This morning, The New York Times published The Global Arbitrage of Online Work, a BitsBlog column with new survey findings from the two largest online staffing companies. It is sobering reading for anyone who faces competition by a multitude of capable workers around the world.
Mr. Hardy’s conclusion is that having a degree may be helpful, but having a reputation is more important to compete in the online marketplace. The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities to create a strong online brand for yourself and your skill set – whether you are independent or planning for your next career phase. Our guide to online reputation management has many tips for from creating a stronger online image. You can access it here.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has undertaken a campaign to restore his public image. The central issue the campaign is addressing—and needs to address of course—is last year’s infidelity. Schwarzenegger seems to be taking the best approach to that problem: owning it.
The release of his new memoir, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, suggests the sort of confession and personal reflection that is needed. But in a host of negative reviews the media has judged that attempt unsatisfactory. It “fails to achieve either the depth or the emotional impact that would make us care more deeply about this fascinating public figure,” according to the Washington Post’s Vernon Loeb.
Schwarzenegger’s reputation rehabilitation plan has fared better with the recent launch of his own eponymous political think tank at USC, a move that has helped rebrand him as “a global policy wonk and statesman dedicated to leading America into what he calls a new post-partisan era,” according to the Associated Press’ John Rogers. The American Psychological Association’s Dr. Bernard Luskin explains the relative success of this branch of his strategy to The Christian Science Monitor’s Gloria Goodale: “Arnold will persist with the same aggressive ruthlessness that he has demonstrated with the other obsessive passions in his life,” the American Psychological Association’s Dr. Bernard Luskin tells Ms. Goodale.
Arnold’s Future
There is no broad consensus on how effective Schwarzenegger’s efforts will finally be, but experts tell the Monitor that his comeback could succeed, but it probably won’t restore him to his previous stature. “The public may be willing to forget to some degree but will not forgive—so much as accept—as he attempts to remake himself,” says the APA’s Luskin. Echoing that sentiment, University of Texas, Arlington’s Ben Agger imagines that the former California governor “well be publicly redeemed if he seeks, not elective office, but talk-show host.”
Luskin and other analysts have likened him to Bill Clinton, but Schwarzenegger will need to recognize his own unique strengths and weaknesses to fulfill his goal. A Business Insider article by USC marketing professor Ira Kalb provides a great breakdown of the characteristics and history of his public image. He deftly protected his reputation against previous allegations, Kalb acknowledges, but last year’s scandal dealt it a major blow. “Time will tell if he is successful repairing his image,” Kalb says. “His admissions and apologies are two steps in the right direction, but this is the third time he has employed this approach in public, and it may take more time and a more aggressive charm offensive to pull it off on this go-round.” Schwarzenegger certainly doesn’t lack aggressiveness, but he’ll need the perfect balance of charm to win back the public’s trust and respect.
Though the uproar over replacement referees actually boosted television ratings, the swift end to the NFL referee lockout last week demonstrated how important integrity and quality is to the league and its millions of fans.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was at the center of the controversy, not only because he is the “most powerful man in sports,” but also because he has “made protecting certain aspects of the sport’s good name his consuming aim,” according to the New York Times’ Judy Battista. Elevating the league’s standards both on and off the field with moves like a strict personal conduct policy and heavy punishments for New Orleans’ ‘Bountygate,’ Goodell has bolstered the NFL’s excellent brand and helped it become “America’s premier sports league by sheer entertainment value, a demand for perfection, and a hard-earned reputation for integrity,” according to the Christian Science Monitor’s Patrik Jonsson.
Controversy showed the importance of referees to NFL’s integrity
The lockout controversy showed how important the referees are to that integrity – and how undervalued they had been from that standpoint. Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins offers a fascinating account of how officiating has been an integral part of American football since its beginnings, distinguishing it from the traditional “honor code” of British rugby. Given its fundamental role in the sport, its not surprising that less skilled officiating had a significant impact on the level of play.
Goodell and the NFL were criticized for coasting along on fan loyalty and replacements until they could negotiate a better contract with the referees. They didn’t appear to realize that loyalty is based on certain expectations, among them quality officiating. “For the NFL to lack integrity based on the replacement officials quickly became a big problem for them, because people expect perfection and the product to be seamless,” USC Sports Business Institute David Carter told the Alaska Dispatch. The regular officials sometimes make bad calls, too, but “the difference in those cases was that fans, players and coaches knew it was a mistake and did not think that the league had allowed incompetence to determine games in the name of a more favorable business deal,” according to the Times’ Battista.
