries are exactly the ones who have the opportunity to delight customers right into buying additional services. So why is the reality too often the opposite? And being treated poorly in the past will overwhelm a new-and-improved widget every time.

If CMOs and CEOs don’t include customer service metrics when they calculate marketing ROI, they’re missing a vital part of the success equation.

Please check out my new daily blog at http://www.stephaniefiermanmarketingdaily.blogspot.com, and consider subscribing for quick takes on news and trends of the day.

An article posted today on CNN is horrifying – but not surprising, at least not to readers of this blog.

Juicycampus.com is a well-trafficked online destination on the campuses of nearly 60 colleges in the US. A little digging reveals that a number of posts have been viewed “hundreds and even thousands” of times.

Juicycampus.com is a site where anyone can say anything about anyone anonymously, and they do. Boy do they ever. Racism, sexism, religious discrimination and homophobia run rampant on the site, as do specific anonymous accusations targeting individual students regarding their behavior in and out of class, their sexual habits, etc. A Loyola student openly threatened to shoot up the campus, encouraged by the site’s free-for-all environment. The site has proven so “poisonous” there have been calls to have it taken down.

Others have tried to take legal action. Two Yale Law students are pursuing autoAdmit.com – an online discussion forum for those applying to law school – for what they say are libelous comments added to the site in 2006 and 2007.

Good luck. Under U.S. law, sites generally bear no responsibility for what users post, and content is protected as free speech. Juicycampus.com goes so far as to direct users to free online services that cloak IP addresses, so one’s comments can never be tracked back. Its privacy policy explains that the site logs users’ IP addresses but does not associate them with specific posts. This policy is out of the mainstream but perfectly permissable and legal.

In other words: if you write a letter or sue – and therefore are willing to draw even more attention to a problematic situation than the original content did – a Court may be literally unable to force a site to reveal the identity of a poster even if it wanted to do so.

The article says that many schools consider the site to be “poisonous” and that students are worried about the effect the site might have on their job prospects. They should be. According to Execunet, 77% of recruiters use search engines to find out about job candidates, and 35% have eliminated a candidate based on information found on the web. And a useful working assumption is that – unless the content is removed from the site – it will be searchable (and findable) forever.

This topic gets Marketing Mojo worked up, as readers well know – particularly because there are things every person can do to proactively build his or her own “personal brand” reputation online. Doing so not only communicates your authentic story to the world, but – if negative content should appear – will act as a crucial counterpoint that, nurtured properly and over a long period of time, can and will prevail.

I was recently invited by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC.com) to write a piece on this topic. The article is available only to IABC members. An excerpt is available here, along with several other points of view on similar topics. Below is the article in its entirety, available outside the IABC only to Marketing Mojo readers.


BUILDING YOUR PERSONAL BRAND ONLINE
by Stephanie Fierman

Low Trust Sets The Stage
It would not surprise you to know that we are operating in a low-trust world, and that both companies and individual executives are vulnerable. In 2005, a worldwide Gallup poll found that 40% of people believe company leaders are “largely dishonest,” and a 2006 WatsonWyatt study says that only 56% of company employees believe their top management acts with honesty and integrity.

These are worrisome figures, given that senior executives worry a great deal about their companies’ reputations but may spend little time on their own. I, for one, am a highly-educated and successful Chief Marketing Officer, known for delivering stellar results for Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Time Warner and others. I figured my “rep” would take care of itself, and this non-strategy worked for nearly 20 years. Then an industry gossip blogger decided to make me his latest meal, and turned lies and innuendo into what became the top Google search results for my name. For months, I took what I thought was the high road and did nothing. Everyone who knew me said to ignore the Internet’s equivalent of “graffiti on a bathroom wall.” So I did. But when I began to get questions about this “graffiti,” I realized I was wrong.

The New High Road
The Internet has changed reputation management forever. Where information used to flow slowly and in one direction (that is, from “us” to “them”), we now live in an age where anyone with an Internet connection can post anything they like, and that information will millions of screens in an instant. And not only can truth be a mere afterthought, but the Google algorithm actually rewards popularity – so the more sensational the information, the better.

