Tag Archives: crisis

Crisis Management, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

According to Variety,  “As soon as the New York Times story about Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment settlements hit on April 1, Color of Change began to mobilize.

The nonprofit African-American civil rights group sent an email blast to its 1.2 million members, calling on them to help ramp up a campaign to pressure advertisers to pull money out of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”

The campaign was remarkably effective, hastening the withdrawals of more than 60 major advertisers from the top-rated hour in cable news.”

Clearly, social media is now the most powerful tool for activist groups to use on organizations whose behavior, they believe, merit boycotts.

In 2014 we experienced the power of hashtag activism: the response by activist group UltraViolet to the way the National Football League handled the Ray Rice domestic abuse scandal. In their criticism of the NFL’s actions, UltraViolet employed a telling combination of the online and off. During a recent game they hired an airplane to fly a banner over the stadium printed with the hashtag “#GoodellMustGo.”

With that banner, UltraViolet was able to very succinctly (and inexpensively) direct a tremendous number of viewers to an online community. They paired that effort with an online petition demanding that the NFL change its policies. Over 50,000 people signed it. And it worked.

As the Lululemon and other crises have shown, hashtag journalism can effect a change at the highest levels of corporate leadership.

How Corporate Leaders Can Navigate this Growing Movement

How can corporate leaders navigate this growing movement? Follow the conversations on social media as they continue to develop, including #hashtags on Twitter. Stay aware of the key issues concerning women. Those include employment opportunities, low minimum wages, the lack of women on boards and the glass ceiling so many face. If you’re a CEO, tuning in to these and related concerns will help you avoid becoming the focus of the next wave of hashtag protests (and nightly newscasts). It will also help ensure you avoid the type of online reputation crisis that can impact your brand as well as your company’s stock valuation.

 
 
Crisis Management, , , , , , ,
PR, buzz, gossip

Do you find yourself drawn into articles about the latest lurid scandal? If so, you’ve got plenty of company. It’s hard to avoid being caught by those headlines, especially when they involve powerful, wealthy and influential or connected individuals.

Those headlines have special meaning for online reputation management professionals. When we read the article, we see a slightly different story—one that is hiding underneath the story on the page.  There are several questions we always ask:

  • Is the story credible?
  • Is there a history of similar behavior or claims, and did they involve legal action against the accused?
  • Could there have been previous, unreported incidents? Does the accused have the clout or financial resources to prevent such information from going public?
  • If the allegations are proven correct, will the scandal threaten powerful institutions, families or organizations?

Predicting How the Scandal Will Play Out

After those initial questions, there are several actions we can take to predict how the scandal will play out. First, we evaluate how much information appears online about the participants (about the accused, then the accusers and any witnesses). Does a Google search produce less than a page of results? Are multiple entries on the first page over a year old? Does the online information about them communicate stability? Is there any information online about them at all? If not, there soon will be – and it won’t come from them.

Once those questions are answered we can assess if the tools of online reputation management will come into play. Can any damaging information be removed from the Internet or substantially displaced so it does not show up on the first two pages of Google results? This will be very difficult if there is a reported history of similar behavior—and especially if that history is backed up by court records, which are given high page ranking by Google. Investigative and feature coverage from well-respected media outlets is also ranked highly by Google and holds its place regardless of SEO and online reputation management efforts.

Attacking the Credibility of Watch Dogs

As a scandal begins to unfold we generally see attempts to attack the credibility of the accusers or watch dogs. History shows that strategy is an effective one—and it still is, if the accusations are false. It’s becoming less effective when there is a strong basis to the story. Technological advances allow investigators to find and reveal the truth, which may be found in digital photography, surveillance videos or texts that can be forensically extracted from hard drives and other instruments.

Such content can also be published online. When a scandal is shown to be based in truth, denials and cover-ups will more often than not increase online fallout. Facts and public opinion shared on highly ranked platforms like Twitter and Facebook will keep the story a highly ranked one. So we now see the targets of scandals—or at least those with the best advisors—working to manage public discussion through apology and atonement.