The Buffalo Blog

The Balance in Online Advertising

Will companies ever find the right balance in online advertising? As YouTube has found out today there’s a thin line between advertising and annoyance. Just one too many ad or annoying flash generated window and you can leave thousands of users increasingly annoyed with your site.

Google seems to have done quite well in this respect using its unobtrusive, sponsored top and side links. They thankfully haven’t yet strayed in to the world of the evil roaming flash window. However, Google has the benefit of a virtual monopoly over the search market which effectively protects it from disaffected users.

YouTube, while also massive, needs to be careful of alienating users and developing too corporate a persona. Advertising means big bucks and big business which just isn’t attractive to the majority of YouTube and Web 2.0 users.

The trouble is, advertising means revenue and revenue means survival. So just what is the right balance for advertising online? See also Wadd’s blog – MySpace adds to PR team

The Ying and Yang of PR

Last week saw developments from both the light and dark-side of the PR world. The side of the good and just saw Mattel turn disaster into opportunity with its excellent handling of its dangerous toy crisis. In contrast a handful of companies were caught practicing the dark art of ‘Wiki-washing’ (appropriately named by The Times).

Mattel, the US’s biggest toy manufacturer, managed to fall foul of the plague of dodgy suppliers that are rapidly being exposed across China. The drive for excessively cheap imports, it seems, has killed off the need for rigorous checking procedures. However, whatever Mattel’s procedural failings they have handled the media crisis remarkably well in an almost textbook fashion.

• Stage 1. Implement crisis plan

• Sage 2. Make a definite action which demonstrates commitment to customer safety i.e. large scale product recall.

• Stage 3. Set up a central point of contact by phone and online where customers can find out information including how to get refunds etc.

• Stage 4. Make a statement about all that has been implemented to ensure customer safety and any important warnings to customers within the first half day of the crisis coming to light.

• Stage 5. Implement inquiry.

• Stage 6. Bring out top media-trained spokespeople and put them in all the right places – prime-time media will be anxious to speak to someone if it is a large-scale crisis and someone will fill the spot if it isn’t the CEO. The inquiry can be announced here.

• Stage 7. Continue updating media. If handled correctly the story will quickly loose news value and the last thing remembered will be what the company has done to fix the mess.

Mattel implemented these steps almost to the tee in the UK and, as such, customers have been made safe (mitigating future crises) and the story’s news value has fallen considerably. Unfortunately though Mattel is still drawing heavy fire in the US indicating their crisis effort has not been as effective as in the UK.

This leads neatly to the problems that various organisations are having over their attempts at covering up their tainted histories. Rather than concentrating on the here and now these organisations (including the Labour Party and Union Carbide) were caught trying to alter their less than sterling pasts by deleting and embellishing Wikipedia entries.

Instead of fooling people into believing these newly spotless pasts however, their attempts only dredged up past crises and events that many wouldn’t have remembered anyway. Now a whole new generation has heard about the horror of the Bhopal tragedy eeking out a further dose of reputation damage from a previously long-forgotten event.

These underhand alterations have drawn much media criticism and serve to illustrate perfectly the lifecycle of an issue. Issues are never truly dormant and can come back to affect reputations at any time. However, it’s usually an exterior party that causes the problems to rear their ugly heads again. This foolish attempt smacks of pure PR incompetence. These organisations need to move on from the past and set about rebuilding those poor battered reputations rather than dwell over spilt milk.

Could there ever be too many blogs??

It seems to me that blogging is regulating the bullshit of the PR and (especially) media industries and is therefore performing a valuable service. So well done to the likes of the world’s leading, pr blogger and Wadd’s tech PR blog.

The question I have is whether there will be a backlash? Post-post-modernism, if you like. Whilst the media and PR industries (rightly) pay heed to bloggers, taking them out for drinks and treating them with the respect that they deserve, will there come a time when bloggers are ignored. Could it be that there are too many blogs, making it impossible to find ‘the truth’ (is it ever possible to find the truth)? Will people start to distrust all bloggers based on the wrongly held views of the minority? Or will blogging move into a parallel with news, as it seems to have done in recent times, and simply provide the instant ‘citizen’ news that people crave.

