Andy Beal's Blog, page 7

Quoted in the The AJC: “Marvel stars want James Gunn rehired despite his vile tweets”

The AJC reached to get my thoughts on whether Marvel director James Gunn was rightly fired for Tweets he sent out years ago?

Here are my full thoughts on the topic.

While the statute of limitations may protect someone from criminal prosecution, such protection does not apply to the court of public opinion.

Your online reputation is always the sum of all of your actions, past and present. In addition, it is the sum of the sincerity of your apology, past and present.

Tweets that were posted when you were younger or embracing a different personality, should still have been accompanied by a sincere apology. If they were merely brushed off or buried, then you could still be held accountable should you later become more famous.

The key is to show humility, demonstrate sincerity, and apologize quickly whenever you make a mistake, otherwise, it could come back to haunt you.

The article can be read here.

The post Quoted in the The AJC: “Marvel stars want James Gunn rehired despite his vile tweets” appeared first on Andy Beal .

#55 – American Airlines provides employees with 4 social media guidelines we dissect

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Do your employees have a social media checklist before take-off? Climb aboard this week’s episode as we discuss 4 important guidelines–and one bonus one!

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

American Airlines’ internal memo to employees about social media guidelines gets leaked to the Chicago Business Journal.

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal:                  Thank you for joining us. We’ve got a good show this week. We’re going to discuss a leaked memo, if you can believe. Those are pretty popular these days, but this one is from American Airlines. It was sent out to their employees with their new social media guidelines.

Andy Beal:                  And Chicago Business Journal obtained a copy of it. We don’t know if this is one that they were just fed, or if they actually did get somebody to leak it to them, and now it’s something that’s public that shouldn’t have been. But we wanted to go through it with you, because it’s actually kind of interesting. I’ve always been a big fan of just having simple social media guidelines as opposed to a massive social media handbook with lots of detail and lots of pages.

Andy Beal:                  And American Airlines, they’re pretty vocal, they’re pretty active on social media. So I thought they did a pretty good job, so we’re gonna go through it, and we’re gonna start off with the first point that they made. They made four points, and the first one is, to be transparent.

Andy Beal:                  And by that, they’re referring to people on social media basically disclosing that they are an actual employee. And I think that’s pretty good, especially if you don’t actually say anything on your profile that you’re an employee of a particular company. But then, chime in on a conversation about that particular company.

Andy Beal:                  You really need to let people know, Erin, don’t you, that hey, I’m talking about this, but I’m also an employee of this company.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely. And I agree, I mean, it’s no secret for anyone that listens fairly regularly that we absolutely push transparency in pretty much every aspect of running a business, whether it be online or in person. But I think it’s good. You see people kind of on social media, pumping up a company and not saying that they’re a representative of that company, and you always give pause and go, you know, do these people really love this brand this much, or are they kind of under cover working for them?

Erin Jones:                  So I think this is good for both sides, both for the company and for the employee.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and I think it’s important that you don’t then go ahead and make up stuff that you think you know and trying to convince the person that’s somebody in authority, when perhaps you’re not. You know, if you’re gonna chime in, then you need to do so, keep in mind, what is your status of the company? What is it you do for them? And then, how much do you actually know?

Andy Beal:                  Because if you don’t know the answer to the question they have, it’s probably a good idea not to try and give them one if you’re not giving them that you actually know fully well what the actual answer is, but maybe just demonstrate that you’re willing to go to the leaders of your company and ask them to respond, and almost be an intermediary for the people that are complaining.

Erin Jones:                  Definitely, especially with an airline. You know, somebody saying that something is absolute could get them or the customer in a lot of trouble down the line, whether it be with logistics, or rules at the airport, and whatnot.

Erin Jones:                  And you know, as a customer and as a representative for companies, I am really comfortable with someone saying, you know what? That’s a great question, let me find out and get back to you. It’s better than dead air, and it’s honest and direct, and I think that it makes the company more human, which is another thing that we talk about a lot here.

Andy Beal:                  Right, and if we’re talking about the whole be transparent, then if you’re gonna do that for somebody, tell them how long it’s gonna take to track that down and say, well, I need to speak to the VP of x, y, z, he’s in a meeting right now. I should hopefully get to speak to him in the next 30 minutes, and then remember that if that timeline goes by and you’ve not got back to them, chime in and just say, hey still waiting to hear, might be another 20 minutes or so, soon as I hear, I’ll keep you updates.

Andy Beal:                  Because a lot of companies, they post too many things that are like, we’re investigating this and as soon as we know we’ll get back to you, but they don’t give you a timeline, and then when hours go by, they’ve not done anything to update you, they’re still actively working on it.

Erin Jones:                  Right, and it prevents the customer from coming back in 15 minutes when you know that it’s gonna take you three hours, so it prevents some of that back and forth that may not need to happen.

Andy Beal:                  All right, so the next point is that they said to be respectful, and by that they’re basically reminding you to be respectful of your social media actions, and quote, unquote, they may reflect on our company and your fellow team members, and they say that you should treat others with respect and dignity.

Erin Jones:                  I like that, and I like that they also said it’s okay to share your opinions, but do so in a way that treats others with respect and dignity. So they’re not saying dilute who you are, or don’t be yourself, but just remember that you are dealing with a customer here, and you are a representative of our brand, so be kind.

Erin Jones:                  You know, and that’s kind of the lesson that I feel like everybody could take away from.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, absolutely. Show compassion to any customer that’s facing an issue, or even if you don’t know all the facts, just kind of, basically think about being in their shoes, and so be respectful and show compassion. Another thing I would say is, just because you see that there is a complaint going on or an argument going on about a particular company issue, and you work for that company, don’t feel like you have to dive into that argument or that discussion if it’s not your normal role to do that.

Andy Beal:                  Because, that may not be something that is helpful for the company, and it may be something that gets you into a lot of hot water. Now, that is completely different if somebody approaches you because they know you work for the company, so even if it’s not your responsibility, but a friend, an associate, or just somebody searching social media, sees that you work for the company, and they approach you, then you still need to be part of that conversation and obviously show respect and compassion.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely. You know, we’ve, again, talked a lot about how people don’t just clock out at five o’clock anymore. If you’re being a representative for your brand, you’re kind of always that representative for your brand. So, if somebody does approach you with a question, even if you can’t answer it, directing them to the right place to find the answer, or just taking a minute to try and help them out, really goes a long way both in their opinion of you as a person and in their opinion of the company.

Andy Beal:                  Right. You may not get paid for it, you may not get an attaboy, attagirl, from it, but can you imagine if someone approaches you and you actually got out of your way? You’re off the clock, but you know how to get the answer or resolve the issue to their face very quickly, and you do so, and nobody officially knows about it, but you know what? The customer is so thrilled that you were proactive like that in helping them, that they then take the time to tweet to or message to you employer and say, “hey, John Doe, Jane Doe, whatever you wanna call them, is amazing because they helped me fix this issue I had within a few minutes, and kudos to them.”

Andy Beal:                  That will go a long way to you getting recognition from your company for helping out.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely. And, not only that, I’m gonna get a little bit woo-y for a second, but, that promotion of good will is contagious. So, you know, you’re putting that good out there and that positive energy out there, and you never know where it’s gonna take it. Instead of ruining someone’s day or making them frustrated, you’re uplifting them, so what bad is gonna come from that?

Andy Beal:                  I always say that you should absolutely assume that someone that’s complaining is probably having the worst day of their life, and maybe even overreacting. Because I’ve seen it first hand where I’ve had people contact me, and they seem really gruff and they’re making accusations that are not true, not substantiated, couldn’t possibly happen, and instead of getting really defensive, I get really compassionate and try to really help and find out that they just got fired yesterday, or they’ve got a child in hospital, and they’re just having a really rough time.

Andy Beal:                  So, now, it’s just always a good idea to assume that somebody that’s complaining to you has got other things going on, perhaps having the worst day of their life, and don’t get ultra defensive right away. Just show that you’re a company that cares, and you wanna get to the bottom of this, you wanna ask questions, you wanna find out what the issue is, and then you work hard to either help them or maybe explain the situation that’s not something technically true.

Andy Beal:                  But yeah, just assume they’re having a rough day, and maybe you’ll turn it around for them and they’ll become your biggest advocate.

Erin Jones:                  And you know, I have found that people that do start out the most frustrated, if I can turn them around, usually end up being the biggest evangelists for the company. You know, if they’re not afraid to make noise when they’re unhappy, they’re probably likely to also make noise if you make their day.

Andy Beal:                  Absolutely. You bang on a drum wrong, it’s gonna make a loud noise. You bang on a drum really well, it’s gonna make a beautiful loud noise. But it’s gonna make a loud noise, either way. You’re absolutely right, Erin. Those that kind of take the time to be vocal on social media because they’re unhappy, pretty good chance that if you make them really happy and you do so ’cause you’re looking at this and saying, okay these people are really active on social media and they’re really loud, I’m gonna assume that, that will continue to the case.

Andy Beal:                  So I’m gonna go over and above to make them happy, and make sure that this is not only resolved but maybe I put in a little bit of incentive or compensation, then you’re absolutely right. Guess what. That person may turn into a really loud, beautiful sound that says nothing but good things about your brand.

Erin Jones:                  Exactly.

Andy Beal:                  All right, number three. So, American Airlines is suggesting that you be responsible. And, this is the quote, “Don’t show proprietary, confidential, nonpublic information or content that you may have access to or hear about from other team members.”

Andy Beal:                  So, you know, they just don’t want you to just dish information. They don’t want you to talk behind the company’s back, they don’t want you to share secrets. We still don’t know whether they want you to leak memos or not, or otherwise this information wouldn’t get out there, but they just want you to be responsible.

Andy Beal:                  And I say that when you are an employee of the company, act like you have ownership in that company. Now, that ownership may not be stock, it may not be any kind of interest in it financially, but you may have sweat equity in the company, because your actions all add up to the success or failure of the company, and so, if you act responsibly, as American Airlines is suggesting, and be guarded, don’t give away informations not public, just always act like you’re the CEO and say, okay, with this help the company or would this hurt us if I revealed this?

Erin Jones:                  Agreed. And, you know, this makes me think of a training that you did actually a long time ago in competitive intelligence. You know, people are really unaware of what little tidbits they give out can add up to a whole lot of information when put together, so I found this one really interesting, because I think that this is definitely a balancing act.

Erin Jones:                  And you know, obviously they don’t want anybody giving away big secrets, but then there may be little things too, that people wanna be careful, a bit more discreet about.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and be the eyes and ears of the company. You don’t have to be the mouthpiece, you don’t have to be vocal. But if you’re on social media, you can watch what’s being shared, you can listen to what’s being discussed, and if you see something that’s being leaked, something confidential that’s being discussed, you don’t have to be the one that chimes in, you don’t have to be the one that speaks up.

Andy Beal:                  You can be the one that goes to the appropriate person in your company, whether that’s a small business and you’re going straight to the owner, or whether that’s a 14500 company, and you’re going to someone in, you know, the communications department or the legal department, wherever it may be, and just say, hey, I came across this tweet, or I know we’re not really active on Instagram, but I saw this screenshot share, you guys may wanna know about it because it’s something we may want to take action on.

