Whatever you may think about the Kardashians, their reality TV show, social media dominance and growing presence on runways, commercial beauty and other products makes them a fascinating business story.
Where Would the Kardashians Be Without Kris Jenner?, a feature profile in The New York Times Magazine by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, tells the inside story about how Kris Jenner, the mother of the Kardashian children and Bruce Jenner’s former wife, built the family brand and fortune. That process began with hard work and sweat equity promoting Bruce Jenner’s early motivational speaking career.
In a world where businesses and high-visibility people go to great lengths to manage their reputational capital, Kris Jenner offers an almost unparalleled level of transparency for the world to discuss, debate or disdain. She has leveraged that transparency into a core element of her family’s brand. That’s why they are the focus of cultural conversations and icons of the new celebrity. You might not approve of her, but her drive, vision and strategic approach to brand building is something we can all learn from.
Sports reporter Britt McHenry was in the headlines last week after a video surfaced of her making harsh, verbally abusive comments to a tow truck company employee after her car had been towed away.
This week’s “Crisis of the Week” column in the Wall Street Journal sums up the incident well:
A video of the incident shows Ms. McHenry lashing into the employee, making fun of her appearance and education, and questioning her choice of employers. Ms. McHenry later apologized on Twitter, and ESPN responded by suspending Ms. McHenry for a week. Her comments to the tow-truck employee came days after she put a post on Facebook asking her followers to “take the high road and be nice to people.”
Discussion online and off continues about whether ESPN should have allowed her to return, and whether her apology was sufficient. Our take? Everyone makes mistakes. The best-intentioned of us have bad days (and even very bad days). Living with pressure is part of being in the public eye. Most public figures can recover from an incident such as this, but time—and Ms. McHenry’s thousands of fans—will decide how this rude tirade will impact her public image. That includes whether they want to continue watching her on ESPN.
Kylie Jenner, 17, is an American reality television personality, socialite, model and fashion designer. She is Kris Jenner’s daughter and the stepsister to Kim, Courtney, Khloe and Rob Kardashian. She been on the cover of Seventeen magazine, modeled for Sears and other brands, raised money for charity and has nine million Twitter followers.
Last week she launched the #kyliejennerchallenge on social media. It encouraged girls to give themselves fashionably puffy lips using a natural technique: blowing hard on a shot glass with a closed mouth. It backfired. Yes, there was backlash. But it increased her visibility without undermining her brand. From a reputation management point of view, she is in a prime position to make a real impact.
Here are five ways she can. Once a week:
1. Tweet about the rising number of Syrian refugees. The crisis has driven ten million people from their homes. Of those, 51% are female. Many are between 12 and 17, the age of most Kylie Jenner fans. Don’t let them be forgotten.
@Refugees
2. Spread the word about lost, missing and runaway children and teenagers who might be in serious danger. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has sharable facts about how communities can help autistic children from becoming lost, as well as a hotline runaways can call for help. (According to their statistics, one in six runaways in 2014 was likely a sex trafficking victim.)
@missingkids
3. Launch a challenge to pledge one million monthly donations of $10 to Doctors Without Borders, which serves citizens in countries facing the worst humanitarian crises. Right now they are sending eight teams to assist those affected by the earthquake in Nepal.
5. Support the Human Rights campaign for lesbian, gay and transgender rights. The violence facing transgender people is a national crisis.
@HRC
Kylie already leverages her celebrity to support philanthropic causes. As a supporter of The Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, she auctions off her used clothing on eBay and all profits go to it. She has helped raise serious money for several other organizations, including the Robin Hood Foundation. We say take the #KylieJennerChallenge to the next level—and keep it there for a year. The results will be big…and show the power of #truebeauty.
What are a few of the most common mistakes CEOs and top executives make that can lead to reputation damage to them and their organizations?
Ms. Wilkinson: Many CEOs…they don’t own a lot of real estate in their name online, and they have not been proactive in creating a strategy to publish information about them on the Internet. When that happens the world creates your profile online, or Internet bots do. Whatever information third parties publish about you–whether credible or not, whether quality or not–will fill out the top pages of the Google search in your name and you have no control over that. The longer that stays the more difficult it is to replace it with more relevant information.
Are these the same issues they were dealing with a few years ago? How has the reputation risk landscape changed?
Ms. Wilkinson: The reputation risk landscape has gone through three developments. The first, which CEOs noticed around 2005, was the first wave of proliferation of anonymous malicious commentary that appeared widely on the Internet and was often directed toward companies, toward CEOs. The second wave was the proliferation of consumer reviews online, particularly geared toward customer service and complaints. The third phase we’re in now is the lack of privacy online, the continual spills of confidential in-house memos and emails, and of course the hacking.
What are some best practices executives and organizations can take to make it less likely they will fall victim to reputation slip-ups?
