An outpouring of reactions to the news of Brangelina’s divorce has flooded the digital space. But it was Allie Jones’ cool assessment of Angelina Jolie’s well-planned public relations offensive — published in New York Magazine — that caught our attention.
Celebrity messaging has tremendous power to affect reputations. But Brad Pitt, Ms. Jolie’s husband and the focus of her messaging, has maintained an elegant silence in the face of this attack. That strategy takes restraint, but is often the winning card in a digital firestorm. And in the face of a reputational crisis, taking the high road can speak louder than words.
New York magazine’s cover story “Cosby: The Women” is drawing a broad and powerful response—from the Chicago Reader calling it “required reading” to Business Insider describing it as a “bombshell.” And it is certainly a powerful story—one that people have been trying to tell for over 40 years.
So why is it finally being told now? It seems to have been kicked off by comedian Hannibal Burress’ comment during a set. But there is of course much more at work. It has become much harder to conceal patterns of criminal behavior: money and power are no longer effective shields.
Cosby was for decades able to block attempts by his victims to go public. But that is impossible in this new age of transparency.
New York article interviewee (and Cosby victim) Tamara Green expresses the change most directly: “In 2005, Bill Cosby still had control of the media. In 2015, we have social media. We can’t be disappeared. It’s online and can never go away.”
If you want to learn how to become an Internet celebrity, please continue reading. If you don’t care about becoming a celebrity but want to learn more about how social media works, same thing. If you work in business, traditional media, the non-profit world or politics and your goal is to reach as many people as possible in the most persuasive, cost-effective way, New York Magazine has provided you with an essential resource.
“The Weird Wide World of Internet Celebrity,”New York‘s informative guide, is a step-by-step, how-they-did it view of how (mostly) ordinary people have used social media to deliver a message, attract huge audiences and sometimes monetize that visibility. The cover story features several different people who have become famous (and often well-paid) by using mostly free or low-cost Internet tools to entertain or educate vast audiences. Most are teenagers or in their 20s.
It is a definitive guide to how social media works in terms of publishing original content and attracting audiences. Equally important, it illustrates why millions of teenagers and other consumers have turned away from traditional media outlets and replaced them with the Internet and their smart phones.
Many people continue to be on a learning curve regarding how social media works, why it is so popular and what the social media culture responds most enthusiastically to. If you are one, you won’t be after digesting this useful guide.
Reputation management has always been a concern for prominent brands and individuals, but interest in ORM is much broader. As just predicted in The New Digital Age, most everyone with a significant online presence will find themselves at some point using one of its professionals.
Industry insiders anticipate that one of the first ORM firms, will soon go public. Other ORM firms have attracted $15 million in venture capital: investors are pouring into the field. There are increasing articles about ORM.
Companies ranging from PR agencies, reputation management companies and social media consultancies to law firms are acquiring or partnering with startups in this fast-growing sector. Others are rushing their own ORM services to market. What does this mean for consumers?
A Profitable Industry, Attracting Explosive Growth
All this excitement has encouraged a distorted view of what ORM really is. It is not simply deleting negative information and flooding the Internet with positive information. Unlike reputation management, ORM is less about controlling image perception than about managing something that is far harder to control: all the publicly accessible online information about an organization or individual. That encompasses blogs and message boards as well as the most established media platforms. And unlike public relations it is not about controlling the flow of information—a goal the Internet has made unattainable. Good ORM is about authenticity and facts.
ORM and Efforts to Hide Negative Online Content
ORM began with attempts to hide, suppress, erase, and otherwise miraculously remove negative information from the Internet. Whether with letters to webmasters or through the creation of multitudes of dummy sites, great effort led to sometimes questionable, “black hat” results. With the refinement of search engine algorithms and the tremendous growth in Internet usage, those simple strategies have become even less effective. Online information can’t be controlled. It needs to be managed.
The open nature of the Internet makes that management more essential as well as more difficult. Companies need to watch for leaks from well-placed employees in addition to negative consumer comments. Since anonymous and unregulated they may as easily come from a competitor as a frustrated consumer. The way information endures on the Internet presents special problems for individuals—it has been argued that every time an old piece of information appears in search results it has been republished. So individuals need to be aware of job and company descriptions from early in their career and excerpts from speeches that could be taken out of context. Outdated information is actually a bigger problem for people that don’t maintain an online presence.
ORM Will Become Niche-Based
Some ORM firms still provide the older strategies. But most have developed an approach that integrates public relations, SEO, and multimedia publishing. Different customers have different needs. As the marketplace becomes more familiar with ORM we predict that we’ll see the industry online become niche-based, with providers specializing in specific areas of expertise corresponding to a type of customer. Separate suites of services are already being offered to companies and individuals. But the needs of a recent college grad entering the workforce (or even a teenager entering college), with his or her Facebook-and Twitter-saturated online profile, differ considerably from those of doctors and dentists, who may be most concerned with patient comments on consumer review sites such as Yelp. A dentist in private practice, for instance, might be best served by an ORM practitioner who is familiar with the medical industry and is able to engage reviewers in online dialogues.
CEO’s, VIPS Need Specialized Services
The same is true for managing the online identity of CEO’s, VIPS and well-established professionals and industry leaders, which is what we specialize in. Not only is there an enormous amount of information about them online, they already have the LinkedIn, Wikipedia and other profiles that are essential aspects of the ORM toolkit. Managing that type of online image requires a different approach. High net worth individuals require different skills: they too are usually the subject of considerable online content, which must be managed while maintaining the maximum amount of privacy for security reasons.
These are just some examples of the many different types of consumers who are already using professional online reputation management services. Clearly, the future for the ORM industry is bright. To ensure it remains that way, we must establish a benchmark of ethics, build trustworthy resources to educate and assist consumers and be proactive in shaping a best-practices culture to ensure they are well-served.
