All posts by Shannon M. Wilkinson

About Shannon M. Wilkinson

Shannon Wilkinson is the founder and CEO of Reputation Communications.

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Now that NBC has fired Donald Trump, do you find the 2016 presidential campaign more divisive than usual? It is. A few campaigns ago, two American political reporters coined a term for the new Internet-fueled political culture: The Freak Show. It explains much about what we’ve seen already.

“The Way to Win,” by Mark Halperin and John F. Harris, was published by Random House in 2006. It identifies the strategies and traits that create winners (and losers) in modern presidential campaigns. The book’s main focus is how the Bushes and Clintons held the White House for nearly a generation. “The Freak Show” is a major theme in the book. It refers to politics in the Internet age, including the rise of ideological extremism, personal attacks and smear campaigns. When they become mainstream news headlines after first surfacing online, they can derail candidates.

These excerpts from The Way to Win explain why The Freak Show now plays a major role in determining who wins Presidential elections:

The Freak Show is about the fundamental changes in media and politics that have converged to tear down old restraints in campaigns and public debates.

The Freak Show…elevates the personal and the negative over an impartial appraisal of an allegation’s relevance in determining a person’s qualifications for the office. The Freak Show’s incentives favor attack over restraint and sensation over substance. The pervasiveness of these incentives is something that a president or serious presidential candidate faces every single day.

In the past, Old Media tended to sift and suppress the angriest and most sensational elements of politics… In the current generation…the extreme and eccentric voices who have always populated the margins of politics now reside, with money and fame as rewards, at the center.

The political opposition and the media (both Old and New) are filled with men and women who prosper by doing damage to personal reputations. No candidate can be considered serious without an understanding of Freak Show incentives and a strategy for dealing with them.

According to Halperin and Harris, Freak Show politics present a huge threat to any politician hoping to keep control of the narrative of his – or her – life story.  When you lose that, they say, you lose the election. As longtime political insiders, they should know. Mark Halperin is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics. John F. Harris, the editor in chief of Politico, wrote the best-selling biography of Bill Clinton, The Survivor.

 
 
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Social media is an important platform for 2016 Presidential candidates. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram matter because they are where 18-24 year olds are getting their news – and communicating with their friends. Women are big social media users, too. Getting them to the polls will impact who wins the election.

In Hillary’s Race For 2016: Turning Followers Into Votes, on Forbes.com, I examine which candidates are winning on social media. Here are five reasons why Hillary is in the lead:

1.She has the most control over her online image: if anyone enters a Google search for “Hillary Clinton,” much of the first two pages of results will be sites she manages. Her digital assets include:

2. Facebook. She has almost one million likes on Facebook, where women aged 18 to 29 are the majority of users.

3. Twitter. Hillary has almost 4 million followers on Twitter; Jeb Bush just over 250,000. 37% of female Internet users between the ages of 18-29 use Twitter.

4. Instagram. Instagram is the most popular social media platform for people in their 20s.

5. She has an Official Hillary 2016 Playlist on Spotify – a collection of upbeat, inspiring songs to accompany her campaign. They can be widely shared by followers on their Facebook and Twitter feeds.

This doesn’t mean the other candidates lack digital assets (Donald Trump’s substantial media footprint includes almost 2 million Facebook likes).  It just illustrates the importance of social media currency in the 2016 election…and elsewhere in politics.

This post includes excerpts from an essay first published by Forbes.com on June 22, 2015. That article has been shared over 14,000 times on Facebook.

 
 
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social media reputation risks

On April 2, The Wall Street Journal published an interview with me: “CEOs Face Reputation Pitfalls If They Avoid Social Media.” It focuses on the dangers social media poses to executives, and on the reasons mistakes seem to happen so often.

The article is behind the newspaper’s pay wall, but you can read the full text here.

I would like to elaborate on some of the important points the interview touches on. Social media can be an attractive way of engaging with your consumers and the broader public, but it can easily turn into a reputation headache. No executive should have a Twitter account – or any presence on social media – unless she or he has a very clear strategy and measurable goals. And for executives in a regulated industry, or that have already been the target of negative publicity, our advice is to stay off.

Your Presence on Social Media May Not be Worth the Exposure

Why? Unless being active on social media serves a specific objective, it isn’t worth the exposure.

In some cases, social media can be a very effective tool. If the public strongly identifies the CEO with the brand, that CEO can use social media to build the audience for the brand. Elon Musk is a good example. He is Tesla (and everything else his company does). Mary Barra is on Twitter and uses it well. Social media is also often a good match for senior execs in advertising, media, fashion and transportation.

On the other hand, Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, is not on Twitter. But Starbucks itself is, and has over seven million followers. Howard Schultz gets plenty of media exposure already. If he had a Twitter account there is a chance he may get too much attention…and attention that would detract from the Starbucks brand.

