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Could bad PR pose an existential threat to one of tech's highest-flying companies? If Lyft's fortunes are any indication, Uber might have reason to worry. While Uber has been dealing with bad headline after bad headline, Lyft has been courting riders and polishing its image. For example, when Uber was facing a #DeleteUber campaign over CEO Kalanick's participation in a business advisory council for US President Donald Trump, Lyft was responding to Trump's temporary travel ban targeting seven Muslim countries by announcing that it would be donating $1m to the American Civil Liberties Union. Is Lyft's cleaner image winning over consumers?According to Bloomberg, Lyft's ridership and bookings "surged" in the first quarter of the year and according to fundraising documents Bloomberg obtained, the company is beating its internal targets. The documents revealed that Lyft's gross bookings in Q1 grew to $800m, more than double what they were in Q1 2016, and total ridership in February was 137% higher than February 2016....
United Airlines made headlines this week after airport police forcibly removed a passenger from one of its flightSuch unfavorable occurrence is not the first for United. Several weeks ago, the airline disallowed two girls from boarding a flight as they were wearing leggings and were “not properly clothed via [its] Contract of Carriage.” It comes with no surprise that the incident has ignited a wave of responses online. While United Airlines attempts to clean up this unsavory fracas, here is a compilation of the best trolls by brands and netizens in response to the brouhaha, with some referencing Pepsi’s recent infamous ad....
The Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle is a master class in how not to handle a crisis. Much will be investigated in the months ahead. But what I find particularly interesting is how Samsung communicated what was happening at each stage of the crisis.
This weekend, the US DOT banned the Galaxy Note 7 on all US flights, categorizing the phones as “forbidden hazardous material.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that. Yet, just a few days earlier, Samsung portrayed the situation as “temporarily adjusting the production schedule to ensure quality and safety matters.”
The gap between “forbidden hazardous material” and “temporarily adjusting the production schedule” is a massive chasm. A few weeks earlier, Samsung similarly described a “global product recall” as an “exchange program.”...
Never ruin an apology with an excuse." – Ben Franklin
In less than 24 hours, two of the biggest stories in the world involved some kind of "apology" for offensive behavior and/or lying. Last night in Charlotte, North Carolina, the notoriously unrepentant Donald Trump shocked observers by expressing "regret" for words that "may have caused personal pain." And this morning Ryan Lochte issued a widely criticized apology for "not being more careful" with how he described an incident in which he lied about being held up at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro.
Neither of them qualified as a true apology since they both offered an excuse for their behavior, failed to give a detailed account of what happened, failed to acknowledge or specify the hurt and damage they’d caused, and didn't take responsibility for the situation.
A proper apology is "an exercise in honesty, accountability, and compassion," says interfaith minister Lauren Bloom, the author of The Art of the Apology. Of course, it's difficult and nerve-wracking and fraught with tension. But it's the right thing to do. So above all, be sincere: "It's the essence of an apology."...
Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn is gone. But on his way out the door, he described the company’s massive, deliberate fraud on his customers and the environment as an “irregularity.” That’s bullshit.
Here’s what happened: Volkswagen jiggered the software in 11 million of its diesel cars to conceal how much they polluted. “Clean Diesel” is a pillar of Volkswagen’s marketing. (My link is to a cached copy; for some reason, the original Volkswagen “Clean Diesel” page is no longer visible.)
Here’s an English translation of the video statement from Winterkorn, made Tuesday before he resigned under pressure. Bold italic indicates questionable terms and passive voice; the text in brackets is my commentary:...
In a week that’s seen South African brands take a beating on Twitter, Pick n Pay should probably have known better than to ask someone to remove a tweet linking to a blog post that criticised a new sale campaign by the company.
The post in question, written by Celeste Barlow of the Reluctant Mom blog, takes particular issue with a promotional gift the retailer recently started giving out for purchases over R150....
In case you missed it, Bloomberg Businessweek published an intriguing story yesterday by veteran journalist Paul M. Barrett that ran with the headline “What It’s Like to Be Attacked by Putin’s Flack.”
The “flack” in question is Ketchum — more specifically D.C.-based partner Kathy Jeavons, who “heads both the Ecuador and Russia accounts” for the firm.