Changed rules means a changed game. Anyone with an interested constituency – whether it be shareholders, employers, competitors, an exclusive pre-school you’re just dying to get your toddler into or a even potential date – must take control of his or her own reputation online. Because if you’re not offering up honest, straight-forward information about yourself, you not only do yourself a disservice but you’re also depriving these audiences of an authentic picture of who you are and what you stand for. Speaking out IS “the new high road.”

10 Tips for Building Your Reputation Online
Like any blood sport, building your online reputation is a combination of offense and defense. Offense is the best way to go: build up content about yourself before you are put in a position to have to respond to negative and/or untrue information. Here are some key steps you can take now:

1. Monitor your online reputation. Create alerts at Google and Yahoo so the search engines will send you an email whenever new content has appeared that includes your name. Additionally, use RSS to sign up for subscriptions to sites that are most likely to mention you.

2. Create a blog (or a frequently updated and optimized website). Post to the blog religiously: at least once a week.

3. Videos get high search engine rankings. If you speak at an event, or can make a presentation, have it filmed and posted on YouTube. Make sure your name is part of the video’s title.

4. Ask allies and partners to post content about you on their own websites, and consider becoming a regular contributor to someone else’s website (e.g. an industry news site). Your byline will be picked up by the search engines.

5. Consider creating multiple sites if you have enough information to divide into several topics.

6. Maintain a friendly and frequent presence on industry blogs and message boards: you most certainly have something to add that will enrich the conversation. Plus, you are more likely to be welcomed into such a forum if there comes a time when you do wish to respond to something that’s been posted about you.

If inaccurate or troublesome information is posted to the Web and you or your representatives are free to respond (e.g. you are not in an SEC quiet period or your counsel advises restraint), here’s how:

7. Analyze the content and its source. Make a determination as to whether you feel the need to respond immediately or prefer to monitor the situation.

8. Build up content. Proactively create or add content to your own website and make sure it is search-engine-friendly: consumers are more likely to use search engines first in a crisis, before they go to your website for “your” side of the story.

9. Assuming you’ve maintained a positive presence on key blogs and message boards, these communities are likely to be open to listening to you. Post information there. Let others be your ambassadors.

10. Where possible and appropriate, post a notice that you are more than willing to attempt to resolve the crisis personally and without delay. Then try to take the first phase of the conversations offline.

Life (On The Internet) Is Unfair. Get Over It.
If any part of your brain is thinking (a) this won’t happen to me, and/or (b) it’s ludicrous to respond to malicious or false information I empathize, but can offer only my own experience – and those of the executives and companies I now advise on the art and science of Online Reputation Management.

It does happen, and your life will be infinitely more comfortable if you have already taken the simple steps toward creating your own authentic presence online. In a world where you are whatever comes up on the first page of Google, you’ve got to take charge – don’t leave the telling of your own story to any blogger, writer or media outlet having a slow news day.
reputation managementanonymous blog postsfirst amendment and the webjuicycampus.comchillingeffects.org

Without Snow Globe Innovations, Christmas Décor Will Be Flat

Adweek Not A Weekly Anymore

A New Ad Agency – Eager For Press – Blunders Fundamentally
There is a new agency in New York called Womankind that is promoting itself as a new idea: advertising created by women, for women. It’s not new, of course (paging Mary Lou Quinlan), but it’s getting its 15 minutes. And what does it do, to show that it is serious about “harness[ing] the power of female ad and marketing executives” to make difference? It chooses a man to be interviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

This made me want to slap my own forehead. Hard. There is nothing in the universe that would have kept me from putting a woman up for that interview. If all the female ad executives in the world were wiped out by some advertising plague, I’d have media-trained a homeless woman. Or used a female sock puppet. Or put a dress on a rock.

I would have to think twice about giving business to a shop who, in my opinion, just displayed such colossally poor (and easy to correct) judgment right out of the box! Not kidding.

Clinton Library To Get More Green

Sak’s Wealthy Clients Help It Buck The Trend
“The higher-end luxury price points have not seen a slowdown and we feel quite good about that consumer’s buying power at this point,” Saks Chief Executive Stephen Sadove said on Tuesday.

This is one of several interesting articles spawned by Saks’ prediction of increased sales in the 3Q and a prediction of better sales in 4Q06 vs. 4Q05. The key observation overall appears to be that the haves are getting more and the have-nots are slipping down, while the middle is getting squeezed.