Andy Beal:                  So you can be responsible in a way that helps the company without you actually having to be so active on that social media channel. You can just be the eyes and ears.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely, and that kind of information can be invaluable. You know, if that’s a channel that’s not being monitored, you could make a huge difference for your company.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, you can, there’s lots of examples that are out there of individuals that are not necessarily major stars, but they can do something that’s a big help to that company. All right, so number four, they suggest this is kind of an also ran. I was just reading the article, I don’t know if this is an official part, but they also suggested that your as an employee of the company should be aware.

Andy Beal:                  So that means it’s a reminder that anyone can see your posts, including the media. So they just want you to know that anything you talk about online could be watched. That goes for your personal posts, too, so even if they’re unrelated to the company, they could still reflect badly on the company.

Andy Beal:                  Now, they could reflect positively, too, but the concern here is that you post a photo of you playing beer pong and completely drunk, or maybe at some kind of political rally that goes against what your company stands for, whatever it may be, rightly or wrongly, they want you just to be aware that your posts can be shared and seen by customers, shareholders, members of the media, and bloggers. Just about everybody.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely, and this one is the only point that I had a little bit of disagreement on. Part of the policy mentioned that they should utilize their privacy settings to determine how much information is accessible to the public, I would caution people to never assume that anything is not available to the public.

Andy Beal:                  Oh, right, absolutely.

Erin Jones:                  We see countless, time and time again, well I thought it was private, it was a private email. No, nothing is private on the internet. You should always assume that, that information is public and that it can get out there, even if you’re joking, someone might take your tone incorrectly.

Erin Jones:                  I saw a thing online that said, like, dance like no one is watching but email like it may be read aloud in a deposition.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah.

Erin Jones:                  You know, you just don’t know. So I would really caution people to make sure that they’re not putting anything out there that they don’t want as part of their public image, let alone their company’s public image.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, but I would say that considering all the video channels that are out there, you should probably also dance like somebody is gonna watch you at some point. I mean, this is why you don’t find me dancing, because I can’t dance and there are plenty of Smartphones out there now that could capture that horrific attempt at dancing. I look like the polio dynamite when I dance.

Erin Jones:                  You know, I met up with a friend a couple days ago from high school and we were joking about how lucky we are that social media wasn’t really a thing in the 90s because we might not have the jobs that we have today if it had been.

Andy Beal:                  Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, we are very blessed that people weren’t able to pull out a video camera and take video and then post it within seconds, because that would’ve been bad for a lot of us. But I’m always of the belief that you know, this is something that causes chaos now, but in a few years, as the years go on, and we’re already seeing it.

Andy Beal:                  Things that initially were something bad for someone’s reputation, they’ve become diluted, people have become numb to it, because they see them over and over again. So, even, example, I just threw one out there a few minutes ago, like a photo of you at a beer pong game.

Andy Beal:                  Well, five, six, 10 years ago, that might’ve caused some issues, but now, people would be like, well, did you win? You know, which company lets you play beer pong? That sounds awesome. So, you know, our perspective has changed, our perception has changed, and that will continue to happen, because as technology becomes more readily available and we’re sharing stuff online, we don’t become as outraged or surprised when we see something posted, because we’ve just become used to it, because Twitter and Facebook, for the most part, they actively encourage it, a lot of times.

Erin Jones:                  I agree, and they’re everywhere now. Like you said, you can’t really dance like nobody’s watching anymore, because someone is always watching.

Andy Beal:                  And that leads me to our last point. So, Erin and I kind of gave this some thought about, well, what else would we add to these guidelines? And I would add that you should be yourself. So, your personality is part of a larger [inaudible 00:18:00] of the company’s personality.

Andy Beal:                  So, let it shine, let it be out there. Part of the reason why I don’t like comprehensive social media policies and handbooks, is because it can turn you into a robot. It turns you into this conditioned person that has certain things they can say, certain things they cannot say, how to act, and it turns you into this autonomous robot that’s just like everybody else in the company.

Andy Beal:                  And so, a company’s reputation hinges on who they hire, how hard they work, how well they treat a customer, whether it’s online or offline. So, let your personality be, let it shine, not only let the public and the customers see who you are and what value you’re creating, but let your employer see it, too.

Andy Beal:                  So that’s my additional, what di you have Erin?

Erin Jones:                  I agree, mine was similar, it was use good judgment. And I’m advising that both on the employee side and on the employer side. I think that if American takes the time to hire good people, make them way to be good representatives of the brand and let them know that they’re appreciated, then those employees are going to go out of their way to make the company good look in return, because they do have a stake in the company, whether it be their paycheck, their benefits, or their future employment.

Erin Jones:                  So I think it has to go both ways for it to work well.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, I agree. And now, hopefully these guidelines, these just four simple guidelines with a few comments, hopefully that is the result of the fact that American Airlines is, highest people with personality and highest people with drive, and that are helpful, and that contribute to the reputation of the company.

Andy Beal:                  So, that they don’t have to have a whole ton of policies, ’cause they’re not hiring rebels or people that are gonna be vocal and different and against the policies and the personality that American Airlines is building.

Erin Jones:                  Definitely, and before long, they’ll have a reputation for having, you know, great friendly employees, that go out of their way to help out.

Andy Beal:                  Absolutely. And, kudos to American Airlines, you know. We often have stories about airlines that are not positive in any way, but good job for them to send this out to their employees, whether or not it was intentionally leaked or not, it made it to the media, and we’re excited about a company that’s doing this kind of stuff, and hopefully that’ll help American Airlines to build a good reputation, and maybe they’ll then have a story that shows up in social media that’s not delayed flights or missing baggage, or pets that aren’t in health, or passengers in some airlines dragged and beaten.

Andy Beal:                  So hopefully this is good for American Airline, [inaudible 00:20:51].

Erin Jones:                  I’m rooting for them. It is time for an airline to come out on top.

Andy Beal:                  There you go. Well, we’ll end it there. We’d love to get your feedback, you can go to our Facebook page, Andy Beal ORM, or you can go to andybeal.com, and just leave a comment on the relevant post for this podcast. If you have any questions, or if there’s a topic you’d like us to cover, then we’d love to hear from you about that as well.

Andy Beal:                  Erin, thank you for chiming in and adding a lot of valuable contribution to this story.

Erin Jones:                  Thank you so much for having me.

Andy Beal:                  And thank you guys for listening, we hope you’ve enjoyed it, and you’ll tune in again, next time. Thanks a lot, and bye-bye.

The post #55 – American Airlines provides employees with 4 social media guidelines we dissect appeared first on Andy Beal .

#54 – IHOP changes brand to IHOb and becomes this week’s Reputation Burgermaker (see what we did there?)

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There’s a lot of meat on this reputation story, so Erin and I will cook it up fresh and help you digest the tasty and not so tasty ingredients to IHOP’s rebrand to IHOb.

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

IHOP us.
IHOP revealed its new brand.
Competitors .
Was it a reputation win or loss? Tune in to find out!

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal:                  Welcome back, and we’re gonna serve up a hot and pressed story this week. In fact, it’s the house special, because we’re gonna talk about IHOP, which as you may know, stands for International House of Pancakes.

Andy Beal:                  Except that, they recently announced a change to the brand and they’re gonna be called IHOB, with a B, because they’re gonna be the International House of Burgers, which is kind of strange, and just kind of fill in the backstory a little bit.

Andy Beal:                  They first teased about the name change back at the beginning of June, and they showed the new logo, so this is kind of interesting, because it got fans and the media trying to guess why they were going to change from a P to a B, and there’s all kinds of speculation and discussion. And then on June 11th, they announced what the answer was, and that was they were gonna change their name to International House of Burgers.

Andy Beal:                  And they’ve announced seven new steak burgers, including the quote, unquote, Mega Monster, which apparently is really to compete with McDonald’s Big Mac, so they’ve announced these burgers are the highlight of their menu.

Andy Beal:                  And perhaps the reason they’ve done this is that, records show, and numbers show, that their sales have been down around 2 percent, and so maybe they’re just trying to add a new revenue stream because, maybe, the revenue from their pancakes is kind of flat.

Andy Beal:                  Okay, that was a bad joke. Okay, moving on.

Andy Beal:                  But they have hinted that this is gonna be, maybe, temporary, they’re not gonna make this a permanent brand. Maybe just a few weeks, they have not really said for sure. And they do actually still have both Twitter accounts, so it looks like they’ll eventually switch back.

Andy Beal:                  But in the meantime, well, social media has gone absolutely crazy, hasn’t it Erin?

Speaker 4:                  It has absolutely gone, absolutely crazy. I have seen some incredibly amusing tweets. You know, hearing that this is a brilliant marketing campaign, I’m still not positive, you know? I think brilliant marketing is if it sells hamburgers, which seems to be their ultimate goal, so I think it still has yet to be seen.

Speaker 4:                  I think they’re gonna sell more pancakes from this, but I don’t know that I would be going to IHOP for a burger.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, it’s interesting. Well, to be honest with you, I don’t know if I would go to IHOP for a pancake. I’ve only maybe been there once in the last 10, 15 years. So, it’s interesting that, you know, this has really helped them to build up some buzz, even just the teasing of the new name got people talking about them.

Andy Beal:                  And it makes you wonder, how many people are gonna head out there to check out these hamburgers? Because, you know, there may be a lot of people that don’t even consider going out there for a pancake, and yet you got their competitors that are in the burger space, just kind of teasing them a little bit.

Andy Beal:                  Wendy’s tweeted, “Remember when you were like seven and thought that changing your name to Thunder Bear Sword would be super cool? Like that, our cheeseburgers are still better.” And then Burger King even went as far as changing their name to Pancake King, which was hilarious.

Speaker 4:                  It was, and I loved the Wendy’s tweet that said, “We’re not really afraid of the burgers from a place that decided pancakes were too hard.” You know, Wendy’s social media is fantastic. I know we’ve discussed that in the past, but they’ve really, really been the real MVP here.

Andy Beal:                  You know, it’s interesting, though. I did a little bit of digging around, ’cause I was curious. I’m like, well, you know, you’ve got, Wendy’s, Burger King, Waffle House said they’re not gonna change, Whataburger said we’re never changing our name to “Whatapancake”. So, I kinda dug around their menus, and you know, Burger King offers pancakes at breakfast.

Andy Beal:                  And Wendy’s doesn’t offer pancakes currently right now, at least, not in the US, but overseas, you can get these really kind of, lame looking pancakes that I wouldn’t spend money on, so it’s kind of interesting that they’re teasing IHOP and saying, you know, you shouldn’t be in the burger business, when they dipped their toe in the breakfast business.

Andy Beal:                  So it’s kind of, I don’t know, I think that they’re mostly just trying to jump on this bandwagon and get a little bit of the publicity that IHOP’s picking up from this.

Speaker 4:                  I agree, and, you know, the words are coming from the far corners of the internet. This has really perked up people all over the place, mostly at IHOP’s expense, but I would really be surprised if just the awareness didn’t increase their pancake sales, if nothing else.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, I mean, I’ve looked back, at the different campaigns. Things that we’ve talked about. So, if we pull out brands like McDonald’s, Superbowl commercials, Burger King, Wendy’s, is really good at being tongue and cheek.

