 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
Late last week I flew United from San Francisco to London. As we got on the plane one of the other passengers gave a box of chocolates to the flight staff as an act of kindness and support for the awful week they’ve had. Nearly 300 stories have been published by the leading news orgs in the US and UK about the incident. Unsurprisingly, our analysis shows sentiment of the coverage is almost exclusively negative. Those stories have earned nearly 1 million shares on Facebook in aggregate. That’s a lot of unwanted exposure for the company. It surpassed United’s trouble with leggings from the previous week about four times over....
But to little old me, a sincere apology goes a long way. When I sense genuine remorse, it means a lot to me -- perhaps because it's so rare, at least in my experience. Combined with my nerdy affection for all things marketing, that sentiment applies to brand apologies, too. It's not so much that I think, "Wow, that means a lot to me," but more like, "Wow, that company really nailed saying, 'Sorry.'" So, who's done it best? We rounded up some of our favorite brand apologies to inspire you next time you make a mistake -- and need to admit your wrongdoing....
It’s a tricky time to be a food marketer. Consumers are scrutinizing more than ever to what goes into the foods they buy. And what constitutes “healthy” to consumers is in flux. The FDA recently announced that it will be calling out “added sugar” on nutrition labels in the future. It is estimated that 68% of processed foods contain added sugars. “It’s going to really surprise people who go to organic and whole foods stores, when they find that all this natural food they’ve been buying is full of added sugar,” said Barry Popkin, UNC professor and author of a study called, “Sweetening of the Global Diet. ”I heard that there are 61 different names for added sugar listed on food labels, which can make it hard for consumers to evaluate the amount of sugar in products they buy. The sneakiest trick to to have multiple sources of added sugar in one product, so that no one type of sugar shows up first on the ingredients panel....
Congratulations, US media! You’ve just covered your first press conference of an authoritarian leader with a deep disdain for your trade. Here are some tips from Russia.Vladimir Putin’s annual pressers are supposed to be the media event of the year. They are normally held in late December, around Western Christmas time (we Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas two weeks later and it’s not a big deal, unlike New Year’s Eve). Which probably explains why Putin’s pressers don’t get much coverage outside of Russia, except in a relatively narrow niche of Russia-watchers. Putin’s pressers are televised live across all Russian TV channels, attended by all kinds of media — federal news agencies, small local publications and foreign reporters based in Moscow — and are supposed to overshadow every other event in Russia or abroad. These things are carefully choreographed, typically last no less than four hours, and Putin always comes off as an omniscient and benevolent leader tending to a flock of unruly but adoring children. Given that Putin is probably a role model for Trump, it’s no surprise that he’s apparently taking a page from Putin’s playbook. I have some observations to share with my American colleagues. You’re in this for at least another four years, and you’ll be dealing with things Russian journalists have endured for almost two decades now. I’m talking about Putin here, but see if you can apply any of the below to your own leader....
Like our favorite celebrities, brands aren’t perfect. Bad PR is a part of life because people aren’t perfect and the companies they run follow suit. Recently New Balance became the first company to publicly back Donald Trump, a very divisive figure for reasons you would have to be sleeping under a rock to not know already. Priding themselves on being a brand that develops their products on American soil, New Balance saw Trump’s election as an opportunity for business growth and one that would bring more jobs to Americans. However, that is their opinion and not some universal truth. Politics is a tricky place for a brand to choose sides when there are so many issues that people take seriously. Thousands of sneakerheads were outraged at New Balance’s political stance. So outraged that they denounced their love for the brand all over social media by literally posting pictures of them throwing the sneakers away and burning them. Things really spiraled out of control when neo-nazis procclaimed the sneaker to be the official sneaker of white people. Yes, that really happened. Obviously publicly backing a divisive president-elect has some serious downsides with the public, so what do we do as consumers after our favorite brands choose to do something against our personal values?...
