» Reputation management: of magnets and lead paint - Marketing Conversation - New Marketing and Social Media by Abraham Harrison LLC Marketing Conversation - New Marketing and Social Media by Abraham Harrison LLC

October 2007
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Sep		Nov »
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Reputation management: of magnets and lead paint

Posted on October 4th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

For Mattel, it was the recall of millions of other toys that contained small magnets that could fall out of the toy and could be swallowed by young children. And for China, it was the massive recall of pet food earlier this year.

Oddly enough, a controversy erupted when Mattel apologized to U.S. consumers. The company had done the ‘right thing’ - or what is now considered standard practice - as they trotted out CEO Bob Eckert and put him on video with him stressing that Mattel will immediately look into the matter and make changes. And he wanted us to know that he, as a Dad himself, was concerned. Relational empathy works.

But the problem was that as Mattel was apologizing to US citizens, they were subtlety making it seem the problem was ‘with China’…which, if not exonerating the toy company, muddled up their role in the fiasco. In the meantime, the Chinese government was not thrilled as most of the recalled toys had problems with their very design as created by Mattel as opposed to lax Chinese standards or poor Chinese workmanship. As a result , Mattel made an apology to China, even though lax standards DID cause some of the problems.

So, as it often happens, we don’t know really who is to blame here. Or if any blame is damning enough to have either the company or the country or both scorned. Now that may be good enough and the issue may go away. But today, with the blogosphere in full swing, with online forums abuzz, with citizen journalism being heralded as a wave of the future, my bet is that problems like this will last more than a bit longer.

So, to me, companies such as Mattel (or governments, or associations, or any type of organization) and their PR agencies are going to have to either learn about or invest in the services of a digital consultancy that can help them manage, repair, or defend their reputation.

Disclosure: Abraham Harrison offers those services. But hear me out.

Businesses are going to make mistakes. Some honest ones, some callous ones. There will always be forces out that the will - very legitimately - call them on these mistakes. But mistakes can lead to rumors to that can spread very fast, to activist groups looking for the killer punch, to media outlets looking for that big story…when there may be no story to speak of.

Traditional PR practices still make perfect sense. Put the CEO on video, develop an new (and more effective) set of guidelines, work with the media. But today that may be enough.

It’s a whole new ball game.