Andy Beal:                  Even negative stories, things like that, there’s a lot of buzz. Lot of discussion that goes on out there, but my first, and immediate reaction to all of this was, like, how often do we hear about IHOP? I mean, you know, when I was doing my research and I saw that Waffle House kind of chimed in and said that they know their roots, I’m like, oh yeah, there’s a Waffle House, too. You never hear about them.

Andy Beal:                  So hear about how much buzz this is creating for them. It kind of reminds me a little bit of when Kmart did their campaign, many years ago, called Ship my Pants, and it went viral. Great videos, that created a lot of buzz.

Andy Beal:                  But then the speculation was, well how much is this gonna actually help them to increase their revenue? And there’s been, a number of them have been like that, but you still gotta think this is gonna bring awareness, maybe even help them build a brand.

Andy Beal:                  ‘Cause I have never seen a memorable IHOP commercial. I know they do the ones with, like, their featured flavors of the month, and those sometimes make me drool a little bit, but they’re even running TV campaigns right now, to push this branding change, and to kind of, like, promote their burgers.

Andy Beal:                  So they’ve really stepped up that brand awareness, and we don’t know if that’s gonna transpire into more revenue, and increase sales, but I’m not seeing anything too negative from this. I mean, there is a little bit of negative sentiment out there.

Speaker 4:                  There is, and you know, I think that, this may be a little bit out of touch with, I don’t know if I wanna say current culture or popularity. I feel like they kind of missed the mark by really focusing on burgers.

Speaker 4:                  If they had turned to International House of Bacon, I feel like, their target market, which I don’t know where you are, but you see a lot of college students, they’re late at night having pancakes, or very, very early in the morning. I feel like bacon would have been a great thing to capitalize on, because, you mentioned earlier that they’re trying to compete with the Big Mac.

Speaker 4:                  Like, their biggest burger is competing with the Big Mac, I feel like they could have aimed higher there.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and I think you’re right. Is it really a good product to focus on? I mean, just about everywhere you go sells hamburgers. I mean, it’s not like you’ve come with, a particular product that is gonna set you apart.

Andy Beal:                  You are now trying to compete with the burger chains that only focus on that, and maybe, create really tasty hamburgers, but you know, yeah, you can go to TGI Fridays, you can go to Applebee’s, you can get a pretty good hamburger there, too. So, what’s really helping you here?

Andy Beal:                  That’s definitely a valid criticism. But, I think that you’re right. I think they could have gone with bacon. Heck, they could have gone with avocado, I don’t know. They could have gone with something that would have set them apart and they still, I think, did a really good job of putting the teaser out there, changing the brand, getting the publicity, kind of putting a little dig in the ribs of these burger chains that have now made them the focus on their attention.

Andy Beal:                  And I think that’s all building into some good hype for them. And I know that you were kind of on the fence, but I’m kind of feeling this is a winner in terms of reputation wise.

Speaker 4:                  I like it. I just am not sure if the overall sentiment is positive, or if it’s positively mocking them. You know, I’m going back and forth a little bit. I would like to see, in two months, what has happened with their sales over the last year. You know, that’s gonna really sell me.

Speaker 4:                  I think that it’s fun, I think that it was a great plan, I just think they could have done better.

Andy Beal:                  Okay, yeah. So, I’ve kind of split it up between, I’ve got some bullet points here I’m gonna kind of talk through. I’m a fan of this, I think it’s a big winner.

Andy Beal:                  So I’ve got a big list of things that I think they’re gonna get from this that are positive, but I have pulled out a handful of negatives from this. So let’s start with the positives. Let me just go through this list and then we’ll, kind of, get your thoughts on it.

Andy Beal:                  So why do I think that this is a reputation winner? First of all, they did a great job with the teaser. So, not only did that build speculation, but it got feedback for them. Because, everybody was guessing and giving them answers, and tweeting to them about what that B could stand with them.

Andy Beal:                  And just as you highlighted bacon, they probably got a ton of insights from their fans, as to what they might hope to get. Now, think about how that could then trigger a future campaign. If a lot of people did ask for bacon, and they didn’t get it, because IHOP already committed to burgers, than maybe a future campaign could be surrounding bacon.

Andy Beal:                  So they’ve kind of gotten some free research there.

Speaker 4:                  Ooh.

Andy Beal:                  Well, bear with me. I’ll go through these and then you can make notes and tell me what you agree or disagree with.

Andy Beal:                  Okay, so the launch, wasn’t just on social media. So they’ve changed their name, they changed the logo, and they’re running TV ads. So, this is, was, some brands just do a social media campaign, and it’s limited to that buzz that you and I see a lot of because we’re on social media a lot.

Andy Beal:                  But IHOP has gone to different channels as well. Now, number three on my list. Facebook does show that this is mixed sentiment. And we’ve talked about, you know, a lot of criticism. And if you look at their initial announcement, I went to Facebook, ’cause Facebook is one of the few places where you can actually look at the emoji icons, get an idea of what people actually think as opposed to just hitting like.

Andy Beal:                  So, the initial announcement on Facebook was mostly negative. But, if you look at the reactions to their cover photo, which is the new logo. I’m sorry, the cover photo is just burgers, and then the profile photo shows the new logo.

Andy Beal:                  You actually can see that it’s mostly likes, and mostly positive, maybe laughing, but it’s not as much negative that shows up there.

Andy Beal:                  Alright, number four. Everyone is talking about this now. Most of it is sarcasm, but it’s also generally light hearted criticism. It’s not a big reputation crisis for them, it’s not like they’re now putting out fires. There’s a lot of ribbing going on, and a lot of sarcasm, but overall, it’s either tongue in cheek or it’s positive, but it’s not really like crushing their reputation.

Andy Beal:                  Number five. Now, this one is kind of interesting because I do a lot of focus on Google reputation management. And, think about all these stories that are gonna flood Google. And this is actually gonna insulate IHOP, should they ever actually have a reputation crisis. Because now, their search results on Google are gonna be flooded with this kind of story, and compared to, maybe a salmonella breakout, this kind of story being dominate in the social results is actually gonna be a lot better than some other major crisis that could show in the future.

Andy Beal:                  And, lastly, they’ll get to see if new customers are actually interested in tasting the burgers, and we already speculated. Are people actually gonna go there to try the burgers? Are people even gonna think to themselves, you know what? I like their pancakes, I’m gonna head over there.

Andy Beal:                  So, that’s my list of why I think this is a winner. Anything jump out at you? Anything you disagree with?

Speaker 4:                  First of all, I love the list. And I like the secondary perspective you took, because I definitely hadn’t considered the insulation against future attacks, and I think that’s brilliant, and I hope that they considered that too. You know, we may never know. I think that, there are gonna be a few things riding on the success of this.

Speaker 4:                  First of all, if they set expectations accordingly. You know, if people are going in expecting an IHOP burger, and they get an IHOP burger, than I think they’ll be in good shape. But if they’re going in expecting a over the top, gourmet, experience, you know, that’s not gonna happen.

Speaker 4:                  Saying that McDonald’s is their main competition, expectations seem to be set accordingly. So, really, I think, I saw a post on Facebook yesterday that said, they need to stay in their lane, and I think that, even changing food, as long as they continue to maintain expectations for what level dining experience they are, that I do think they will be in pretty good shape.

Speaker 4:                  My children love IHOP, I have two young kids, and they think that going to IHOP for pancakes is super exciting and fun, so will I order a burger next time we go? Not likely, but it will keep them top of mind, and I think that, that, with school being out and it being summer, that that’s a good place to be.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. Now, you make an interesting point about the burgers and stuff, because that leads, let me roll into my, I have three point for why this is not a good idea, or why this could hurt them. And one is, there’s not really much of an incentive for going to try the burgers now.

Andy Beal:                  So, like you said, comparing yourself to a Big Mac. Now, Big Macs are tasty, but they’re not the most gourmet, delicious burger you’ve ever had, so you’re not really creating an incentive to go try these burgers.

Andy Beal:                  And, I would have thought, as well, that they would have set, maybe a shorter timeline for this branding change. Because, we don’t know when it’s gonna end, so I would have said, hey, this is two weeks only. We’re gonna be the IHOB, and if you come in and get a hamburger, you’re gonna get this, this, and this, or we’re also gonna throw in a free dessert.

Andy Beal:                  I think they’re doing unlimited fries, so there’s something there, but there’s just no reason to go in and try this right now. And, why would they try it later? Why would somebody wait for later? So, I don’t know if this is really creating an urgency or much of an incentive to go in and try them.

Andy Beal:                  I also noticed that they have not secured the domain name IHOB.com. It actually goes to some holding page owned by somebody else. And if you’re going to use a brand for a campaign, you have to register that. Now, you may not remember this, I know Erin will probably remember this, but listeners won’t.

Andy Beal:                  So, I own the software company, Tracker, and few years ago, we did a Halloween promotion, and we actually had Trackula. And, T-R-A-C-K-U-L-A. So, I had this hand puppet that looked like a Muppet, and we did this little campaign, we did videos.

Andy Beal:                  I even had the domain name, I had the Twitter account, we changed the logo. So, IHOP has done some of that, but I would’ve thought, if you’re gonna do a new brand, at least get the domain name and redirect it so that people are like really convinced that you’re putting an effort into this.

Speaker 4:                  Definite.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 4:                  Oh, no, I was just gonna piggy back off that and say, you know, they started out with really, really good congruence between channels, and then just kind of fell off right there.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and we’re big fans of congruence, if you look back at our episodes, we talked about that.

Andy Beal:                  Lastly, they did get a lot of buzz from this. I don’t know how much of it’s gonna stick, but they also shared a lot of this buzz. It’s really, if you look at this, the buzz is circulating the burger industry in general. So, yeah, IHOP is getting a little bit of biz by doing this branding, but Wendy’s is jumping out as being the hot and fresh burgers, and Burger King is kind of chiming in and tongue in cheek, so this is kind of helping the entire burger industry, and it makes you wonder that, when people look at this and they start craving a burger, they may, as we already said, probably not gonna be an IHOP burger.

Andy Beal:                  They’re gonna go to a particular restaurant. Here in Raleigh, it’s a char grill burger. I mean, if you are in the triangle, or if you ever visit Raleigh, give me a call. I will take you to Char Grill and let you decide for yourself if this is a better burger than what IHOP is offering.

Speaker 4:                  I love it, and I feel the same way. I do like the positive energy that’s come from this, it’s been a really nice distraction from some of the more depressing news, you know? The news cycle lately has been a little bit redundant and just not very uplifting, so if nothing else comes from this, it’s been really fun.

Speaker 4:                  But I agree with you, there is nothing better than a small, local burger joint, if you want a good, even fast food burger.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, we’ll leave that on the note that, hey, even small businesses can have a better reputation than these large, multi million dollar companies. So hopefully you’ve got some tips from this for any campaigns that you wanna do, but also know that, hey, being a small, local burger joint is probably the way to go, and you’re probably still gonna do a lot more business than this IHOB is.