17 of the most offensive and dumb Twitter, Facebook and Instagram fails The Bankers Who Think ISIS Killings Are a Hoot Just last week, six HSBC bankers in Birmingham, England, were fired over re-enacting (and recording, and posting on Instagram) a mock ISIS beheading. One of the bank employees – the one who nabbed the coveted leading role of beheading victim – rocked an orange jumpsuit as he kneeled in front of his five colleagues, who did a lovely job as a supporting ensemble in black tracksuits and balaclavas. They were fired after the super-insensitive clip circulated online, of course. In their defense, the video was reportedly made during a work-sponsored team-building exercise, and you can only do so many trust falls before it becomes boring and, quite frankly, dangerous....
NEW YORK, Aug. 4, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- DEAR AMERICA... "Donald Trump lives, works, eats and employs people of all races and religions."... Part of the text of a paid news release run on PR Newswire by a Trump supporter. No problem with supporting your candidate, just fun to note a bit of unintended content. An edit by a PR pro might have helped.
It has been a tense spring in the realm of big-time newspaper consolidation. Back in April, Gannett, owner of more than 100 newspapers across the country, including the flagship USA Today, made a roughly $400 million takeover bid for the Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and several other titles. The intervening weeks have seen a great deal of maneuvering by Tribune Chairman Michael Ferro to rebuff the bid, an effort that advanced Thursday with the news that Gannett may be backing off its bid in light of “expectations” that Tribune shareholders would back management in a critical vote. [VIDEO: Tribune rejects Gannett’s bid again] Amid all this business, the Tribune lost its mind, in a press release. First, it renamed and rebranded itself: On June 20, we'll be tronc. Yep. tronc. pic.twitter.com/PvK8jtrQbp— Michael Zajakowski (@zajakowski) June 2, 2016 “Tronc” stands for “Tribune online content,” or, as this tronc press release renders it in smaller case: “tribune online content.” So obsessed is the new, rebranded company with the Web’s lower-case vibe that its press release starts various sentences that way. ...
Yesterday, Tribune Publishing, purveyor of news since 1847, changed its name to “tronc” (short for “Tribune Online Content.”) It’s now a “content curation and monetization company” — a company that makes money from content, what we used to call a media company. Today, I deconstruct the rest of its attempt to use techno-drivel to misdirect our attention from its problems. Crisis-tossed Tribune Publishing, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, and dozens of other papers, has suffered through a sale to a billionaire, a bankruptcy, a corporate split, newsroom turmoil, massive layoffs, and an unsolicited takeover offer. Now, as “tronc,” the company wants to be considered alongside Silicon Valley startups. (If this trend catches on, will the Boston Globe company become “hubstuff” and the New York Times “gray_lady”?) The tronc press release is a classic, because it reveals that when a media company wants to reinvent itself as a technology company, it drapes its press release in the same techno-drivel that tech companies use. Instead of meaningless media and corporate bullshit, we get meaningless, shiny Silicon Valley bullshit. It’s a transformation (you can tell because the release mentions “transform” or “transformation” six times).In the commentary below, I’ve added bold to indicate passives, meaningless superlatives, and especially, new-age jargon. I add commentary in brackets and commonsense translations below each section....
Burger King took out a full-page, open-letter-style ad in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune this morning, calling for a truce with McDonald's and suggesting they join forces to create a "McWhopper" burger.
But McDonald's is having none of it.Burger King's idea was to "get the world talking" about the Peace One Day charity, which is lobbying for September 21 to become an official Peace Day. Fernando Machado, the fast-food chain's senior vice president for global brand management, said it wasn't just a PR stunt and that BK was hoping McDonald's would agree to sell the hybrid burger September 21....
There are a few universal truths in online dating: most photos are carefully staged, most profiles are slightly puffed-up, and most people on them (and this is clearly fast-changing) are actually human.Until some unlucky Tinder users spotted Ava.
A company promoting the movie Ex Machina created a fake account, Ava, with a photo of the star of the movie. Ava is an AI in the film and presumably she wants to get down. Unsuspecting men and women swiped to make a match and Ava, in a cross between cheesy AI and Eliza, asked a few pertinent questions including “Have you ever been in love?” and “What makes you human?”