For the record, Jeavons did not personally attack or even contact Barrett. But a source did forward him a talking points document that the firm wrote for Nathalie Cely, Ecuador’s ambassador to the United States. The doc included both well-stated observations about Ecuador’s history with Chevron and suggestions for casting doubt on the credibility of Law of the Jungle, Barrett’s upcoming book on the lawsuit that accuses the company of abusing its relationship with the people of Ecuador....
Microsoft already had a public relations crisis on its hands with Thursday's news that it was laying off 18,000 employees. That's 14 percent of its workforce, and the biggest batch of job cuts in the company's nearly 40-year history.
How it's communicating those layoffs to employees doesn't seem to be helping matters. Microsoft published the email from Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft's devices unit, to about 12,500 laid-off employees. The lion's share of the employees who are losing jobs come from his department.
The memo begins, "Hello there," ends with "Regards," and is loaded with business jargon. Terms such as "financial envelope," "business continuity," and "right-size our manufacturing operations" are peppered throughout. Worse, it barely makes clear that its recipients have been discharged. It's mostly about the company's new strategy to make and sell Windows phones, which wouldn't seem a primary concern for people who no longer work for Microsoft....
When it comes to recent Google Plus news, what we have from Google is a failure to communicate.
To recap, last Thursday Vic Gundrota, senior vice president for Google Plus, publicly announced his resignation by this rather touching Google Plus post And Then.
His boss, CEO Larry Page, responded with his own G+ post to Gundotra’s.
The cat was out of the bag the previous week with this post on the Secret app: “Vic Gundotra is interviewing.”
Of course the news exploded in the technology media and speculation continues to echo around the Internet. Including Google’s own survey asking if G+ would be missed as reported by Curtis Jacob?
What was missing was a proactive Google PR response....
Note to self: Never mention a celebrity on Twitter from a company account. Recently, it hasn't worked out well for two different brands.
A few weeks ago, people were in an uproar over Red Sox slugger Big Papi's selfie with the President. Then, last week, Katherine Heigl issued a lawsuit to Duane Reade for posting a paparazzi photo of her on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Here's what they posted on Twitter (Facebook's post was almost identical)...
Mastercard’s PR agency, House PR, went ahead and offered Telegraph journalist, Tim Walker, a press pass to the Brit Awards on the condition that he shamelessly plug Mastercard and the hashtag associated with the brand #PricelessSurprises on Twitter. Walker wasn’t even given creative license on the tweets – the content of each one was specifically outlined in an email he later released (hence how the situation blew up in Mastercard’s face). Needless to say the whole debacle erupted into a Twitter storm of negativity directed at House PR and Mastercard.
However, after looking into the Twitter data with SocialBro it seems the Mastercard#PricelessSurprises hashtag was not a fail at all. The negativity surrounding the hashtag was namely from the industry itself and outweighed by its popularity with the TV audience. In total the 14,992 tweets that used the hashtag during 24 hours had a potential reach of over 25 million people. Interestingly, the SocialBro data shows us that the hashtag was a hit with the public, it also didn’t hurt that celebrities such as Kylie Minogue got involved on the night, mentioning and retweeting the hashtag several times....
Cleveland Browns fans looking for some action on Super Bowl Sunday found their antagonist in Purell. The hand sanitizer brand took to Twitter during the game with a taunt about how the Broncos looked as bad as the Browns.
By early Monday morning Purell had pulled the tweet, apologized on Twitter and on the website of Cleveland’s major newspaper, and promised that nothing like that would happen again.
And Purell wasn’t the only corporate Twitter account using the Super Bowl as pretext to tweet its foot in its mouth: MSNBC ran into trouble for a racially charged message about a Cheerios ad. The frequency with which companies tweet apologies can make it seem like they’re not doing much of anything else on social media.
There’s evidence to back this up. A study published recently by Ruth Page in the Journal of Pragmatics, which covers linguistics, looked at the way we apologize on Twitter, studying 1,183 apologies issued by corporations, celebrities, and normal folks between 2010 and 2012. The first finding: Corporations apologize a whole lot. Corporate accounts used the word “sorry” at 8.6 times the frequency of individuals, while the words “apology” or “apologize” pop 7.4 times more for corporations and the word “regret” is used a whopping 37.5 times more frequently in corporate tweets. The study filtered out nonapologetic uses of these words....