Andy Beal:                  And we’ll see how long it takes them to change back. So, thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you appreciated that. If you have any questions or any feedback, please go to our Facebook page, /andybealorm, or just go to andybeal.com, find the post for this podcast episode, and just leave us a comment, we’d love to hear from you.

Andy Beal:                  Maybe give your thoughts on, well, maybe you’ve even tried the burger and you can tell us what you think of it. Erin, I don’t know about you, but, I’m not in a rush to go to IHOP to get a burger, but I appreciate you chiming in and joining me this week.

Speaker 4:                  I feel the same way. Thank you so much for having me.

Andy Beal:                  And we appreciate you guys listening, we hope you’ll join us again nice time. Thanks a lot, and bye-bye.

The post #54 – IHOP changes brand to IHOb and becomes this week’s Reputation Burgermaker (see what we did there?) appeared first on Andy Beal .

#53 – The importance of offline and online reputation congruence

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Does your business operate online and offline? Try not to let your reputation be Jekyll and Hyde.

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

We look at examples of how businesses have split reputation personalities due to operating online and offline.

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Coming soon!

The post #53 – The importance of offline and online reputation congruence appeared first on Andy Beal .

#52 – How Amazon, retailers & consumers should deal with fake reviews!

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Fake reviews? Whether you’re the marketplace, the retailer, or the consumer, we share reputation management advice!

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

Despite taking previous action, Amazon is still facing an intricate scheme of fake 5-star reviews.

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal:                  Thank you for joining us. We actually just have one story this week. We almost didn’t do the podcast because we couldn’t find a number of stories, but there was one that Buzzfeed released, and it was about Amazon. If you haven’t seen it, you can click on our notes and read it. It’s a pretty lengthy story, so I’m going to give you like a one-line summary.

Despite Amazon previously banning fake reviews because they gave out free products, Amazon is still facing an underground marketplace for retailers where companies are basically offering payment and incentives in exchange for five-star reviews. These are still continually showing up on Amazon, and it’s helping these companies to ship products that maybe don’t necessarily deserve five-star reviews, but they’re getting a ton of them. This has been known for many years. It’s kind of like astroturfing, which is a play on being an opposite of grassroots. Instead of organically growing your review profile grassroots-style, this is astroturfing because you’re basically paying for something that’s artificial. It was kind of shocking to read through that article there and just see how comprehensive this is and just the networks they’re using and the processes they’re using to do all of this.

Erin Jones:                  It’s amazing. I think we’ve discussed this before, but if they put half of that effort into just building that grassroots-positive business, I would really like to see the difference in where they would be because I feel like a lot of these companies spend a lot of time trying to game the system to what end.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. It’s like it’s getting to the point now, instead of investing in the product, in PR, in influencer outreach, in what, all the other things, social media and customer feedback and engagement and surveys and things like that, they’re basically looking at this and saying, “Hey, we’ll just throw a few dollars at individuals, and we’ll just get some fake five-star reviews, which is our ultimate goal.”

They’re using networks such as Reddit where you can go in and you can bid to get particular product for free, and then you also get like two or three bucks as well so you can then turn around and sell that product back on eBay or Amazon Marketplace maybe. Yeah, they’ve really, I don’t know, they’re kind of going about this the wrong way.

I’ve actually seen this. This is kind of interesting. I actually, I buy many products on Amazon and I look at the reviews, and I actually went through something where I saw this in action because I bought this, it’s a reversible belt. It’s black on one side, brown on the other. I needed something like that for a trip I was going on. It had amazing five-star reviews, but when I got it, it was cheap pleather. I mean like really plasticy feeling and really badly done. I just felt compelled to go leave a review of I think two stars because nobody else was bringing this up. It really made me realize what was going on.

What I thought we would do today is break down the story into three different perspectives from a reputation point of view. We’re going to talk about how this affects Amazon and other marketplaces. We’re going to talk about some reputation tips for retailers, and then we’ll finish off with consumers, so how you can dig through them and also how you can protect yourself. Sound good, Erin?

Erin Jones:                  Sounds wonderful.

Andy Beal:                  All right. For Amazon, the biggest thing that jumped out to me, they’ve already taken action, but I really think that they should probably build an algorithm to try and analyze the context of these reviews. Instead of just looking at, hey, this is a, seeing a review that says, “Great product, worth the price, fantastic,” whatever it is, whatever the minimum word count is, they should build an algorithm that looks for cliché terms and looks for authenticity in the actual review, build something that’s looking for, to check boxes to say this review is actually legitimate, but Erin, what do you think?

Erin Jones:                  I agree with that. I think another level they could go with that is to look at the actual reviewers and see if they’re … I would guess that some of these reviewers are leaving the exact same review for every product that they’re reviewing if they’re in a hurry. See if the content in their reviews is duplicated, and then maybe actually take a closer look at the actual reviewers.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, because other marketplaces do something similar to that, like for example, Yelp. If you go and look at Yelp reviews, especially if you’re building a profile where you just go out and you leave one or two really positive reviews, and that’s all you’re doing, those reviews generally don’t get shown up. They get hidden because Yelp’s got an algorithm that tries to detect how authentic it is basically by looking at how many friends you’ve got, how many reviews you leave, what’s the mixture of stars that you leave, all kinds of things that they keep to themselves. Yeah, I think looking at the authenticity of the reviewer is a great system. Even if we just don’t do it ourselves where you can go and just click it yourself, I think Amazon needs to do something where they can order these by, and not just order the actual review that shows up, but maybe even filter out the stars that show up in the overall profile.

Erin Jones:                  I agree. I think they’ve made some effort. You can see which purchases have been verified to have been purchased through Amazon, but they definitely need to be doing more. I tend to trust verified purchases more, but I think some of these retailers with what they’re doing to game the system go so far as to pay people to buy the product from Amazon, so-

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Erin Jones:                  … it’s really hard to know. One thing I tend to look at, and this might be jumping towards what the consumers can analyze, but looking at what content is in the review, that’s another thing that Amazon could look at. Instead of just saying, “Five stars. Love this product. Its perfect,” show those reviews that say what does someone love about it, what does someone hate about it, like the most useful option that they have there, and put a little bit more weight on how useful the content of the review is in addition to it not being duplicated all over the reviewer’s profile.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. There are also monitoring companies out there now that specialize in analyzing reviews on Amazon and then giving you their thoughts based percentage-wise on how likely these reviews are legitimate. You can punch in a product, and they’ll look at the review profile and tell you the chances that this is all automated. If Amazon doesn’t do something like that, then … I guess they got other projects to work on, but they buy so many companies. You think if they don’t actually want to research it and build it themselves, they can at least buy one of these companies that’s out there doing that.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely. If anyone has the resources to do it, it’s Amazon.

Andy Beal:                  All right, well, let’s talk about the retailers then. What are some of your tips for other retailers that are selling products or selling services that are trying to build good reviews so that they do so in a legitimate way and product their reputation.

Erin Jones:                  I think that this is … Oh, we could talk about this for days. I think the first thing that brands should do is ask. Send a follow-up email when someone purchases something or even put a little note in the box. I know Amazon has some tricky rules about that, but just ask people for a review. You need to be careful about how you do that, but the easier you make the process for the end user, the more quickly it’s going to get done and the more authentically it will be done.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. I’m same as you, especially when I buy cheaper products that are in the $10-30 range. There’s always some little business card or little note in there that basically suggests if I’ve got five-star review to share, then they’d love for me to share on Amazon, and if there’s anything, the negative that I’d like to share, they give me a telephone number or an email to reach out to them, which I think is generally okay. I mean, like you said, look to get feedback. The key thing is to not offer to give away a product for free if you’ll agree to give five stars.

Now, I think there’s an opportunity to give away some kind of discount code or something like that. I’ve seen where it’s like you buy one product, and if you give a review, then you get a coupon for another product, but I think one of the key things is to do so without trying to just get a five-star product, so you’re basically trying to get reviews. You’re asking for reviews, and hopefully, people will give mostly positive reviews, but there’ll be some in there that mixed, and that won’t give you a more organic reputation because it will give consumers something to look at that doesn’t look suspicious.

Erin Jones:                  Yeah, and statistically, people are a lot more willing to trust a brand that does have a mixed mag of reviews than all five-star reviews or even all on-star reviews. Being authentic, again, I feel like we always circle back to being authentic, but being authentic with your audience and letting them know, “Hey, you wouldn’t only be doing us a favor, but you would also be letting any potential customers know what you think about us, what we could do better,” sometimes asking that really generates positive feedback. I’ve seen brands say, “Tell us what we could do better here,” and people come back and say, “Wow, I didn’t expect that. That was really refreshing, and you’re amazing,” but I also think brands need to be ready. If someone does provide some constructive criticism, you need to be ready to act on it.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. It’s a great idea to consider, hey, look how easy it is for us to get feedback now. Everything’s online. It’s easy to get to from your mobile device. Twenty years ago, we’d have to send out surveys and ask people to fill them out and offer a chance to win a $20 gift card in return, and it would take weeks. We’d have to go through all this manually. Here, you’ve now, and now you’ve got this online process where people can just leave feedback within a couple of minutes and give a few stars for different aspects of your product. There’s a great way to get this feedback so that, yeah, not only you’re increasing potentially your reputation with the number of reviews, but you’re getting feedback on the product, how well it works, any flaws that it has, how it competes against your competitors.

Erin Jones:                  Right. For those people that I know are shaking their heads right now that are afraid to ask for feedback because it may be negative, I’ve even seen email marketing software where that you can send an email saying, “Are you happy with your product?” There’s a yes button and a no button, and if you click on the yes button, it goes straight to their Amazon review page. If you click on no, it goes back to the brand’s customer service center-

Andy Beal:                  Yeah-

Erin Jones:                  … so-

Andy Beal:                  … get five stars. Is that …. They do that right?

Erin Jones:                  They do. I think it’s great. It gives the brand one more chance to make things right. It’s not directing people away from feedback. It’s getting them directly back in contact with you so that you can resolve the situation and then possibly convert them into a happy customer.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. That reminds me, a few years ago, I built the small company GuestComment where we had iPad kiosk for people to leave guest reviews of hotels, and we did a similar kind of process where it’s, “Hey, please enter in your information. Give us a review. We’ll give you a coupon for a free cocktail.” If it was four or five stars, we would encourage them to share that online, and if it was three or less, we would not only thank them for the feedback, but we would send them an immediate alert to the general manager of that hotel so that they could try and figure out and intervene and resolve any issues before the guest even leaves the property and gets home and uses TripAdvisor. Yeah, having some kind of trigger built in is a great thing for retailers.

Erin Jones:                  Yeah, and everybody should be using a system like that. Think of how many crisises could be averted just by someone walking out into the lobby and saying, “Hey, I heard you’re not having a great time. How can I make this right?”

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Jones:                  That’s all people want.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, exactly. That really … Honestly, most negative reviews, most negative things, whether it’s a star review or a blog post or whatever it may be, generally happens because they feel so frustrated that there was nobody active enough to resolve the situation while they were either engaged or they just bought their product, whatever it is, and so they then turn to online channels, whatever’s the most popular.

That kind of, again, is another piece of advice. You should be focusing on your centers of influence to try and figure out where is it these customers are going to head to. That’s where you want to focus, but as Erin said, you need to try and get to them and resolve it before they even have a chance to get to TripAdvisor, Yelp, or Angie’s List, or whatever it may be.