Normal users assumed they were talking to a human but they were actually talking to a bot. In the end, like the chatbots that now linger on near dead chat systems like AIM, Ava sent her suitors to an Instagram page where they found out that she was all a sham....
|
When last month’s “Communicator of the Year” can turn into this month’s PR disaster, there’s a lesson for any brand on the perils of flubbing a corporate apology. Any brand can go from hero to zero.
Much has been written in the last week about the missteps of United and its CEO. Given that it was PRWeek that so recently awarded Oscar Munoz as “Communicator of the Year”, I thought the PRWeek postmortem was particularly interesting:
“No company or brand can rest on its laurels when it comes to its reputation. Protecting and enhancing it is a 24/7, 365 days a year undertaking....
This week, enigmatic former Donald Trump campaign advisor Carter Page appeared on a PBS News Hour interview to defend himself from the revelation that he was caught on a phone wiretap colluding with Russian intel agents during the election. This came as a surprise because Page’s last publicly known location was Moscow, suggesting he had already fled the country. He told PBS this week he’s Arizona – but he was standing in front of what appears to be a fake background that has been used before by other political figures.Here’s a screen grab of Carter Page’s interview on PBS News Hour this week. If your first thought was “Why is he standing outdoors in front of a mountain during a remote television interview,” we asked the same question. And if your second thought was “Does he look like he’s poorly superimposed on that fake looking background,” we asked that question as well. So we went digging, using a Google image reverse-search, and we uncovered this strangely familiar image of Arizona Congressman Trent Franks giving an MSNBC interview in 2016 in front of the exact same scene:...
The striking ads last just 10 seconds, but the spots are ruffling plenty of feathers.A new PR campaign from the Irish Cancer Societyfeatures short promos on TV and social media with the words: “I want to get cancer.” Each spot shows four different people—a middle-aged couple, a young surfer and a young woman in a relationship. Each person says: “I want to get cancer.”Is it too offensive or powerful PR?...
2016 saw its fair share of corporate public-relations mishaps, but some were more cringeworthy than others. To be sure, the PR crises in certain cases weren't all that bad compared with the serious business missteps that precipitated a few of them, but the fact remains that there is always a better and a worse way to talk to customers and the public when something's gone wrong. These were three of the year's most egregious gaffes, and what companies can learn from them heading into 2017
The President-elect's supporters are threatening to boycott Pepsi (PEP) over fabricated statements circulating on social media. Twitter users, many citing debunked news articles, claim PepsiCo (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi told Trump fans to "take their business elsewhere. "Sites designed to trick people, including Truthfeed and Gateway Pundit, published the fake quote while encouraging readers to stop buying Pepsi's products. Gateway Pundit also incorrectly claimed PepsiCo's stock plunged 5% because of the comment that Nooyi never actually made. Nooyi never told Trump's supporters that Pepsi doesn't want their business and she even congratulated the president-elect on his victory. But she condemned the ugly rhetoric of the campaign....
Olympian Ryan Lochte, who was dropped this week by major sponsors including Speedo and Ralph Lauren, has found a brand willing to take him on. Pine Bros. Softish Throat Drops signed an endorsement deal today with Lochte, who will appear in commercial and print ads for the brand. The swimmer thanked the company in a tweet today. Lochte embellished the story of what he claimed was a robbery at gunpoint with fellow swimmers at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro during the Olympics earlier this month, lying about it to NBC's Billy Bush and Matt Lauer (and inspiring some shade from the likes of Al Roker, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, who all called him out for his behavior). Lochte apologized to Lauer in an interview that aired on the Today Show on Monday, saying that he "over-exaggerated" the events of that night. Lochte's ads for Pine Bros. will feature the tagline, "Pine Brothers Softish Throat Drops: Forgiving On Your Throat," just as the company—and Lochte, himself —is asking the public to forgive him. ...
