Online Reputation Management Blog

Archives for March 2013

Interview with Crisis Communications Expert Rob Hayes

March 21, 2013 by 1 Comment

We are excited to to invite Rob Hayes, founder and President of Compass Communications LLC, to share his thoughts on our Online Reputation Management blog.  Rob managed communications for Florida’s agency that coordinated response to and recovery from the devastating 2004 hurricane season and headed external communications related to state employees for the Office of Governor Pataki during the response and recovery following the attacks of 9-11 and the anthrax attacks in New York State.

What is crisis communications?

It’s funny how we are always trying to fit everything into a definition or elevator speech.  To me crisis communications is the act of engaging your risk communications plan.  When injury or loss is imminent, occurring or recently occurred all communications are crisis communications.

What are the biggest mistakes you see people and companies make when dealing with the media?  

Not being credible in their statements whether it is in acknowledging their own role in the event, acknowledging the true impact on others or when discussing the future impact and how to deal with it.  In my time working for Governor Pataki, Governor Bush and while running my business, two of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make time and again are having the wrong person delivering the message and sharing the wrong information. [Read more…]

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Surviving the BBC Scandal

March 15, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The British Broadcasting Channel (BBC) has long been loyal to its great entertainers.  So many shows and personalities have emerged over the past 90 years, entertaining and informing not just the millions of people in Great Britain, but audiences all over the world.  However, allegations against Jimmy Savile have severely damaged the BBC’s reputation and created a communications crisis for the venerable broadcasting company.

Jimmy Savile, who died last year at 84, was the star of the 1960s and 1970s BBC shows, “Top of the Pops” and “Jim’ll Fix It.”  This entertainer was so dearly loved that when it was suggested that Savile might have been assaulted underage teenage girls, according to the Wall Street Journal, BBC chairman George Entwistle seemed to ignore the overwhelming evidence pointing to the entertainer’s guilt.  Instead of heeding these reports and airing an expose from his network’s own “Newsnight”, Entwistle instead shelved the reports and approved several holiday tributes of Savile on the BBC instead, according to news reports.

Entwistle’s refusal to run the expose was not taken lightly as reports of Savile’s alleged pedophilia spread throughout the world, and an expose about the entertainer aired on a rival network, ITV.   But that one incident is hardly enough to cause the resignation of the BBC’s top executive.  It took another botched news report right on the heels of the Savile issue to truly force the BBC top management to clean house.

“Newsnight” – keen to salvage it’s truth in journalism reputation, subsequently decided to pursue a different investigation, reported the Wall Street Journal “… into sex abuse at a children’s home in Wales dating to the 1970s and 1980s…the program appeared to accuse 70-year-old Alistair McAlpine of committing sexual abuse and gave the former House of Lords member no opportunity to reply.”  Later, the Wall Street Journal reported that McAlpine issued a detailed denial and the alleged abuse victim said he had identified the wrong man to the BBC.

Entwistle announced his resignation a few weeks later and the BBC appointed a former journalist who runs the Royal Opera House, Tony Hall, according to the Montreal Gazette.

So what happened? In a few short weeks, the BBC spiraled into a drama suitable for one of its televised shows. Entwistle had only been on the job for 55 days when his tenure was brought to an abrupt end.

Two of the most senior figures at the BBC said Tuesday that there had been “elementary” failures of the organization’s journalism and “appalling editorial judgment” according to the New York Times. “The BBC tells the truth about itself, even when the truth is appalling,” chairman of the BBC trust, Chris Patten said in a New York Times article. The New York Times continues: “(Patten) contrasted the broadcaster’s readiness to clean its stables with what he said had been an opaque and truculent reaction among Britain’s newspapers when confronted by their own scandals.”

Journalists, public relations heavyweights and reputation management companies will debate the appropriate next step for restoring the BBC’s trust and credibility.  What do you think the BBC should do next?