Erin Jones:                  Absolutely, and to piggyback on your center of influence comment, don’t overwhelm people with choices of places to review. If you send out an email with 15 different review links, that’s the quickest way for me to get to the delete button. It’s overwhelming I don’t have time to leave 15 reviews. Give me one or two, and I’ll make it happen.

Andy Beal:                  Absolutely. All right, so let’s move on then. Let’s finish up with some reputation advice for consumers, and this is both for them making purchases and also to protect themselves. Some tips that we’re going to share, I’ve got one or two. I buy a lot of products online. Here’s something I would definitely recommend. That is, check the reviews that are left and look at the timestamp for the reviews, especially if it’s on Amazon. If you see a ton of reviews that are all within a day or two, then that should raise a red flag because that indicates that maybe these people were all given a free product or an incentive around the same week or two, and they all came on and just kind of, they just came on and left these reviews very quickly. Yes, it might be five stars, but they’re all left over two weeks, and that’s something that would make me want to delve deeper into the other reviews.

What about you, Erin? What do you have?

Erin Jones:                  I agree. Another thing that I put more trust in is reviews that have specifics. If a review just says, “This is the best. This is amazing. Wonderful product,” that’s not getting a lot of stock from me because it doesn’t look authentic. When people are really specific about what they love when they’re talking about a restaurant, “Oh, the barbacoa tacos are amazing,” or, “Their iced tea is out of this world,” with Amazon, the texture or color of a fabric, things like that, even how the product is packaged, I’m going to view a lot more authentically because they’ve taken the time to talk about their whole experience from getting the product to testing it out.

Even negative reviews. Sometimes, someone doesn’t like something about a product that I love, so if they say, “Oh, I hate the way that this charger plugs into the wall,” that might be something I’m actually looking for. The negative reviews aren’t always going to turn me away from something. For me, the main thing that I put trust in is people that use specifics.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, I would actually agree and add that I like to look at the review profiles right in between, so the people that have left three stars. I read those to see what did they like or what didn’t they like. I try to figure out what’s the commonality between those to see if there’s any real clues of product issues because if it’s all five-star, I don’t necessarily trust them, and if it’s all one-star, and then I don’t trust that either. Maybe they’re a competitor. Maybe they are, I don’t know, it could be any number of reasons to why they’re leaving a one-star review. Maybe they were paid to do so. Who knows.

Three-star reviews are a really good way to find out the legitimate concerns because they’re usually something that you can look at and go, “Oh, well, yeah. They said the battery life is only six hours, but you know what, that’s enough for me. I think I’ll be fine with that.”

Another thing you can do is if you do see a lot of five-star reviews on a product, and then you buy it, and then you disagree, then you can help ensure your authenticity as a reviewer by leaving five stars on products you agree with and leaving one, two, or three stars on products that have been getting glowing reviews so that other people can follow you and say, “Yeah, this person is leaving authentic reviews because when I look at their profile, they’re not just all five stars. I see where they have three-star reviews, two-star reviews.” That will really help you.

Then lastly, just be very careful about being enticed to leave a free review in exchange for money or free products. I know that can sometimes seem like a good deal, but especially if you do a lot of shopping on that particular marketplace, you can risk hurting your own profile, your own reputation with that particular marketplace on Amazon because people can go click and see how you’ve listed it. I think that just be cautious here. Don’t make it a common thing where you just go on Reddit and get paid of all of them, but if you’ve left a three-star review because there was something wrong, and then they correct it and you up it to four stars, maybe you just put that as an edit on your review, but don’t feel like you’re being incentivized to go one way or the other.

Erin Jones:                  I agree. One last thing that people can do, I kind of like to say, shake off the haters and the fanboys and really read what’s in the middle there because those are the people that are probably going to be a little bit more honest and thoughtful in the review process. Typically, nothing is perfect and nothing is absolutely loathsome, so that middle ground is probably where you’re going to get your best information.

Andy Beal:                  Yup, and don’t forget to ask your friends and family. You can go to other marketplaces. You can go to, or you can go to Twitter or Facebook and just say, “Hey, thinking about buying this. What are your thoughts?” Doesn’t have to be so organized and structured. You could also just go to friends and family and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about this. It’s got 3.5 stars. What do you all think?”

All right, well, that’s our tips. Hopefully that’s useful, whether or not you are a marketplace, a retailer, or a consumer. Hopefully there’s something in there you can take along with you. If you have any tips that you’d like to share, head to our Facebook page or just go to andybeal.com and leave a comment and let us know. We’d love to get your thoughts on something that you can add to this or any tips you have for either these companies or for individuals.

Erin, thanks for chiming in. Always a pleasure to chat with you.

Erin Jones:                  Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Andy Beal:                  Thank you all for listening. We really do appreciate. We hope you’ll tune in again next time. Thanks a lot, and bye-bye.

The post #52 – How Amazon, retailers & consumers should deal with fake reviews! appeared first on Andy Beal .

#51 – Tony Robbins’ critical #MeToo mistakes on his way to becoming #ReputationRoadkill

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Andy’s flying solo today, so it’s an abbreviated look at the lessons learned from Tony Robbins #MeToo scandal.

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

Tony Robbins faced a reputation crisis after challenging the motives of the #MeToo movement.

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal:                  Okay, something a little bit different this week. Unfortunately, Erin can’t join us. She has a personal matter to attend to, but I have promised a few of you that I would jump in and talk about Tony Robbins. So, this is going to be a mini-podcast, a mini-episode this week.

For those of you not aware, Tony Robbins is … you know, he’s our figurative reputation roadkill. There’s a video showing him saying that women use the MeToo movement to gain significance, and that many Hollywood executives he coaches are now refusing to hire attractive women, believing the risk is too great. And this video from a few weeks back has circulated, and Tony Robbins has had a lot of reputation issues because of this. He’s had to apologize. And this has definitely been a serious crisis for the author, the personality, the life coach, whatever you want to call him.

You know, looking at this, I just wanted to kind of help us to learn from this, and it’s something that I am aware of as being an expert. And that is, when you become an expert on a topic, when you become a leader in your industry, you become susceptible to arrogance and hubris. You start talking in absolutes. You think that you know everything, not just on your expert matter, your subject matter, but on related things, too.

So when this subject came up with Tony, you can tell that this kind of overlapped a little into what he thought was his lane, if you like, as a life coach, and you know, he wanted to demonstrate that he was an expert. I kind of get the feeling, though, that he just didn’t understand it. And if you look at his apology, he admits he’s got a lot to learn.

So, in hindsight, he shouldn’t have talked about this in absolutes, by saying that these women were trying to gain significance. Which, if you look at the MeToo movement, that’s not really what it’s about. This is why I have not really commented on this movement, about how it’s affecting reputations, because it’s clear that there are a lot of evil men out there doing evil things to women, and these women are coming forward, and they’re brave to do so. That’s all I know, so that’s all I’m going to say about the topic. And perhaps that’s what Tony should have said.

The other thing is, when you become like this larger than life personality, people want to attack you. You become a target for criticism. If this had been just an everyday person making a comment about this, it would have gotten a little bit of attention. But because he is this big mega-star that’s, you know, probably … I don’t know if he’s a billionaire, but he’s certainly made hundreds of millions of dollars … there are people that are out there that are ready to attack him, and listening to his words closely.

So, the other thing I wanted to talk about as well, is his apology. Now, his apology did check all the right boxes. He didn’t do the, “I’m sorry if people felt offended,” that kind of stuff. It seemed like a sincere apology. But what I didn’t care for is that he didn’t make the apology until a number of days later, and he had seen the damage his original comments were making to his reputation, to his brand. He should have let his conscience lead him to apologize, not the pressure from social media.

The longer you wait, the more fuel is added to this fire. The more … really insincere it can appear. Even when you say all the right things, if it takes days for you to apologize, it comes across that you’re only apologizing because you’re trying to clean things up, and you’re trying to make it all go away. I think there’s definitely a strong part of that with Tony Robbins’ apology. It took him days to respond.

He should have known early on that he had made a mistake. Honestly, saying that women are going to hurt themselves because now they’re not going to get hired because men are fearful of hiring attractive women. Oh my gosh, the moment the words left his mouth, he should have apologized. That’s not something you sit on and wait. So clearly, there’s an aspect here of waiting for this to see how this pans out, and he waited too long.

He’s definitely going to recover from this, but there’s going to be scar tissue. You know, he’s still going to sell lots of books, he’s still going to sell out the audiences, but there will always be this question hanging over him. It’ll probably make his Wikipedia profile, it’ll probably show in the top 20 of Google, and there’ll be something there that lingers and it’s going to hurt him.

So what can we learn from this? Because there is some takeaways here. Now, again, these are not absolutes, right? So if I had Erin here, she would chime in as well. This is why we have two people on this show normally, because I don’t ever want to think I have all the answers. But I think it’s safe to say that if you get feedback from your customers, your stakeholders, your friends even, that you are wrong, or maybe that your product is poor, or that you’ve lost a step in terms of the service you provide, just because you are top of your game, don’t assume they are wrong.

Just because you’ve had previous success does not mean that you are impervious to making mistakes. You’ve got to listen to that feedback early, and take a hard, honest look at yourself and say, “Okay, enough people are saying this. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe we do need to improve our service. Maybe we do need to make our products better. Or maybe I need to rethink the comments that I’ve made. Maybe I was wrong with what I said.”

The other thing as well, is certainly when it comes to online, don’t talk about topics that you don’t understand. Stay in your lane. Especially if you’re the leader of your company, or a spokesperson for your company, it’s going to be really hard for you to separate your personal opinion with your expert opinion, and so when you start making these statements about things that are not your expertise, then you run the risk of saying something that you don’t know. You know, you kind of don’t have all the facts, you misrepresent something … I don’t know, you just kind of drift out of your lane, and you can come under fire.

There are plenty of topics that I don’t cover. We don’t talk a lot about politics, we don’t talk a lot about social issues, because I don’t understand them enough. If I was to take on a client with a reputation issue like that, I would spend weeks researching the topic before I even consulted and worked with the client on how best to address the situation, or to talk to it. So, making an ad lib, off the cuff comment is potentially going to be damaging to you.

There you go, just a quick episode this week. We’d love to get your thoughts on what you think Tony Robbins did wrong, if there’s anything I’ve missed, what you think he can do now to repair his reputation, whether you agree with my comments or not. Again, I always try to come at this from an understanding that I don’t have all the answers, but hey, let’s discuss it.

Go to our Facebook page, Facebook.com/andybealORM. And then andybeal.com, just go to any blog post and leave us a comment. Erin hopefully will be back with us next time, and we hope you’ll join us then. Thanks a lot, and bye-bye.

The post #51 – Tony Robbins’ critical #MeToo mistakes on his way to becoming #ReputationRoadkill appeared first on Andy Beal .

#50 – Tesla’s reputation recall, the Ripple effect, and do consumers want political brands?

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A packed show this week. We dress down Tesla and talk up Ripple. We also discuss what consumers want brands to take a stance on.