High-end luxury retailers, targeting the truly affluent client (net worth of $1M-$10M) are still performing, as these are the customers immune to credit problems, housing woes and $3/gallon gas prices. But those in the middle who have been reaching up to “low end luxury” brands such as Coach for the last 5 years or so (consumers with annual incomes of $100,000 to $300,000) must now pull back and will shop at Wal-Mart instead – shopping closer to their needs than their wants.

TWO SPINS ON OUR CONVERSATION ABOUT ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT AND THE UNFETTERED NATURE OF THE WEB

Town Considers Criminalizing Online Harrassment After 13 Year Old Commits Suicide
A terrible, sad story about “Internet shaming” and the death of a 13 year old girl. Where are we going re. regulation on the Web? What responsibility, if any, do we believe that ISPs, social networks and other involved parties must take?

Bob Garfield’s Campaign Against Comcast Continues
“For people with anger issues, the internet is a cathartic godsend and/or lethal weapon.” “… all he needs to have, basically, is fingers and rage.”

Garfield’s ongoing campaign is funny to read, ha ha, and we all feel good about it when we agree with the attacker’s point of view. Then it happens to you personally, or your brand. What do we do?

bill clintonsaks fifth avenueinternet shamingcomcastmegan meier>

Check out the WGA’s YouTube video about the writers’ strike.  

A few observations:

 (1) Re. the actual reason for the strike… I think that media companies are going to have a hard time having it both ways. The video goes out of its way to make a point of this, just in case anyone has forgotten how much dough these same companies have claimed that new media content is worth.

(2) There were several articles this week claiming that the WGA members were beginning to win over the public.  How best to reach, first off, The Daily Show’s existing audience and, secondly, the millions of others who want to see something funny (and will listen to your message as a side bonus?).    Plus you don’t have the eternal recall problem of remembering whether that caveman ad was for Geico or Aflac… You’re the whole game!

The best marketing possible is authentic, endemic and real:  and the bar is only raised for social media efforts.   For me, this may be the most spot-on use of social media/YouTube/UGM. Huzzah!

(3) I have a blinding admiration for creative talent and this was just too good not to post.

In Part 1 of this series on growing and promoting brands online - that is, not just company brands but also your own - I mentioned that I’ve begun to consult and help others do just that. 

Here is a (my first ever) podcast that I did with “Buzz Marketing For Technology” blogger Paul Dunay about the importance of managing one’s own reputation online - check it out.   And thank you, Paul, for getting this important message out to your readers.

I’ve also copied most of a press release that was published last week below (the full release can be found here).  

Stephanie Fierman to Advise DIGO Clients on “Brand Self-Defense in The Digital Age”

DiMassimoGoldstein (NYC) beefs up ‘online brand advocacy’ offering by retaining the veteran marketer.

According to Fierman, “Max Kalehoff of Nielsen BuzzMetrics had it just right when he said that this is the age of ‘defensive branding.’  There’s so much a business can do to protect and defend its brand and reputation online, but most marketers still have no idea how to do this — either proactively, or reactively in a crisis.  Well I have  learned the hard way, and I’m looking forward to making it a lot easier for DiMassimoGoldstein’s clients.”Fierman refers to her own brand wake-up call, when she discovered that the top Google search results for “Stephanie Fierman” were anonymous lies and derogatory innuendo.  After months of “taking the high road and ignoring it,” Fierman started looking for answers.  What she’s learned, she now shares with other marketers who are anxious to hear from her.

This week, in addition to advising her growing client list, Fierman addressed the CMO Club in New York on the topic of online reputation management.

About DiMassimoGoldstein (DIGO):
DiMassimoGoldstein is a leading creative brand-building agency that partners with “B.R.A.V.E.” Marketers to manage brands that emerge from the din of the marketplace and the limitations of their categories. B.R.A.V.E. Marketers manage to be Be Real and Visionary Everywhere. We have  built our unique model doing just that for brands such as Comcast, Progressive, Gateway, Crunch Fitness, JetBlue, Clarisonic, Citibank, Starwood, GoSMILE, and Pfizer, among others. Visit us at http://www.digobrands.com/.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link. Stephanie Fierman https://profnet.prnewswire.com/Subscriber/ExpertProfile.aspx?ei=68343 

So, Gentle Reader… I’m asking:  what have you done to build your online brand today?anonymous blog postsprotected speechhow google works