Social Media Tips for High-Profile Leaders

If you are a high-profile leader in any industry – or organization – and have not yet adopted social media but are thinking about it, consider taking these steps:

Study the social media landscape, paying special attention to what your peers are doing. Who is doing it well? Who is not? Who is staying away entirely?

Identify what you hope to achieve. Consider how it could impact your organization and its brand. Who will manage your account?

Mistakes do happen. How will you respond to a crisis? Are the benefits worth the possibility of a crisis? An example of one: 500 Twitter followers lampooning your last tweet…and then protesting your salary and recent layoffs at your firm.

The golden rule for social media is to stay neutral. If you want a presence but don’t want to create waves, post about topics that are safe. Avoid stating opinions that aren’t in line with your organization’s brand. That will help you avoid joining the list of executives whose social media gaffes have made headlines.

 
 
Crisis Management, ,
Social activism impacting reputations

Risk Management has published “The New Reputation Risks: What You Need to Know for 2015,” an article explaining trends I expect to see play out in 2015.

Risk Management is the leading journal for risk managers, and I wrote this piece to help that audience anticipate changes in the risk management landscape—specifically, in the area of reputation risk. It includes our predictions for the biggest potential reputation-related crises in 2015, as well as a look at the current shape of the reputation management industry.

 
 
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Korea Air

Earlier this month, Cho Hyun-ah, the daughter of Korean Air’s CEO and an executive at the airline, caused an international social media firestorm. She berated the crew of a Korean Air flight for serving macadamia nuts incorrectly, then forced the pilot to return to the gate while taxiing out of JFK. Her behavior sparked international headlines. Extensive analyses about the reputational fallout on Korean Air and her father’s business empire followed.

The Wall Street Journal’s “Crisis of the Week” column weighed in and invited me to comment.  (I suggested that Cho Hyun-ah step out of the public eye for a period of time. When she makes a new start, she is in an optimum position to use her access to Korea’s wealth, power and influential as a platform for helping the less fortunate.)

Reputation Risk Isn’t New to Business…But Has Taken a More Prominent Role

Reputation risk isn’t new to business. But over the past two decades it has taken a more prominent role in the business world. The Internet, and social media in particular, has introduced a new level of transparency to business operations and culture, and a new level of empowerment to consumers.

If one employee makes a misstatement on social media, and it gains viral momentum in the community at large, it can be a crisis for the company. When that employee is the daughter or son of the company’s owner, it can become a defining one.

 
 
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Crisis management

Every day, it seems, another major American brand experiences a crisis. Despite a large and experienced  industry of experts that fix them, they don’t seem to be going away. Last fall the CEO of Microsoft became one of many corporate leaders to unwittingly create one.

Why are so many CEOs stumbling in the diversity department? The problem often starts internally. Statements and actions by CEOs and other leaders portray them as out of touch with the people their companies target as consumers. Outrage ignites online, goes viral, and then lands on prime-time news. CEOs and boards are surprised over the impact of their actions or statements. They are often puzzled as to why a backlash occurred at all.

If you are a CEO, there are several steps you can take to ensure you don’t become the next target of online backlash. The first is to understand why these crises are happening so often and what they share in common.

My recent Forbes.com piece,  The Most Successful CEOs Embrace Customer Diversity, sheds light on the problem. How else can CEOs incorporate a more well-balanced blend of diversity within their corporate cultures? Conduct a search for #diversity and you will find plenty of suggestions.

 
 
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Pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has been in the news recently. It is investigating whether its international affiliates may have made improper payments to doctors. But thanks to some excellent crisis management, headlines are focusing on how Sanofi is handling the issue instead of on possible wrongdoings.

I contributed to this piece, published today on The Wall Street Journal’s website, that examines Sanofi’s response in more detail. Other major pharmas, including Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, have faced similar issues. Sanofi, however, has distinguished itself with a proactive approach to reputation management.

These situations serve not only as examples of how crises unfold in the Internet age. They also illustrate a type of problem that can be difficult to avoid in a global economy: in other countries, payments we would consider bribes are seen as simply a cost of doing business. International industry has not found a way to resolve those cultural dissonances…but Sanofi has demonstrated one way to manage the crises they produce.

 
 
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Reputation Communications

The explosive growth of the Internet has dramatically changed the demands of reputation management. The manipulation of search engine results—what used to be considered the central activity of ORM firms—has lost its utility as search engine algorithms have grown more sophisticated.

The National Cybersecurity Institute Journal has published my new paper addressing this topic. “The New Demands of Online Reputation Management” provides an overview of the leading online reputational threats faced by companies in the United States, as well as an explanation how such events unfold, the motivations behind them, and how they can be protected against and resolved.