Fan outrage & endangered NFL reputation was the turning point
The turning point was the controversial ending to last Monday’s Seahawks-Packers game, which sparked widespread outrage that registered on social media, in an ESPN fan poll, and even reached the White House, with President Obama calling the game-deciding call “terrible.” With its reputation clearly in danger, the NFL and the referees quickly returned to the negotiating table and hammered out a compromise. “No matter how money-driven fans think Roger Goodell and the owners are, they are human beings,” writes ESPN’s Darren Rovell. “They do have pride in what they do.”
Both sides were hoping that they would emerge from the lockout with the best deal, but it looks like each ended up putting their sport’s reputation ahead of getting exactly what they wanted. The deal showed that the NFL “is willing to share its prodigious wealth to protect the reputation of the game,” according to the Washington Post’s Tracee Hamilton, but she also highlights the referees’ agreement to let the league hire additional officials and fire underperforming ones. “This was a concession by the union, and an important one,” Hamilton says. “If the league wants to protect its image, and the officials want to be regarded as an integral part of the NFL, they have to be held to a high standard.” Goodell defended the league’s decisions in a letter to fans, but he also acknowledged that the lockout’s damage would require mending. “We always are going to have to work harder to make sure we get people’s trust and confidence in us,” he said.
Earlier this month Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Philip Roth published an unusual article on The New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog: “An Open Letter to Wikipedia.”
Dismayed by the online encyclopedia’s refusal to remove a “serious misstatement” suggesting that fellow novelist Anatole Broyard may have been the inspiration for his novel The Human Stain, Roth’s letter explained in detail how his friend Melvin Tumin was the actual inspiration. On the surface Roth appears simply to be correcting that misperception, but a closer look at the situation highlights Wikipedia’s distinct approach to reputation and authority—along with a few mistakes commonly made in attempts to manage an online reputation.
A simple mistake
Following the novel’s publication in 2000, critics at numerous respected publications pointed out similarities between The Human Stain’s protagonist and Broyard. “It was such a widely held notion, the Broyard connection was incorporated into the Wikipedia article on The Human Stain,” Andrew Lih writes in The Online Journalism Review. Lih notes that Roth denied the connection in a 2008 interview but wasn’t aware that the comparison was mentioned on Wikipedia until earlier this year. With help from his new biographer Blake Bailey, Roth tried to remove the reference, but Wikipedia’s editors rejected those attempts. “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” a Wikipedia administrator told Roth, “but we require secondary sources.”
Roth addressed that point directly—by publishing a letter about his inspiration for the book in The New Yorker. With the issue went live, he had the secondary source Wikipedia required and he inserted his account into The Human Stain’s entry—though his perspective went alongside rather than in place of the comparison he originally sought to erase. One can understand how Roth might view his actions as absurdly unnecessary, but according to Lih this incident demonstrates “a fundamental working process of Wikipedia, which depends on reliable (secondary) sources to vet and vouch for the information.”
Cory Doctorow delves further into that process in The Guardian, examining how Wikipedia necessarily employs a vastly different system than that of a traditional encyclopedia, including the “outsourcing” of authority to what its editors can agree are “reliable sources.” “It’s not perverse for Wikipedia to insist that authors must publish essays in reputable forums if they want to correct the record on their own work,” Doctorow writes. “It’s the only way a system like Wikipedia can work.”
Though not all subjects of Wikipedia have access to public platforms like The New Yorker to use to make corrections to what they view as erroneous entries, it is safe to say that Roth is not alone in experiencing acute – and understandable – frustration in trying to set things straight. His saga has not stopped there, but has continued to play out online. (We will not go into the exhaustive details here.)
For more insight into Wikipedia’s stringent rules, our posts to using Wikipedia as a reputation management tool are a useful resource.
Entrepreneur Elon Musk is a leader in space exploration and founder of the pioneering electric car company Tesla. Yesterday David Brooks explained why Musk represents the best aspect of capitalism. Brooks was inspired by Bloomberg tech writer Ashlee Vance, whose comprehensive profile of Musk was published a week ago.
Both articles provide insight into the myriad elements that influence how today’s visionaries are perceived. Musk’s public image has been built from such elements as views from friends and colleagues like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel and WebTV co-founder Bruce Leak, skeptical voices on the Tesla Death Watch blog, his frank acknowledgement of two divorces (one in which both he and his ex-spouse blogged about the divorce negotiations), unhappy employees who have filed lawsuits and blogged about Musk’s demanding CEO style (which some say compares to Steve Jobs’), the need to schedule 10 hours a week to dating, and his goal of establishing a colony on Mars within 15 years.