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

Tesla announces a new recall. Is it fair to hold them to a higher standard?
Ripple donates $29m but how does that help its reputation?
Do consumers want brands to take social and political stances? Survey says?

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal:                  Welcome to what we hope’s going to be another good show. In fact, this is our 50th, so yay us for making it halfway to 100. Good show this week, and we’re going to start off with a story about Tesla. Now, I don’t know if you know, but there’s been a product recall. Tesla’s announced that they’re recalling 123,000 Model S cars, because a fault with the power steering.

Now, it’s a proactive move by Tesla. There’s no major issues. It’s not like cars are crashing en masse or anything like that. And it only affects the power steering, so you can still drive it, but it’d be like driving an old school car from ’70s or ’80s where you just can’t move the steering wheel too easily, so not a huge deal.

However, I tweeted it out, and I used my normal hashtag, #ReputationRoadkill, because this is what I think a negative for Tesla’s reputation. Well, somebody called me out on the tweet, and I’m going to read you the tweet. I’m not going to tell you their name, you can go find it if you want. And I’m not saying this to embarrass them, I think they have a fair point, but here’s what they tweeted me.

They said, “Geeze, I don’t recall you saying the same for the Ford recall a couple of weeks ago when 1.2 million steering wheels were at risk of coming off while driving. Ford’s recall was a lot bigger deal. The recent ‘Pile on’ attack of Tesla is really not fair.” Now, first of all, I didn’t see the Ford story, or otherwise I would have tweeted it out, so it’s not like I’m playing favorites here.

But two things jumped out to me. One, it’s interesting that Tesla has a lot of brand evangelists that love everything that Tesla does, and Elon Musk does, and it’s good to see them coming to the defense of Tesla, ’cause Tesla didn’t reply to me. It was just I’m assuming somebody who’s a fan of Tesla. And two, with all the hype that comes from this higher expectation of quality, almost feels like Tesla has failed to live up to that expectation here, and so I think in my opinion, it seems fair to hold them to a higher standard.

But Erin, you’re a fan of both Ford and Tesla, so I’m going to be interested to hear what you think about this. Should we hold Tesla to a higher standard, or is this just part of what car manufacturers do?

Erin Jones:                  You know, funnily enough, to get started, I found the tweet amusing, ’cause you do have a reputation for being the founder of online reputation management. It seems like people look to you to call out the fault of every brand that should have their attention. I think we’re going to have to get a Kickstarter campaign set up for a warehouse of assistants to find all of these stories for you.

But back to your original question, I do think that hyped brands have a greater social responsibility, or a greater responsibility to put out a great product. It feels like Tesla is the new Apple of the current generation, and whether it’s fair or not, the public makes this happen. The brand’s personality and what they’re putting out really dictates what people expect from them, and Tesla has set themselves to a higher standard, and as a result, the public holding them to a higher standard.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk is definitely the grandmaster of pulling the strings of hype, and talking great things, announcing great products, but if you look at Tesla’s track record, they actually have a record of missing the mark in a number of ways. This is not their first recall, and I saw they’re in the news again today for not being able to ramp up production of the new car that they’ve got coming. It’s almost like you live by the hype sword, or you die by the hype sword.

And in my opinion, if they want to maintain this Apple-esque reputation, they can’t afford to have these misses, these issues. You’re right, when we see Apple have problems, whether it’s antennas or batteries or screens, that really stands out and will hurt them a whole lot more than if it’s LG that has a problem with a phone or a tablet. I think that we hold Tesla to that same high standard, they have that same fan base as well, which is going to come to the defense of the brand, which is great.

But I think that you’ve almost got this … I hate to use the word uber, ’cause I’m crossing definitions here, but you’ve got this uber reputation here, this super reputation, and I think along with that, we should hold them to a much higher standard.

Erin Jones:                  I agree, and I think that there might be a little bit of schadenfreude associated with this as well, where we really want them to do well, but then we also want to see that they’re not completely infallible. When they do make a mistake, people talk about it because there’s a little bit of gratification in seeing the mighty stumble. I go back and forth, you mentioned I am a fan of both companies. I have had a Tesla on order since 2016, haven’t even chosen a paint color yet, and just when-

Andy Beal:                  You have plenty of time.

Erin Jones:                  Right? Just when I start getting really frustrated, though, they send a car into space with rockets that can land. You feel kind of bad complaining about things, when they’re doing these really phenomenal, innovative things that we’ve been told repeatedly are impossible.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and you’re part of a movement, right? You’ve bought into this movement, this revolutionary technology, you’re going to be one of the people not on the cutting edge, you’re going to be on the lunatic fringe of car technology, right? So it’s really exciting, you’re a part of that, you don’t want anything to dent that. You’re an evangelist, and it’s almost like apologetics. In Christianity there’s apologetics, which is basically defending the bible, and in reputation, we have it’s almost like apologetics here.

But the issue that I have is how long can Tesla maintain this? Because they’ve built their brand and their buzz based on these amazing electric cars, but 2018, and next few years, every car manufacturer’s got electric cars, and we’re going to see some really sexy electric cars coming from other places. So, if that’s all Tesla’s got to hold onto, and then not meeting the hype, so if they’re just, if all they’ve got is, “Hey, we make really cool electric cars,” but on the flip side of that there’s recalls and they miss deadlines and all that kind of stuff, then they’re going to lose that advantage, because hey guess what? Ford and Chevy and Jaguar, they’re all making really cool electric cars, and they have recalls and missed deadlines too.

So now you’re on a level playing field Tesla. What else you got? And maybe that’s why they’re sending cars into space and building these batteries and all this kind of stuff, ’cause they’ve realized that, “Hey, everybody is catching up when it comes to electric car technology.”

Erin Jones:                  And I think that they should probably take a look at Apple. We’re talking about Apple and Tesla being similar. When Apple came out with the iPhone, it was new and innovative, and sexy, and amazing, and then they stalled out on their innovations and other brands did catch up, and other brands had less expensive phones with other options that Apple didn’t provide.

I think that Tesla’s following that same path, so they’re really going to have to impress us pretty soon, or people are going to stop paying attention and stop putting them on that pedestal.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, and there’s another angle there that we can explore another time, and that is I strongly believe, I’m an Apple fan, but I strongly believe the quality and the focus of Apple has dropped off since Steve Jobs passed away, ’cause Steve was synonymous with Apple. The reputations went hand-in-hand, and I think Tesla certainly needs to be careful that their reputation goes hand-in-hand with the brilliance of Elon Musk, and so they need to make sure that that stays in place, and that they pay attention to both. But that’s probably a story for another time, ’cause we need to move on.

Okay, so Tesla is known for Elon Musk and for these electric cars that are really fast, really sexy, and Ripple wants to be known for something else. Honestly, I’ve only heard of Ripple once or twice prior to this story coming out, but Erin’s going to fill us in on the details.

Erin Jones:                  I am. You know, speaking of Ripple, it’s a cryptocurrency, I probably can’t speak to this completely intelligently, so let me move forward a little bit, but crypto hasn’t traditionally had the most wonderful reputation, and along with that, public education isn’t typically known as being flush with funding.

So, this past week, actually on my birthday, woohoo, DonorsChoose, which is a crowdfunding website that teachers and educators can use to raise money for classroom needs and educational experiences, last week they were given an amazing gift. Ripple fulfilled every teacher donation request on the DonorsChoose website.

Andy Beal:                  Wow.

Erin Jones:                  What that means is that they donated 29 million dollars to fulfill wishlists, so 30,000 public school teachers in states all over the nation are receiving books, school supplies, technology, field trips, and any other resources that they may have requested. I’ve seen notes from teachers that asked for a rug for their classroom and it was fulfilled. That’s really, really neat, and they did so through participating in DonorsChoose’s hashtag, #bestschoolday.

It’s an event that was kicked off about two years ago by comedian Stephen Colbert. He announced that he was going to pay for every school project request in his home state of South Carolina, so Ripple upped the ante this year on their third year, and fulfilled every request. A couple of different … Oh, sorry.

Andy Beal:                  Carry on.

Erin Jones:                  I was just going to say, this is really neat because they haven’t traditionally had the best reputation, being in the crypto space, and with the markets horribly abysmal, where they’re at right now. I don’t know if this was an effort to change their image, or if they just wanted to make a great gesture, but what an amazing way to get people’s attention.

Andy Beal:                  It was, and I think I read that there’s an estimated one million public school students who will benefit from this, and I’m a big fan of anything that helps with teachers and teacher pay. I think that our first responders, our military, and our teachers don’t get paid anywhere near enough. We are going to suffer from that going forward as a country. Okay, end rant there.

But here’s my question, though. You are right in that this is positive for a cryptocurrency, because they are like second, third, fourth place behind the giants, and we’ve talked about on this show how Bitcoin’s reputation, when you talk about Bitcoin, really the thing you talk about is how volatile it is in terms of its valuation, right?

So, this is a chance for Ripple to be known for something else out of the gate, but I’m just having a hard time believing that 29 million dollars spent on teachers was the way to go for Ripple to have a long lasting benefit to its reputation. Because I just checked Google just a minute ago, and there’s no mention of this on the first two pages of the web results at all.

It’s not carrying any reputation weight there, so yeah, it’s a real feelgood story, really tremendous kudos to them for doing that, a lot of people are going to benefit from this, but I just don’t know if this is something they’re going to look back on and say, “Hey, this is really what sparked us. This is what we can point to that says that this is the day where Ripple got a fantastic reputation and jumped ahead of the competition.” Do you see something different?

Erin Jones:                  This is something we’ve talked about in the past, and I think what happened here is millions of people who have never heard of Ripple now know that Ripple exists. This was not the grand gesture. I think this was the serve that’s going to allow them to propel themselves into everyday life, if they take it.

Andy Beal:                  Also, they’ve got to back it up now, right? It’s one thing to do a good act. Any company can do a good act. Hey, if even United Airlines or Wells Fargo could go out and donate a ton of money to a worthwhile cause, but are they going to demonstrate? Is Ripple going to demonstrate that they have a brand alignment now with this kind of altruistic support of education? How are they going to carry this forward and not let it just be a one-off act?

I’m having a hard time seeing that if you’re going to invest 29 million dollars, I don’t see the correlation between fulfilling teacher requests, which is admirable and very well needed, and I appreciate them doing that, but then as a cryptocurrency, where do they take that?

Erin Jones:                  I agree. That’s something, it’s actually a point for our next story that I wanted to make, but I think that they’re going to have to really play this well, otherwise it’s going to be 29 million dollars here and gone.

Andy Beal:                  Right. Well, let’s dive into our next story ’cause you’re right, I was tempted to dive into it, so let’s bring it up, ’cause it really does play in well. We don’t do things by chance on this show, so Sprout Social surveyed more than 1000 US consumers to better understand how people want brands to communicate their position and engage in conversations on political and social issues.

There’s a lot of stats here we’re going to talk about in a moment, but one of the things that jumped out is that it is important, especially if you take a stance on something that matches your core beliefs, or matches what it is that your brand’s doing. Let’s tie that back into Ripple. I just don’t see how investing in funding teachers ties into a cryptocurrency, and I think that’s where they’re going to have a hard time, I don’t want to say cashing in on the goodwill, but it’s like planting a seed that doesn’t match the harvest you’re hoping to get.

