Filed under: Blog Messaging, Blog Policies, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Crisis Management, Industry Reputation, Online PR, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Strategy, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Reputation Management

I think Southwest is missing an opportunity to effectively come clean on this recent story that they let 46 of the planes fly beyond the FAA mandated amount of per plane flights to have an inspection. They’re using “spinspeak” when they don’t have to.

The issue is muddled. The level of responsiblity is unclear. The nexus of blame looks to be dispersed. Southwest needs to open up a bit more. Instead, they obfuscate.

“The FAA has issued what is called a “letter of penalty” to Southwest Airlines regarding one of many routine, redundant, and overlapping inspections of our fleet. The specific inspection in question involves an extremely small area in one of many overlapping inspections designed to detect early signs of skin cracking on our aircraft.”

“Many, routine, redundant, and overlapping inspections”…”extremely small area in one of manyh ovrlapping inspections”. Please.

Meanitme, one can simply read any news coverge of this and find out that the airline went well past the alloted amount of flights. By trying to sound “reasonable”, they cause people to look elsewhere. And the term “overlapping inspections”…what they hell does that mean?

Most of the rest of what they say if fine. But in the interest of transparency, simply explain the concept of inspections based upon amount of flights. THEN you add how you found the problem and quickly notified the authorities. Keep the bulk of the story on the blog itself. Off an apology for the confusion. Thank people for their loyalty. Let them know that you’ll keep them informed via the blog. Have CEO Gary Kelly post an entry a week until the situation resolves itself.

Right now there’s a bunch of responsed showing doubt towards Southwest. And there’s a significant amount of supportive responses. Some very elaborate. Allmost seems organized, but they’re not cookie cutter. And y0u’ve got some who are defending the company by attacking the media. Saying that the media doesn’t know what they’re talking about…that the media is blowing things out of proportion. On what they’re basing this I don’t know.

Southwest has 30 days to respond to the FAA’s letter of inquiry. Let’s see how it turns out.

No Comments » Posted on March 10th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Messaging, Blog Policies, Blog Strategy, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Relations, Blogger Response, Blowback, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Branding, Branding Online, Buzz Marketing, Citizen Generated Media, Citizen Journalism, Citizen Media, Code of Conduct, Cult of Personality, Customer Ratings, Customer Reviews, Influence, Influencer Identification, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influential Brand Advocates, Influentials, Intellectual Property, Legal Blogs, Legal Issues, Memetics, New Marketing, New Media, New Media Blogs, New Media Marketing, New Media Strategy, New PR, Online Advocacy, Online Avertising, Online Brand Intelligence, Online Brand Promotion, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Branding, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Facilitation, Online Marketing, Online Participation, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Online Strategy, PR Hubris, Peer-to-Peer, Pop Culture, Public Relations, Reputation Rehabilitation, Social Meda, Social Networking, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing

I just asked a question via Twitter. And I’ll repeat it here.

Question for social media types…many complain about interference from legal dept. when it comes to social media, especially with UGC…so, are there any conferences, events, seminars, etc. that bring the two groups together to understand one another more?

Not to toot my own horn, but that’s a good question. And it’s one that needs to be answered.

Marketers are essentially in charge of defining, promoting, enhancing, and protecting the brand. Lawyers are essentially in charge of protecting the entity, the business, and, yes, the brand.

I got to thinking about this because social media strategists often, as part of their strategy, enlist, encourage, or allow a brands users to play a role in the branding. I got to thinking of a recent story involving a group of car enthusiasts putting together a picture calendar showing off their cars. They calendars were to be sold on CafePress. But there was some sort of communication screw up and it was halted I believe. Some social media strategists mistakenly blamed the car company.

But then I thought…wait…if the legal department did have reservations in this situation, is that necessarily a bad thing? Think about it….

What if one of the participants of an unsolicited consumer generated media effort has let’s say a problem. Like a police record. I mean, let’s say he’s the type of guy who could get nailed by Chris Hansen of Nightline. You know, a pedophile.