Social media offered many opportunities for (quite justified) outrage this year. But did they come at a price?
...Here was instant comeuppance for someone who said something terrible. Here was comeuppance for a white person generalizing shallowly about Africa, the continent, as if it were one large country with only one story to tell. Here was a woman reveling in her whiteness and assuming that her whiteness was some kind of shield against a disease that does not discriminate. I was amused by the spectacle. I followed along even though something in my stomach twisted as the hours passed. It was a bit surreal, knowing this drama was playing out while Sacco was at 38,000 feet.
At the same time, I was horrified. It all felt a bit frenzied and out of control, as interest in the story mounted and the death threats and gendered insults began. The online outrage and Sacco’s comeuppance seemed disproportionate. The amount of joy some people expressed as they engaged with the #HasJustineLandedYet hashtag gave me pause.
Somewhere along the line, we forgot that this drama concerned an actual human being. Justine Sacco did not express empathy for her fellow human beings with her insensitive tweet. It is something, though, that the Internet responded in kind, with an equal lack of empathy. We expressed some of the very attitude we claimed to condemn....
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David Dao, the doctor who was seen being dragged off a United Airlines jet this month in videos that sparked widespread outrage, has reached a settlement with the airline for an undisclosed amount, his lawyers said on Thursday.
The April 9 episode had stoked the fears and frustrations of airplane passengers everywhere and became a public relations nightmare for United.
On Thursday, both sides welcomed what they hoped would be the end of the ordeal.
“Mr. Munoz said he was going to do the right thing, and he has,” Thomas A. Demetrio, one of Dr. Dao’s lawyers, said of Oscar Munoz, United’s chief executive. “In addition, United has taken full responsibility for what happened on Flight 3411, without attempting to blame others, including the City of Chicago. For this acceptance of corporate accountability, United is to be applauded.”
Perhaps you noticed that there was a screwup at the Oscars last night. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty announced that “La La Land” had won the Academy Award for Best Picture . . . and then had to backtrack, because there was a mistake. “Moonlight” was the actual winner.
After the mistake, many people behaved graciously. In what has to be the most heartbreaking moment of his career, “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz realized he didn’t receive his first Oscar, and then beckoned the producers of “Moonlight” to come on stage. Warren Beatty explained why he’d made the mistake — he’d gotten the wrong envelope.
But who was responsible for the screwup? It was PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that counts the votes and determines the winners.
PriceWaterhouseCooper’s statement is a model apology. Here’s PwC’s statement just after the event...
Speedo and Ralph Lauren have ended relationships with U.S. Olympian Ryan Lochte, a decision that comes after the swimmer was accused of fabricating his tale of being robbed in Rio de Janeiro.
"Speedo USA today announces the decision to end its sponsorship of Ryan Lochte," the brand announced in a statement. "As part of this decision, Speedo USA will donate a $50,000 portion of Lochte's fee to Save the Children, a global charity partner of Speedo USA's parent company, for children in Brazil."
As for Ralph Lauren, the company said its endorsement agreement with Lochte "was specifically in support of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the company will not be renewing his contract." ...
Transparency is important to all elements of the food movement, but it is particularly relevant in the realm of chocolate, Carla Martin, lecturer on African and African American Studies at Harvard University, and founder and executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, told Quartz. She cites examples like Cadbury’s ignoring the use of slave labor in its supply chain in the early 1900s, and early industrial chocolate makers who were found to be bulking up chocolate with corn sugar.
“It’s something that people involved in the craft chocolate movement are very concerned with,” she says. “There are ideals about this kind of openness in one’s business practices and it comes from very real concerns about fraudulent practices in the food industry.” Similar concerns continue to the present day: Most of the world’s chocolate comes from West Africa, where practices like child labor and rainforest clearing are rampant.
It’s easy to attribute all of the negative comments to resentment from other chocolate makers—Mast Brothers gets incredible press from a range of publications all over the world. “There is a certain kind of jealousy,” Bernardini told Quartz over email, “but more of an anger.” “But [chocolate makers] should also be angry with the media as it is the fault and responsibility of the media that Mast Brothers became so famous (with a mediocre and sometimes also bad quality). Only because they wore clothes like Amish people with long beards.”