If you plant tomato seeds and you’re all about growing oranges, then I just don’t see how it’s going to help you. I think that’s what ties into this survey is it’s one thing to do something really good and to take a stance on something, a social issue, but you’ve got to pick and choose where they are. That’s what comes out of this survey. What else jumped out to you from this survey? ‘Cause there’s a lot of good stats in this, lot of good statistics.

Erin Jones:                  What really surprised me is that people overwhelmingly do want their brands to have a social conscious, but they want the brands to know that that stance is not going to sway them as a consumer. It was a little bit contradictory to me.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, ’cause 66% of consumers say it’s important for brands to take a public stand on a social and political issue, yet 66, the same number, say their minds are rarely changed by that brand’s opinion. Along with that, 44%, I am reading these ’cause this is a lot of numbers, 44% would buy more if they agreed with your stance, but 53% would spend less if they don’t agree.

There’s more risk than reward. They want you to take a stance, but if they don’t agree, you’re not going to change their mind, and they’re more likely to boycott from you than to buy from you, so you’re really taking a risk, unless you pick a stance that is shown to affect your customers and their interests, or their employees.

For example, 58% said that all companies should be vocal on human rights issues, because that affects everybody, but only 33% said the same about immigration, because that doesn’t affect everybody, and they don’t want you to make that your cross to bare or your hill to die on. You’ve got to be really careful here, and we’ve talked about this. Politics is generally not the issue to take, ’cause you’re going to alienate.

But then again, if you can find a good social issue that matches, whether it’s the environment, or whether it’s human rights, or whatever it may be, if it matches what it is you’re offering, and what it is you sell, then you can walk that fine line between alienation and winning over a whole lot of new customers.

Erin Jones:                  I almost feel like Ripple read this post before they made their donation. Their press release said all the right words. “Our students are going to be the next technological leaders of our culture, and we want to provide great education so that we can have great developers in the future for our products.” They did this, taking a stand and tying it back to what they do. I’m just not sure about the longevity there.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. Now, if they can show, if the leaders of the company can show the education, what they said in their statement, was not just spin and fluff in order to get as much hype, if they can show that they actually have a heart for education and students and teachers, and they can keep this going through the life of the company’s brand, then I think it’s a great move.

But if they just wanted to jump on something, if they were sitting around a table and going, “Hey, this is getting popular, Colbert’s behind it. Hey, let’s go ahead and just fund this. This will get some good publicity,” but then they don’t follow through on anything again on that topic, then I think it’s a waste of 29 million.

Erin Jones:                  Right, and the study does say that education was one of the safest places to take a stand with 45% of people supporting it, and only 21% of people thinking it’s not a place that a brand should take a stand. If we’re using this study as a litmus test, they may be in good shape. I think that one thing that they need to be careful about is [inaudible 00:19:43], but another thing that we’ve talked about in the past is they’re going to have to be really able to make sure that their cause doesn’t outweigh the actual message of their brand and what they do-

Andy Beal:                  True.

Erin Jones:                  … which goes back again, to what we were discussing earlier. If what you’re talking about matches the message of your brand, they can propel each other equally, but if it doesn’t level out, then I think that’s where brands are going to see problems.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah, ’cause we’ve seen plenty of companies spend millions of dollars on feelgood Super Bowl ads, and we remember the ad, but we don’t remember the company. We don’t remember their product, ’cause the two don’t go hand-in-hand, there’s no synergy there, so it ends up just being a waste of money.

I thought this was also interesting in the study. We talked about political, I just want to share this stat with everybody. 82% of Liberals feel brands are credible if they take a stand, but only 46% of Conservatives feel the same way. Boy, we could spend an entire show dissecting that, but we’ll just leave it that you should know in general, the political persuasion of your audience, of your stakeholders, because if they lean more Liberal, they’re really going to applaud you for taking this stand. If they tend to be more Conservative, then maybe not so much.

Erin Jones:                  You know, I think that’s a really interesting statistic, and a little bit dangerous territory to look at, but the other thing associated is brands should also know how vocal their audience is going to be on specific issues that they take on.

Andy Beal:                  Yeah. All right. We’re out of time. It’s definitely good to take a stance on something, but you don’t have to do it at a big global level. You can do it on a small, help a small non-profit, or small group. Don’t think this’ll only work if you can find 29 million dollars. Start small, build your brand locally. If you have any questions, or would like to dive into any of these topics in more detail, feel free to go to our Facebook page. AndyBealORM, or go to AndyBeal.com. Leave us a comment on any blog post. Erin, as always, pleasure chatting with you.

Erin Jones:                  Thank you so much for having me.

Andy Beal:                  And thank you guys for listening to our 50th episode of Reputation Rainmakers. We hope you’ll enjoy us again next time. Thanks a lot, and bye bye.

The post #50 – Tesla’s reputation recall, the Ripple effect, and do consumers want political brands? appeared first on Andy Beal .

#49 – The Facebook Reputation Roadkill Mega Edition: data breach, privacy, regulation, politics, #deletefacebook, and our advice

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Hold on to your apps folks, because we have an entire show on the topic of Facebook’s recent “data breach.”

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

We canceled all other talking points for this week to focus on Facebook. We discuss the data breach, the backlash, the stock price, the politics, the privacy, and if Facebook can recover its reputation.

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Andy Beal: All right, guys. As you would probably expect, there’s really only one topic to talk about this week, so we’re going to dedicate the entire show to Facebook. For the one or two of you that have no clue what’s going on at Facebook, or perhaps you’ve heard about it and you’re still not quite sure, here’s just a brief summary of what’s happened with Facebook over the last week. Basically, it has been revealed that, via an app for a personality test, a company called Cambridge Analytica was able to obtain, at a later date, was able to obtain the user data of 50 million Facebook users, and allegedly used that data to help with some presidential campaign stuff on Facebook for Donald Trump.

This has turned into a huge issue for Facebook. Now first of all, it’s important to note that technically this is not a data breach, but a trust breach. The data was obtained originally all above board via APIs and systems that Facebook has in place for app creators to create these apps and get information. How it got in the hands of Cambridge Analytica is a little bit of a gray area, but that’s also a little bit of a red herring, because it doesn’t really matter how Cambridge Analytica got hold of the data, whether they created the app or if they got it at a later date. They still got data. They still obtained the data from someone that legitimately and legally obtained it from you, because we all like to complete these personality tests and give permissions to these apps. That’s where we are right now. Now there’s a huge backlash with a hashtag called #DeleteFacebook, isn’t there, Erin?

Erin Jones: There is. I have to say, I am siding with Facebook on this one today. I actually went in and looked at-

Andy Beal: You know this is not a Cage Match question. You don’t have to pick a side.

Erin Jones: I do.

Andy Beal: Okay, go on. Carry on.

Erin Jones: I do. Now first of all, I think Cambridge Analytica in itself could be a series of podcasts. The more I dig into this company, I’m fascinated and a little bit terrified by some of the methods that they use to extract information. One thing I had read was that they set up this quiz to get some information, and somehow along the process, Facebook makes them agree to delete all of the information that they gather by a certain date. They were supposed to do that, and they didn’t. I don’t know how much truth there is to that, but just out of curiosity, I went and looked to see how many apps I had given access to my own Facebook profile.

I’m pretty well-educated in this arena, and I’m pretty careful about what information I share, and there were at least 50 apps that had access to my profile. Some of them were things that I … FarmVille, I didn’t use FarmVille, but as an example, people who played that game a decade ago, it probably still has access to their profile. Where does the responsibility lie here? Is it with the end user, or is it with the app creator, or is it with Facebook? Should they shut these off after a certain amount of time?

Andy Beal: Well, they’re going to now. They’ve announced it. As part of the changes they’re going to make, if you’ve not accessed an app in three months, they’re going to shut down their permissions. But it’s an interesting point you bring up because there are so many people, and I’ve done it to some degree myself, that give permission to these apps, and we don’t give a second thought as to what permissions we’re giving. Now, it’s one thing to say, “Hey, I want to give you permission to allow me to log in to your service by using my Facebook login,” which is all pretty much protected. A lot of software, a lot of online services, do that.

But there’s a lot of things that I see where people are like, they want to find out which celebrity they look like or which … Probably in this case, you could also say that all those apps where it was like, “Okay, who should you vote for in the presidential election?” and next thing you know, you’re so eager to find out who you should vote for or which celebrity you look like, you don’t read that you’re giving them access to your date of birth, your email, your friends list, all these things.

Yeah, we’ve got to take some kind of responsibility here. If you’ve not already heard this expression, then pay attention. That is, if you’re not paying for a product, you are the product. We don’t pay for Facebook. Therefore, we are the product. Whether that is somebody using an app to get information about us, or somebody is spending money on advertising to get their products in front of us, or Facebook using our information, we are the product.

Erin Jones: Absolutely. I think that it’s really naïve to think that someone spent hours and money building an app that will tell us what color potato we are or which X-Men character we’re going to be for no reason at all other than to make us happy. Looking at what the end goal of some of these apps, especially like you said the who should I vote for apps, and I’ve been guilty. Curiosity gets the best of us. If they’ve got a great marketing team, they’re going to get a lot of feedback and interaction with these apps, but we need to be careful about what we’re sharing. A friend of ours, Carrie Hill, her daughter set up a Facebook page as kind of a test and used a different name than her real first name, and within months, was receiving email to the first name of her Facebook profile and not her real name.

Andy Beal: Wow.

Erin Jones: This information is getting out. It’s just a matter of how willing are we to share it, and who are we going to hold responsible when it gets out? I think some of that responsibility has to be put on our own shoulders.

Andy Beal: Right. Everything you’ve read about Facebook, all the issues they’ve had with privacy and all this kind of stuff over the years, you should assume that anything you put on Facebook is at some point going to make it into the public. I’m even very careful about what information I share on the direct messaging, because you never know how that might get breached. Some of the things you can do, when you do get asked to give permission, first of all you’ve definitely got to explicitly give it, but look for where it says that they have the ability to post to your wall.

You can make changes to say, hey, okay, if I have to give them the option to post to my wall, you can make the change to say that only you will ever see that. If they ever go ahead and post something without your permission, it won’t be an ad for Viagra that you didn’t give permission for, and then everybody on your friends list is seeing it. Only you would see it. There are some protections you can do. Fortunately, Facebook hopefully is going to finally come out with some updates that’s going to protect us as users, but that doesn’t necessarily protect us from Facebook itself. We still got to assume that Facebook is just a privacy leak.

Erin Jones: Right. I think Facebook’s in a tough spot here, because this is going to be at the expense of the happiness of some of their advertisers. That’s where their money comes from, and that’s where their stock grows. Then you’re circling back to users being unhappy, because their stock is dropping, or they don’t have as much money for new development. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. If we want this free platform, we have to agree to how we’re going to pay for it.

Andy Beal: Yeah. Facebook’s stock is … Their market cap is down 60 billion just since the scandal broke. That is not, I repeat, that is not because of the potential for users to stop using Facebook. It’s as important as email, really, these days. Now, if you’ve never used Facebook, you’re probably not even listening to this podcast, so you’re kind of a different segment. Can you imagine not using Facebook? I only know one person that successfully quit Facebook for more than a couple months, and even he’s thinking about coming back. It’s that important.