Ms. Wilkinson: The first is to look at the company’s internal culture. A lot of negativity comes from employees so it’s a good time to look inside at the opportunities employees have, and to look at diversity and inclusion, particularly providing women with opportunities. This is really the hot seat CEOs face now. This is going to be an issue for every company—employees, consumers are looking at how equitable companies are at providing opportunities for women, minorities, the LGBT group.
What makes top executives susceptible to engaging on social media in a way that can cause them reputation headaches?
Ms. Wilkinson: Some lack an understanding of how many people use social media and how they use it. I think most CEOs don’t encounter issues because of what they say on social media, it’s what is said on social media in response to their actions, that is the bigger threat. They’re so scrutinized and it’s so easy for a comment to be taken out of context.
Business News Daily has published an in-depth guide to choosing a reputation management service.
Three important takeaways:
Whether you’re a business or an individual, it’s important to understand how reputation management services can help you, and to make sure you know what ORM companies can and can’t do and what makes a service trustworthy and effective.
While the majority of ORM providers offer the same basic services, every company is different. It’s important that you choose the best one for you and your business. And handling a reputation management issue quickly and tactfully may be more important than you realize.
Reputation management campaigns often use questionable black hat practices, but they fall into an ethical gray area and can ultimately do more harm to your brand than good. Make sure that the ORM service you choose avoids these tactics and is clear about what it can and cannot do for you.
Shannon Wilkinson, Reputation Communications’ founder and CEO, is a featured expert. Her advice:
“If you are a recent college graduate, you will be best served by a company experienced in removing inappropriate or outdated photographs and information on social media platforms,” Wilkinson said. “Doctors, dentists and attorneys, as well as storefront businesses like restaurants, find online reviews to be their biggest challenge. They might obtain best results using a review management firm.”
And “if you are a high-profile industry leader, VIP or have a rising presence in business, you face different issues and will want a firm that specializes in that sector,” Wilkinson added.
Billion Dollar Bully is a documentary film about Yelp that “examines the claims by business owners of extortion, review manipulation and review fabrication.”
That is the description posted on the filmmakers’s Kickstarter page, through which they are trying to raise the funds needed to finish the film.
We have discussed the ways in which Yelp and similar review sites can imperil your business’s reputation, and we’ve had quite a bit to say about how to protect against that possibility (essentially, through online reputation management). But Yelp can also be an extraordinary tool for a young business. Yelp is among the highest-ranked websites by search engines. So by creating a Yelp profile, a business immediately has a prominent presence online.
Yelp is an important component of online reputation management. That doesn’t mean it is immune to experiencing a reputation crisis itself: Shares of Yelp’s stock fell 4.7% after the release of the documentary’s trailer.
After enduring an online firestorm, Starbucks has stopped encouraging its baristas to write “Race Together” on coffee cups.
Starbucks is planning several steps as part of the “Race Together” initiative that promise to substantially benefit minority groups. But by leading with the slogan, the company has prompted heated criticism.
One issue that is increasingly incensing the online community is when consumers feel they are not represented within the senior-level staff of the brands they are loyal to. And with this campaign, Starbucks unfortunately highlighted that issue. As the New York Times’ Sydney Ember observed, “Many have pointed out that the company’s leadership is predominantly white, while many of its baristas are members of minorities.”
This controversy reinforces the importance of authenticity in public relations initiatives. We don’t doubt that CEO Howard Schultz’s heart is in the right place with this campaign. And we support his efforts to encourage discussion and the economic components of the campaign. But if he is going to associate the Starbucks brand with such a serious social issue, he should have preceded that slogan with action…including perhaps a seriously substantive movement to diversify Starbucks’s leadership.
Future Crimes exposes the ways criminals, corporations and countries are using new and emerging technologies against you – and how this makes you more vulnerable than you ever imagined.
Here are two excerpts that stand out:
If you don’t own and control your own online persona, it’s extremely easy for a criminal to aggregate the known information about you and use it for a wide variety of criminal activity, ranging from identity theft to espionage. Indeed, there are many such examples of this occurring, especially for high-profile individuals.
The more data you produce, the more organized crime is happy to consume. Many social media companies have been hacked, including LinkedIn (6.5 million accounts), Snapchat (4.6 million names and phone numbers), Google, Twitter and Yahoo. Transactional crime groups are responsible for a full 85% of those data breaches, and their goal is to extract the greatest amount of data possible , with the highest value in the cyber underground.
In 2013, the data broker Experian mistakenly sold the personal data of nearly two-thirds of all Americans to an organized crime group in Vietnam. The massive breach occurred because Experian failed to do due diligence.
Goodman concludes Future Crimes with an appendix of tips that will help readers avoid more than 85 percent of the digital threats that they face each day. (Turning off your computer at night is one.) Reading the book will help you understand why they are so important.