Musk is part of the new era of entrepreneurs using technology to lead the way into a better future. He is self-made and has been involved in launching successful ventures that have gone public, enabling him to fund his current undertakings. Articles on his personal and work life may not be on everyone’s reading list, but they may be the best information investors and entrepreneurs who hope to follow his lead in business can find.
Coco Rocha is one of only a few contemporary fashion models that has a very strong online brand—one of the few whose name is well known outside the fashion industry because of her social media strategy. This New York Times article examines advice she gives to young models on establishing a brand using her techniques. Early in a career, a key challenge is distinguishing yourself from your peers. Building a brand can be the answer, and social media is most often the most accessible platform to use.
Most any brand will benefit an emerging career. Ms. Rocha’s advice to a young model creating a Tumblr content: “I don’t care if it’s about cats, just make it the best cat Tumblr out there.” And any audience you can muster is a clear asset you can offer clients. Her savvy is very likely to extend her modeling career…because of the added value her large audience brings to the products she is hired to showcase.
The Republican National Convention kicks off at Florida’s Tampa Bay Times Forum today, a four-day extravaganza of brand and reputation management. A recent New York Times article looks at how the party plans to use the convention to “accomplish something a year of campaigning has failed to do: paint a full and revealing portrait of who Mitt Romney is.” Romney’s team will aim to champion his business career and religion and “overcome perceptions that Mr. Romney is stiff, aloof and distant,” according to the Times.
Branding Experts Weigh In
Embracing those two core facets of Romney’s professional and personal life—his private sector experience and devout Mormon faith—could go a long way toward portraying him as a well-qualified and compassionate candidate as opposed to “Romney the Unknowable.” In a Harvard Business Review blog post branding strategist Dorie Clark recently said that Romney’s “selection of Paul Ryan as his vice presidential running mate is, from a branding perspective, a masterstroke.” The decision “draws attention to Romney’s North Star: no one has ever, ever doubted his belief in the salutary power of business,” Clark explains, adding that “when your brand is in doubt, it pays to play to your strengths.” The convention will give Romney a chance to build on that move and cement his brand. “It needs to be credible and defensible, but also aspirational, something Americans and the media believe and can believe in,” says branding strategist Howard Breindel.
Romney’s team will need to tread carefully, though, when it comes to presentation. While they have told the Times that they are “conscious of trying to make it not seem grandiose” and have crafted designs “to convey warmth, approachability and openness,” the convention’s $2.5 million stage and its 13 massive video screens have already been mocked as “smoke and mirrors” and an attempt to “humanize the Romneybot.” If such criticism rings true, Romney’s own hand in the convention’s design could make him seem even more out of touch.
Social Media Key to Convention
Social media, on the other hand, is allowing Romney and his party to reach beyond the pageantry and connect more directly with the millions of Americans who will be following the convention—a strategy University of North Carolina journalism professor Daniel Keiss told the Associated Press will be “viewed as more credible and more authentic.” RNC organizers have teamed up with Google to create a “customized YouTube page that will carry both the convention livestream and key videos, but will also have space for the Twitter conversation around the convention and for social metrics indicating what people are talking about,” according to BuzzFeed. While a recent Pew Research poll found that Obama leads Romney when it comes to social media numbers, Republican digital strategist Vincent Harris points out that “more people are actually interacting with content on Mitt Romney’s page.” The RNC’s YouTube-based “Convention Without Walls” could capitalize on that engagement while also helping prevent the party from losing control of the conversation.
The Republican National Convention will be a critical moment in this year’s presidential race. To maximize its effect, the party is working to perfectly balance of pomp with authenticity, and carefully crafted messages with the unscripted social media. Unlike in past conventions, the elaborate video displays may prove to be less important than the multitude of smaller screens glowing in front of Americans across the country.
Prince Harry is the wit in a sea of English Breakfast tea, the tingling gin and tonic at lunchtime on a humid day. He has never tried to project an image of being anything but what he is: a rogue. The pictures capture the Prince Harry we know. More of him than we ever expected to see, but nothing, we expect, that will ruin his reputation. (Though it might reduce the number of his official duties….indefinitely.)
Reputation management is ultimately about being authentic. Prince Harry’s Las Vegas vacation may not be representative of Royal tradition, but he has never been traditional. Even Royals are human; Harry, especially so.