Amazon.com Inc. is facing digital backlash following a tweet that was posted just hours after 49 people were killed and more than 50 others injured inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla. Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, posted a tweet of a ceramic bowl with the words “cereal killer” and a red splatter pattern that resembles bloodstains on it, along with “#Guilty” and a link where shoppers could buy the product. The tweet, time-stamped at 10 a.m. Central on Sunday, was posted as U.S. consumers were learning about the mass shooting in Orlando and as details about the attack and the victims were trickling out. The tweet remained online for about an hour before it became unavailable, and that was plenty of time to draw reaction from Twitter users who called the tweet “offensive” and “insensitive” and said it was poorly timed. The bowl, made by Ohio-based crafts manufacturer Dab-A-Do’s Ceramics, is no longer for sale on Amazon’s site, though it’s unclear as to whether Amazon or Dab-A-Do’s pulled the product. Dab-A-Do’s still had the bowl on its website for $25....
Well, that sure got weird, didn’t it? Tribune’s takeover of what used to be called Times-Mirror was messy when it started, a decade and a half ago, and has gotten worse every few years: This is the company, after all, that took over several great newspapers, crowed about “synergy,” and made a few legendary editors so uncomfortable that they left their posts. (One of them was Dean Baquet, who’s now executive editor at the New York Times.) And they sold their papers to Sam Zell, who had no background in newspapers and made an even bigger mess of things before filing for Chapter 11. Last fall, the company put Tribune Tower, where its original newspaper is based, up for sale. But now Tribune has a new trick: It has renamed itself tronc – a term that means, in French, “poor box,” and if modulated to “trunk,” something worse. According to Tribune’s current chair, Michael Ferro – who was invited onto the board by former CEO Jack Griffin, whom he fired — this is a bold step into the future. Here’s a corporate release:...
The diesel emissions nightmare at Volkswagen continues unabated as the German government orders the company to recall 2.4 million vehicles next year. To recap, the company has admitted to cheating on emissions tests on up to 11 million diesel vehicles worldwide. The global CEO has resigned, the new North American head departed before even starting, its share value has dropped by over 30% and VW Group sales have plummeted.
Some estimates say this could cost the company in the region of 35 billion euros, and all but destroy the consumer market for diesel vehicles.
This scenario has all the makings of a classic PR crisis, but so far most would consider VW’s communications efforts a fail. Weeks into the scandal consumers who purchased one of the diesel vehicles still do not know what, if any action they should take. Dealers are left scrambling on the front lines without the facts or even a narrative on VW plans. For employees, suppliers and shareholders there is also confusion around how the corporate parent plans to navigate through the crisis. Lawyers smell blood and are circling both in North America and Europe....
The Fort Bend Sheriff's Office just sent a press release to news outlets all over Texas that revealed the credit card, checking account, Social Security, and driver's license numbers of hundreds of people. You see, the email contained a photo of these items that were kept in a lost and found room at the Santikos Palladium theaters in Richmond.
A few seconds later, the Sheriff's Office sent another email saying that, on second thought, maybe that wasn't such a great idea.
Pay close attention while we walk you through this: According to the original email, an off-duty Sheriff's detective was working security at the Palladium when he "discovered several boxes and bags containing numerous wallets, 171 driver's licenses, more than a dozen Social Security cards, several hundred credit and debit cards, and more than a dozen checkbooks."...
...Yes, that appears to be an attempt to bribe a journalist to mention clients in stories he is doing for us and other media clients.
"I've seen some pretty incredible PR pitches — including offers to have the PR agency write the story and put the reporter's byline on it — but this is one of the most brazen I've seen," said Jim Romenesko, a noted media critic. "A publicist who suggests paying a major news outlet for slipping a client's name into copy has no idea how journalists do their jobs — or how ethical 99 percent of them are."
|
Not surprisingly, United Airlines took a massive social media and reputation hit, not to mention the impact on their share value.