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The recent United and Pepsi social media firestorms are still captivating the media's undivided attention. It’s no surprise that the online perpetuation of these real-life events is the prime topic of conversation for marketers across all industries (not just airlines and soft drinks). Both brand blunders have sparked a burning question that’s occupying my mindspace, and it doesn’t have to do with brand reputation. “Does anyone even care?” Brands have one purpose, selling products and services to the consumers of the world. So unless social backlash and media scrutiny are causing a serious decline in sales numbers, are there any actual consequences?...
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....
Sunday morning United Airlines once again proved that they have some of the worst public relations people in the business, which is likely a reflection of their top management. The Situation Two young girls, ages estimated to be around ten to eleven years old, were prevented boarding a United Airlines flight from Denver to Minneapolis with their family. These were children, not adults, nor young adults. According to United Airlines, they were flying on what is known in the industry as a “Buddy Pass,” which is a relatively free (taxes have to be paid) ticket that is one of the benefits of airline employees. The girls were wearing leggings, which again, according to United Airlines, is in violation of the dress code of people flying on a Buddy Pass. The gate agent apparently approached the family and told them the girls could not board the plane wearing leggings. It is important to note that two of the girls did not have any other clothing options at the gate, and the family apparently checked bags with the girl’s clothing in them at the main ticketing, where a United representative had to weigh the bags, check the tickets, and confirm the identifications of each of the passengers. Despite this close contact with the passengers, the ticket agent did NOT prevent the children, nor the rest of the family from heading to the gate....
When the organizer of the #NotMyPresident protests refused to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show, the Fox News host booked an actor with no ties to its leadership as a replacement. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson had a hard time booking Olga Lexell, the creator and co-organizer of the nationwide Not My President’s Day protests on Monday. So, after repeated refusals, Carlson’s show instead booked Shane Saunders, a Los Angeles-based actor and casting agent, who Lexell said “was not affiliated in any way with our rallies and was not an organizer.” In the five-minute segment, Saunders was referred to as an “organizer” by an on-screen graphic and Carlson himself, who also asked Saunders about why “your protest is going to make a difference.” “It's frustrating because, with the exception of one person, all of the organizers are women,” Lexell told The Daily Beast. “For a man who knows nothing about the protests to go on TV unprepared, misrepresent our message, take credit for our weeks of hard work, and make us look bad—and for Tucker Carlson's team to go along with it—is just disappointing.”...
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?...
It’s a cycle that has unfortunately become quite familiar over the last year with the loss of so many pop culture icons.A beloved, iconoclastic celebrity dies and we proceed to express our sadness and disbelief, particularly on social media. And in a rush to get in on the conversation, brands forget the most important rule of grieving in public: it’s not about you. Carrie Fisher’s death this week spurred remembrances of her prodigious writing talent, mental health advocacy and lacerating perspective about women in Hollywood. So Cinnabon decided to post a swiftly deleted tweet about how she had “the best buns in the galaxy.”...
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?...
Skittles has responded with uncharacteristic yet appropriate seriousness after being dragged into the presidential race by Donald Trump Jr., son of the Republican nominee, who posted a controversial tweet on Monday with an analogy about Skittles and refugees. Here is Donald Trump Jr.'s tweet... Within hours, Denise Young, vp of corporate affairs at Skittles parent Wrigley Americas, responded with a tersely word statement. "Skittles are candy. Refugees are people," she said. "We don't feel it's an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing."...
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. ...
Back in 2004, media and TV personality Martha Stewart was sentenced to five months in jail for obstructing a federal securities investigation. To pass the time during her incarceration, Stewart did what she does best: cooking and crafts. Speaking at a Daily Mail brunch session at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Thursday, Stewart said the food inside was around three years past its expiry date. "That's why I made jam out of the crab apples on the trees," she added. Aside from making jam, Stewart also turned her hand to ceramics. As a child she'd go to ceramic classes at the weekend, so she quickly signed up to a ceramics class in prison too, at a place called Alderson....
We suppose it is possible for the Department of State to screw up the handling of questions about whether they lied to reporters even worse — but it is hard to figure out how. The video below from CNN’s Jake Tapper today nicely lays out the series of offenses — but here is our quick summary: In February 2013 Fox News correspondent James Rosen asked then State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland if there had been direct talks between the U.S. and Iran. She essentially said “NO.” In December 2013, Rosen points out to Nuland’s successor Jen Psaki that the correct answer would have been “YES” and asked if State routinely lied to reporters when they found it convenient. Psaki with a smirk said there are times when diplomacy needs privacy to succeed. (Translation: yes, we lied)....
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:...
It's a tragic day, as one of the most gifted musicians of the modern era has passed. Despite his moniker, Prince, who died Thursday at 57, was a king among men and will live on only through memory and the hours of powerful and provocative music he left behind. Brands, as they usually do, tried to join the conversation about Prince online with mostly-purple-clad homages. That's challenging in the best of times—and doubly hard when the conversation is mostly one giant outpouring of grief. Not every brand managed it well. As of this writing, at least two brands have had second thoughts about their posts and deleted them outright. Many others remain up, though some are clearly in questionable taste—mostly because they feel overly self-promotional....
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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....
The disturbing scene captured on cellphone videos by United Airlines passengers on Sunday went beyond the typical nightmares of travelers on an overbooked flight. An unidentified man who refused to be bumped from a plane screamed as a security officer wrestled him out of his seat and dragged him down the aisle by his arms. His glasses slid down his face, and his shirt rose above his midriff as uniformed officers followed. At least two passengers documented the physical confrontation and the man’s anguished protests, and their videos spread rapidly online on Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics. A security officer involved in the episode has been placed on leave, the authorities said, and the federal Transportation Department is investigating whether the airline complied with rules regarding overbooking. Tyler Bridges, a passenger on Sunday’s flight who posted a video to Twitter, said in a telephone interview on Monday that “it felt like something the world needed to see.” The shocking scene raised questions about the common practice of overbooking and how far airlines will go to sell all of their seats. Particularly annoying, Mr. Bridges said, was that the airline was looking for extra seats for some of its employees....
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....
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
A bizarre Christmas commercial from Russia is under fire for showing Santa Claus trying to teach a single mother a lesson in being a better parent—by abducting her and dragging her through the wilderness by a rope and eventually pulling a knife on her. And the ad's creators seem baffled that anyone could have a problem with it. The spot, for Credit Bank of Moscow, was created by ad agency 3Sba. It is beautifully shot, which makes it even weirder—clearly no expense was spared in producing the film, yet how no one raised a red flag during its creation is baffling. Check out the ad here...
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....
Mylan and its CEO Heather Bresch are under fire. It raised the price of its EpiPen product — an essential protection for people with life threatening allergies — by a factor of five in the last eight years. Mylan’s statement defending itself clarifies what it’s doing — providing rebates — but evades the main issue of why it increased the price in the first place. Here’s the dialogue between Mylan and the public, in a nutshell: Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’ll help you afford it with coupons and rebates. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive? Mylan: We’re on your side. It’s the insurance regulations. Public: Why is this thing so hellishly expensive??? RtMylan: We even give some away to schools!S So Mylan’s position is that it won’t explain the massive price increase on a product where it has a monopoly on a generic medication product that millions of people could die without, a product that’s essentially unchanged from past years....
Donald Trump's national spokeswoman Katrina Pierson explains why she wore a necklace made of bullets on live television.
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....
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....
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So United Airlines and Pepsi weren't hurt by recent controversies? Interesting proposition but I'm not sure I buy it.