Ridiculous? If you think so, you’re missing the point. The point is that legal department and marketing departments are going to have to understand one another and work together to both reasonably promote and protect the brand through social media. Cutting edge vs. overly cautious won’t do. Lawyer potentially nixing or at least getting in the way of potentially effective programs or frustrated marketing types angrily rolling their eyes at the stupidity and interference of the legal department will only serve to stifle the brand, or, potentially worse, leave it unprotected.

No Comments » Posted on March 2nd, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Abraham Harrison Staff, Blowback, Brand Advocacy, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Competitive Intelligence, Domain Name Strategy, Online Advocacy, Online Attack, Online Brand Promotion, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Branding, Online Communications, Online Crisis Management, Online Identity Management, Online Monitoring, Online PR, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation

Let me first reveal that Abraham Harrison LLC, my employer and my company, is an online reputation management company — online reputation protection, promotion, defensive SEO, domain name strategy, and crisis management. That said, I could not be happier because online reputation management is apparently the new black, at least according to Techdirt, Forget Publicists, All The Cool Kids Have Online Reputation Managers:

It’s been well-documented that Google has become something of the mythical permanent record teachers warned you about as kids. There are plenty of stories about people losing jobs or discovering dubious information about dates using Google. A few years back, services popped up claiming that they could scrub your online record clean — though, how successful such services could be was certainly called into question. However, it appears that those services have morphed into a new, somewhat scary, category called online reputation management. While it’s to be expected that corporations might have people monitoring online reputations, it’s quite another thing to have individuals hire firms to do the same thing.

(Tip of the hat for the article to Scott Burns)

Read more…

1 Comment » Posted on February 1st, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Jaiku, Online Participation, Pownce, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, Social Graphs, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social News, Social Unrest, Social Utilities, Twitter, Twittergram

Yesterday morning I woke to find that former Pakistani president Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. Found out on Twitter. Now Twitter didn’t break the story, nor did Twitter give extensive coverage by itself.

But Twitter as a utility showed how it is becoming has become an extremely vital vehicle of the spreading of information. People were sharing news articles, providing links, giving others access to the latest information.

If the internet is a tangled web of computer networks, then Twitter is a tangled web of human relationships and conversations. By the time I write an post this blog entry, news of an event could have reached thousands of people.

Businesses must realize that in the world of Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, and others rumors, customer complaints, etc. can spread like wildfire. People can read, send, link, point to, blog about, forward, comment on YOU within a matter of a half an hour.

This goes back to the concept of reputation management. It’s a whole new ballgame and I bet most PR firms and departments haven’t a clue. It will take a few disasters for it too sink in.

2 Comments » Posted on December 28th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Abraham Harrison Staff, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Moptimization, Search Reputation Management, Wombagging

Much like Search Moptimization, we catagorize “Wombagging” as Defensive SEO.

‘”Wombagging”: This exercise tries to protect, or sandbag, your brand from negative or undesirable word of mouth (WOM). This could include anything everything from buying negative keywords on search engines to putting videos on your Web site featuring your CEO begging for patience and forgiveness. For some companies, wombagging might even include employing staffers in defense of bad buzz. But again, all this falls into the defensive branding arena, not outright promotion.’ The Official 2008 Web 2.0 Buzzword Forecast By Pete Blackshaw

However, we at Abraham Harrison actually call the process online brand reputation defense, Internet land grab, domain name registration strategy, search engine brand protection, domain name strategy, and domain name protection — they’re all sort of part of completely owning your own space on Google, Yahoo!, and Live.com proactively, well in advance of anything going wrong.

Why? Well, if you own your first three pages of Google well in advance of an online brand perception crisis, there is a much reduced chance of some negative online buzz being able to shoot right up to the top-five results of Google. It is much easier to fortify your castle than it is to rebuild it. Wisdom, free of charge. Tip of the hat to Jonathan Trenn, via ClickZ

No Comments » Posted on December 13th, 2007 by Chris Abraham

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