The New York Times published a brutal takedown of Amazon culture this past weekend. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sent around an internal email to deny the charges. But Bezos’ reply is so weak, it makes you wonder if his heart it is in it.
Justine Sacco is in the news again. Not that she wants to be. She’d like nothing more than to fade from the spotlight. But today, over 15 months after she launched the tweet that just won’t go away, she’s still the poster child for career ruination via social media. The recent revival of Justine’s story came before the release of a new book by Jon Ronson, “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.”
If you’ve never heard of Sacco, I’ll recap quickly. Just before boarding an 11-hour flight to South Africa, in what can only be called a monumental meltdown of discretion, she tweeted this: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” This touched off a social media feeding frenzy looking for Sacco’s blood. The world waited for her to land (#HasJustineLandedYet? became the top trender) and meet her righteous retribution.
Oh, did I mention that she was IAC’s corporate head of communications? Yeah, I know. WTF, right?...
A GIANT public relations agency that has been under fire for a couple of gaffes in the last couple of weeks says it is taking steps to try to make sure such blunders do not recur — the kinds of steps it would recommend to clients in the same predicaments.
“What the leadership team decided,” Ben Boyd, president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman in New York, said in an interview on Friday, is that “we will treat ourselves like we treat a client.”
“Lesson learned,” he added.
“Just because you advise clients on the complexities of today’s world, that doesn’t mean they’re easier to manage,” Mr. Boyd said, adding that “it would have been smart” to have had in place at Edelman some of the internal protocols and processes that the agency’s 5,000 employees suggest that clients adopt....
The great thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. The terrible thing about social media is that it allows whatever stupid thing you want to say to reach your audience instantly. It takes about 30 seconds of thought to accurately gauge whether your brilliant marketing gimmick will build brand engagement or be prosecuted as some kind of hate crime in certain countries in Europe.
The folks on this list did not take those 30 seconds......
In February, Chevron apologized to residents of a town where a fracking well exploded by giving them pizza coupons. Columbia University seems to be taking a similar, food-based approach to contrition over its alleged mishandling of high-profile sexual assault cases.
Anna Bahr—who writes for the campus magazine the Blue and White and publications including The New York Times Upshot blog, according to her Twitter profile—tweeted a photo of a cake she saw in the Ferris dining hall decorated with red roses and a message written in cursive that reads “sexual violence prevention”:...
Bill Ackman isn't playing nice in his campaign against Herbalife, but he's playing the system the same way big corporations do.
Astroturf-marketing campaigns and manufactured news events are standard fare for big corporations looking to influence lawmakers, regulators and the public. We've grown numb to their antics. So it's usually not a big story when some hare-brained promotion or lobbying effort goes wildly off track.
But when a billionaire hedge-fund manager uses the same techniques to attack a company whose stock he's shorting, the dark arts of public relations suddenly seem novel again. And so the New York Times today delivered a well-researched opus on Bill Ackman's hilariously inept crusade against Herbalife Ltd., the nutritional-products distributor....
But our real heartburn came with what happened next. Apparently, Sablonski held a news conference but instructed the media not to take video of her face. Amazingly, they complied and only showed the back of her head.
The Sup's explanation for the bizarre order was that the story was not about her -- and therefore her face was unneeded...
Apparently, Russian authorities think journalists are sabotaging hotel rooms in Sochi -- thanks to bathroom surveillance cameras.
The press arrived in Sochi this week for the Winter Olympics, and it did not go well.
Tweets, photos and full-on articles told the world of shoddy, unfinished accommodations that gave Vladimir Putin's Olympic Games a black eye before they'd even started. Russian officials remained largely mum as Sochi's unfinished construction — rooms without doorhandles, toilets that can't flush paper — became the story of the week that ends Friday with the Olympics' opening ceremony.
Then, on Thursday, a Russian official finally addressed reporters, ostensibly to set the media straight and correct the false narrative that gained so much momentum....
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![Pick n Pay shows the world how not to deal with online criticism [Update] - Memeburn | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/dbtOMJPGtYlv_ULj8ufE5zl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
There is such a thing as "bad PR" and Uber is seeing the consequences.