The stock price is not because of the potential to lose users. They’re not going to lose users. The stock price drop is because the impact this could have on their ability to earn revenue. As you’ve said, Erin, advertisers are not going to have their access to that information. App creators are not going to be as motivated anymore. Facebook’s going to lose that ability to earn that revenue. Then in addition to that, what potential government regulation is going to happen? Because there’s already calls for Zuckerberg to answer questions on Capitol Hill. The distraction from that, combined with the loss of earning, that’s what’s causing Facebook to lose some of its market cap.

Erin Jones: Right. My concern here is, where does Facebook’s responsibility lie, and where does the end user’s responsibility lie? Because we all always complain and talk about how we want this freedom to use the platform however we want. We don’t want to be censored. We want to be able to do what we want. But we also are trying to trust companies to be ethical in their dealings, and that’s not always going to happen. A lot of us, especially Americans, are kind of blind to the fact that things aren’t always done the same way with the same rules in other countries as they are here, or even with some of the companies here. How much do we want to give so that we can take what we want? We need to be responsible for the information that’s being fed our way and kind of own it from … There’s got to be some responsibility on the user’s end here for me.

Andy Beal: Yeah. Would this even be a big deal if it wasn’t connected with the presidential campaign, right? Because imagine if this was somebody had collected 50 million profile data in order to influence you to watch American Idol on ABC.

Erin Jones: And who says they haven’t?

Andy Beal: Well, exactly, right? They’re failing, but it’s like we-

Erin Jones: That’s another topic for another day.

Andy Beal: Yeah, exactly. We’re getting manipulated all the time, and we probably don’t care. We’re giving valuable information all the time. The number of people I see that actually have their full date of birth in their Facebook profile, you’re just giving hackers one step closer. Then I’ve seen where people will create apps where they’ll target you. Then in part of that, they’ll ask you what street did you grow up on, or which town did your parents meet? What was the name of your first pet? You see those quizzes that go out where people answer all these questions. It’s like, do you not realize this is most security questions that banks and financial institutions ask, and you’re just giving them away in a quiz because you think it’s cute?

I really don’t think … and I’m kind of really ranting here. I can hear my own voice. Let me see if I can bring it down an octave. I really don’t think that people either realize or they even care, and I think that this is getting whipped up by the media because, let’s face it, your credit card number wasn’t stolen. Your date of birth wasn’t stolen. Your Social Security number wasn’t stolen. You weren’t coerced into doing something nefarious. You just might have seen an ad or a story about something to do with the presidential election. I mean, this is not a huge deal, except that the media knows, if they can jump on this bandwagon, and then maybe … Oh, let’s start. It’s like heaven forbid if they find out that there’s a Russian executive at Cambridge Analytica. They’ll really just have a 24-hour news cycle then.

Erin Jones: For sure. I doubt this is the first presidential campaign that something like this has happened in. We’ve seen dueling magazine covers based on the demographic of the area that it’s being sold in, or different headlines for newspapers based on which part of the country they’re going to be placed in stores in. This is not anything new. I think, just like you said, people are up in a tizzy because the media is making a huge deal about this, and they were able to insert the word Russian into it. I think it’s something that people should be aware of and be careful of, but not just from an election standpoint. Like you said, they play on nostalgia to get you to say what your first car was or what street you grew up on, because people like reminiscing. It feels fun. I’ve probably gotten caught up in some of that myself, and I absolutely know better, but we can do better.

Andy Beal: Yeah. Let’s switch gears a little bit, because it took days before Mark Zuckerberg actually came out and apologized and explained what was going to happen. From a reputation perspective, that was way too long. I agree. You do need to sit down and evaluate what the situation was, the circumstances, the facts. You don’t want to just jump to the wrong conclusion, but that should take hours, maybe 24 hours. It shouldn’t take days. Certainly the facts were clear at the beginning that Facebook, whether it was a breach or just poorly crafted policy for app users, let down its core user base. For that, it should have apologized earlier, and then said, “Now we’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to the bottom of this.” Do you agree, Erin, that maybe the apology should have come sooner?

Erin Jones: I absolutely agree. I think when you’re dealing with multiples of billions of dollars, if you’re smart, you’ve got responses crafted to a lot of these potential situations at the ready. I’m really curious to see what they were sitting back. Were they waiting for it, hoping it would blow over, or were they really scrambling to come up with a response here?

Andy Beal: I think they were looking to see whether they could just shirk all responsibility. They wanted to see, is there any way we can put this fully on the shoulders of a third party? If you read through Zuckerberg’s Facebook response, which I’ve read it twice and still didn’t see an actual apology in it, I know he’s apologized in other channels, but I read his Facebook response, didn’t see just a sincere apology. You see the facts laid out, but you definitely see a lot of, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, mitigating circumstances where they’re trying to explain away that it wasn’t fully Facebook.

They were probably spending these days trying to figure out how they could pass off some of the blame, if not all of the blame, and how they can craft this so that they can come out unscathed, as opposed to just, “Hey, we’re sorry. We screwed up. This is what we’re going to do.” I think that’s where they spent so much time was it just feels to me that they were trying to be very careful with their wording here to avoid this stock crash, to avoid political oversight. I think it kind of backfired on them, because I’ve always said, in the absence of an official word from the company, the void is going to be filled by everybody else with speculation and discussion.

Erin Jones: I couldn’t agree more, and especially when that discussion is going to happen on the very platform that you created. Why wouldn’t you take a minute and make your best apology live on the platform that you created where the conversation is happening? Facebook and Twitter and some of these social media sites have changed the way that news has been disseminated in this world, and this would have been a great time for him to say, “Before I go to the news outlets, I’m going to let you hear it here first.”

Andy Beal: Yeah, absolutely. But again, you got to think, where is the priority? Who is the customer for Facebook? It’s advertisers. It’s investors. It’s the media. It’s politicians. We’re the last to know, because we’re the last rung on the ladder. We’re at the bottom of the food chain, right? We’re not the important part. He knows he’s got billions of people using his platform, and if he loses … Heck, if they lose a million people that actually follow through with the Delete Facebook campaign, then that’s a drop in the bucket. That’s why we were the last to know. Going forward, Facebook really needs to demonstrate that it can be trusted, because if the users don’t leave, it could face more government regulation, which is probably more scary to it than the users leaving.

Erin Jones: Absolutely. Can I just shake my old lady cane on my porch for a second, and say that deleting Facebook is not making you a warrior for social justice? Facebook is, for the most part, pretty self-serving. Most users, it’s a … I don’t want to say a narcissism thing, but we’re communicating with our friends and family. We’re sharing information. We’re posting photos. You deleting your Facebook page is not paving the way for social change. First of all, I think that that hashtag is a little bit ridiculous, and I feel like it makes me sound like a cranky old lady, but I rolled my eyes when I saw it.

Second of all, I feel like this would be a really good avenue for some great opportunity to figure out what people want to get out of Facebook and sit back. They jumped in. It was really fun and kitschy in the beginning, and it’s grown into this massive machine. Now’s a good time to take a step back and figure out if you’re sharing what you should be sharing, maybe tighten down your account a little bit, and really look at what you’re putting out there.

Andy Beal: Yeah, no, I’m an old lady with a cane too, but I think the cool kids would say it’s time to get woke, right? It’s time to realize how your data is being used, how you’re being used. Continue to use Facebook, but just be a little bit more careful. At least be aware that you don’t have this level of privacy that you think you have. Even if somebody were just to take a screenshot of something … In fact, I had someone contact me the other day where the person had a reputation issue that their young daughter was suffering from an issue, not because of anything they posted publicly, because somebody had taken a screenshot of something they had posted privately and then they put it publicly.

It’s time to kind of realize that, look, Facebook is a great tool, but there is no privacy. You are not the customer. You are a very small cog in a big wheel. Understand that, and continue to use Facebook knowing that that is the case. It doesn’t mean stop posting or whatever, but just be careful. Okay, maybe I don’t want to post that picture of my children if I’m worried about their identity. Maybe I don’t want to discuss my vacation plans or all that kind of stuff. Just think twice as to where your limits are. Be your own privacy regulator, if you like, as to how far do I want to go? Regardless of what Facebook tells me they’re going to protect me from, how far am I willing to go? Let that be the bar that is set, not some kind of imaginary bar that you think Facebook has set.

Erin Jones: I couldn’t agree more. I don’t think that it’s fair or reasonable to expect someone else to protect our privacy for us. We’ve said this before. You even said it earlier in the podcast today, but it’s worth reiterating. Anything you share online in any platform should be considered public, whether it’s an email, a Facebook post, a private message. Always assume that it can be shared. Text messages can be screenshotted. Private emails, even if at the bottom it says, “This is confidential, and if it wasn’t meant for you, delete it right now,” that’s not going to get you very far. Act accordingly.

Andy Beal: Yeah. Well, we told you we had a packed show today and that we would fill up the 20 minutes talking about Facebook, and hey, we delivered on that. Next time, we’ll get back hopefully to discussing some different topics. We already have a Reputation Cage Match topic in the hopper ready to talk about for next time. We hope you’ve enjoyed this show. If you have any questions or you’d like to make a comment, feel free to go to, ironically, our Facebook page, which is /andybealORM. Don’t private message us, because you never know who might see it. Erin, thank you so much for joining me this week. Always a pleasure chatting with you.

Erin Jones: Thank you for having me and my cane here today.

Andy Beal: All right. Well, we’ll let you get back to sitting on your front porch, and we’ll let our listeners get back to what they were doing. Thanks a lot for tuning in. We thank you for joining us, and hope you’ll catch us again next time. Thanks a lot and bye bye.

The post #49 – The Facebook Reputation Roadkill Mega Edition: data breach, privacy, regulation, politics, #deletefacebook, and our advice appeared first on Andy Beal .

#48 – Fake Twitter retweets and Instagram bots! Is it a good idea to pay social media influencers?

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When is a social media influencer not a social media influencer? We discuss…and argue.

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

Twitter is cracking down on tweetdecking.
Instagram is rife with fake accounts and comment bots.
Reputation Cage Match: is it a good idea to pay influencers to promote your brand?

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Coming soon!

The post #48 – Fake Twitter retweets and Instagram bots! Is it a good idea to pay social media influencers? appeared first on Andy Beal .

#47 – United’s lottery fail, do we have a right to be forgotten, and Reputation Cage Match: should your brand be political?

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Apparently, Erin and I tend to agree too much, so this week we present the first Reputation Cage Match–two enter, but only one will be victorious!

Each week, Erin Jones and I take a look at the most interesting reputation management stories, answer your questions, and share valuable ORM tactics. In this week’s episode:

United Airlines gambles its reputation on a lottery system to replace existing employee bonuses…and runs out of luck.
We discuss whether the US should have its own Right to be Forgotten.
Reputation Cage Match: should companies be more political?

If you have a question you would like us to tackle, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook Page.

Transcript (forgive us for any typos):

Coming Soon!

The post #47 – United’s lottery fail, do we have a right to be forgotten, and Reputation Cage Match: should your brand be political? appeared first on Andy Beal .