I have more questions than answers, but what I know for sure is that there are more bad blogs than good ones and it is those that give the blogging ‘industry’ a bad name.

Jean Charles de ‘Bacle’

Today’s news reports highlight a real reputation blunder by the MET. Indeed, it’s difficult to recall such a high profile mistake. Now, over two years after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes the IPC has brought it all back to the fore with revelations that we were all lied to. However, it didn’t have to be this way.

Anyone involved in crisis management will tell you there are broad stages in an event like this – the initial event and the inevitable inquiry report publication. Both are characterised by widespread victimisation of the organisation in trouble. I hope that the MET’s PR have taken the intervening time to ready themselves to counteract the current bad publicity. However, if they’d been reading their crisis manuals there would be little new to say in this report and a lot less negative press.

As it is we find that Menezes was actually under surveillance and wasn’t really wearing a bulky jacket or acting strangely. It’s not nice to feel you’ve been lied to…

This is an unfortunate and salient example of letting non-communicators do the communicating. In a race to make excuses and counteract bad publicity at the time of the furore, it seems that bouts of misinformation were spread solely to allay media demand. Unfortunately for the MET this was a short-term strategy and infinitely less useful than telling the truth in the first place.

Of course the police cannot simply release everything during a criminal investigation, but the public understand this. In such a situation, saying what can be said and telling journalists why other things cannot be released is the best strategy.

The MET has also had two years in which to correct the false information to pre-empt the IPC report. This damage-limitation strategy would have attracted some stick but importantly, would convey a feeling of honesty.

A policy of transparency is much more favourable than being held to account by an exterior body - like a schoolboy caught in the act. As it stands the MET now have a lot of explaining to do – let’s just hope they learn from last time and remember that honesty is the best policy.

India - home of the world's leading economy and lots of cows

I’ve been off in India  for the last few weeks – and what an experience it was too. Desserts, mountains, cities and the greatest amount of wildlife greet you, as does a cow round every street corner.

As everyone knows, India is one of the leading developing economies in the world – you can’t discuss the global economy whilst ignoring India. 1.1 billion people and the world’s fastest growing economy do not lie.  Yet, I re-iterate that a cow lies round every corner. The whole place is a mish-mash, a country that appears to be planned as they go along. A beautiful improvisation, but an improvisation nonetheless.

Although I did not visit Bangalore or the other technology centres in the Centre and South of India, I thought that Delhi, the Capital City, would resonate with the vibe of a hugely developing economy. The whole impression is counter to this. This is not to say that a sleek corporate image does not exist behind closed doors, it is just not evident to the man on the street.

Rail Nightmares - Bad use of IT in Crises

Why is it that the rail networks can’t seem to handle a few leaves or a bit of water. Yes a years worth of rain did fall in one day and it’s perfectly reasonable that trains aren’t amphibious in nature and will have to stop. However, what’s not okay is leaving thousands of bewildered customers woefully uninformed when all they want to do is get home.

Picture the scene if you will: East Croydon on a Friday evening jam packed with passengers not going anywhere and completely unaware of their predicament. The station staff, conductors and station managers are also suffering from ignorance of what’s going on. This is a real recipe for disaster and was probably seen as such by the thousands of customers who attempted to get home that evening. A situation like this isn’t good for business or for reputation.

There is an obvious flaw in the way these crises are prepared for and the actions that go in to place when crises occur. The main problem is the complete lack of communication between the rail companies and passengers. Indeed, it seems the old tannoy is just not enough, especially when it is tied up announcing trains to far flung and useless places. The on-platform ticker screens may look impressive but as the flood waters rose they either had either been forgotten about or simply aren’t equipped for anything other than train times.

If the latter case is true then train operators need to have a good look at their IT infrastructure especially in the way that it works during crises. Perhaps this needs investment but wasn’t that the point of privatising the network? Currently systems are leaving people largely in the dark despite the efforts of embattled employees.

A lack of information only breeds misinformation, leading to angry customers, a bad reputation and, as a small green man once said, this all leads to the dark side.