Filed Under: crisis communications Tagged With: , ,

Fake Reviews on Yelp

March 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Yelp and other online review sites encourage people to review restaurants, retail establishments, healthcare providers, hotels and more.  Nowadays, you don’t always have to be a celebrity or powerful politician in order to get people to listen – blogs, social media site, Yelp, TripAdvisor and other online destinations are where consumers share their thoughts, ideas and opinions.  The attraction of these review sites is that the reviews are not advertisements or spin developed by clever marketing or PR professionals – these are honest and legitimate comments… usually.

Many people look to sites like Yelp to help them book a restaurant for a special occasion or make a hotel reservation for a trip they have been looking forward to for months – after all, if you can’t trust your peers, then who can you trust?  Yelp, Travelocity, TripAdvisor, OpenTable and other social media channels need honest reviews of customers to drive traffic – and people look to these sites to help guide their most important purchasing decisions.

Business owners and sales managers are fully aware of how powerful these customer reviews are and know that certain star ratings and customer comments can have a meaningful impact on their business – good or bad. That is why when Yelp officials found that some of its businesses were “buying” good reviews – it struck at the very heart of Yelp’s business and brought into question the integrity of their entire business model.  Today, Yelp is one of the most powerful “review” sites with 30 million reviews, according to the New York Times.  Consumers need to know that the reviews are honest and real and when Yelp officials discovered that several companies were “manipulating” results and paying or bribing customers to write fake good reviews, Yelp officials went on the offensive.

Yelp officials wrote in their blog, “… the allure of a page full of five-star reviews can turn even the most ethical business owner starry-eyed and persuade some to attempt to game the system by paying for reviews…this pretty much breaks every rule in the book, not to mention it’s just wrong to mislead consumers with fake reviews. To combat this, we’ve put on our detective hats, tracked down these rogue solicitations and are now giving you a heads up…”

An example of a business manipulating reviews came from a Texas business owner “…who purchased 200 online reviews in an attempt to artificially bolster his business’s online reputation,” reported Yelp officials.  As such, Yelp has put up a “consumer alert” flags on business sites they believe to be buying online reviews.

Yelp is not the only social media site that found it needed to go searching for “fake reviews” – the New York Times reported that “…TripAdvisor has put up similar warning notices, but declined to say how extensive its effort was…In general, however, review hubs have tended to deal with fakery very quietly, even as the problem has grown.”

Yelp, TripAdvisor and other review sites are policing their sites more vigorously.  Their model depends on honesty – if people start to doubt the legitimacy of the reviews, then the purpose sites will lose their perceived value.  As a Yelp blog reported: “We want to make sure consumers are making informed decisions… the large majority of businesses on Yelp play by the rules and work tirelessly to provide the best customer service and products to their clients. We salute their efforts and entrepreneurship. They inspire us to work even harder to protect the site from faux reviews, so that they have a fair opportunity to bask in the glow of their shining stars.”

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Interview with Crisis Communications Expert Robert J. Fisher

March 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Today’s interview on the Online Reputation Management blog, is with Robert J. Fisher, a veteran public relations executive, counselor and consultant with over four decades of experience in the fields of public relations, marketing, communications and advertising.  Robert is President of Fisher & Associates, Inc. (F&A), a Los Angeles area-based public relations and communications firm which has served a broad range of businesses and industries on local, national and international levels for more than three decades.  He has extensive experience in crisis communications having represented clients both throughout the U.S. and internationally who were in crisis situations.  He is also a recognized expert in this field by the media who he has long served as an expert media information source and analyst.

What is crisis communications?

Crisis Communications is the response that is made to a negative situation that has arisen that threatens to in some way harm an entity (e.g. business, industry, product, person, organization) either by potentially impacting on its livelihood and/or severely damaging its image, reputation, brand or the good will or trust which it has with its primary target audiences.  The response can take many forms but involves the dissemination of information and the influencing of opinion to mitigate the potential harm to the affected entity.  The response can be a short term effort or an ongoing one depending on the length of the crisis.  The type and nature of the response will depend on the strategy that has been formulated for handing the situation.  A critical element in crisis situations is timing with an emphasis on moving rapidly. [Read more…]

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