Sensei Blogs

Starbucks' Hijacked Twitter Campaign Could and Should Have Been Prevented

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Measuring and analyzing sentiment around a brand is becoming an important part of a business’ marketing and PR strategy. As a discipline, it seeks to understand the tone of the conversation occurring online around a business’ product, brand and/or that of its competitors. Using social media monitoring software like Lexalytics, Viralheat or Trendspotter (to name a few), marketers look for the context of social posts, the popularity of specific product-related topics, or the audience’s overall attitude as it relates to the product and brand.

Such programs are often on-going, general search-and-report type programs conducted as part of a market research or brand reputation management service. In other cases, it’s the marketing or customer service departments that are tasked with this job. In an ideal world – and in an ideal corporate structure – every department shares information in real-time and makes data available across business silos seamlessly. Yeah, right.

Back in reality, we know this situation is not common; in fact, it’s most likely the opposite of what’s really occurring. The immediacy of social media content sharing and the consumer’s ability to drive that unedited content across multiple platforms demands a rethink of this organizational failure. At a minimum, businesses must add sentiment analysis to the pre-launch stage of every social media campaign they execute. Why?

Starbucks Customers Hijack Twitter Campaign

A recent Starbucks Twitter campaign asked followers to tweet their holiday cheer on Twitter using the hashtag “#SpreadTheCheer.” A great idea except for the fact that with the 700 locations in the UK, Starbucks is embroiled in a public relations battle based on the news that it paid only 8.6 million pounds in corporate taxes over the last 14 years. With other news reporting that Starbucks in the UK planned to cut paid lunch breaks and maternity leave benefits, the public sentiment around the brand was decidedly poor. The result was a public hijacking of the holiday-cheer #hashtag campaign in protest of its corporate policies.

Not only were these Tweets seen across Twitter , they were amplified on a giant screen over a Starbucks-sponsored ice rink at London’s Natural History museum.

If the marketing team responsible for the execution of the campaign had conducted a standard sentiment analysis check before it launched, they’d have realized the potential risk before it was too late. Of course, that would mean sentiment analysis checks were part of standard pre-launch methodologies for social media campaigns or that the PR team communicates regularly with the marketing team.

<Insert soundtrack of corporate hysterical laughing here>

As much as marketers wish to deny this fact, the business brand is now firmly dictated by the sentiments and opinions shared by the general public and consumers. Social media can provide a stellar platform to amplify positive brand sentiment but it can just as easily – and more likely – disrupt corporate-directed messaging with negative social commentary. Sentiment analysis can no longer be a nice-to-have program or even a PR-specific effort; sentiment analysis must be inserted as a mandatory tactic preceding any social media effort.

Not convinced? Ask the executives as Starbucks in the UK what they think. Still not convinced? Ask the executives at McDonald’s who had their own positive-story Twitter campaign (#McDStories) hijacked by negative consumer commentary. This is not a trend; it’s a reality.

Is it realistic for a marketing team to conduct sentiment analysis before every campaign? Will budgets be made available for such a strategy? Or will businesses continue to take the risk? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Customer Experience Cannot be Automated

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I’m a bit disturbed by the fact that most customer experience (CX) discussions I’ve had lately with marketers have been about marketing automation and technology. Software firms pitching clients at trade shows, on webinars or at conferences all seem to be leading with the promise that their technology will generate a greater customer experience through automated engagements tracked back to the individual user profile.

I hope the clients of these software firms understand the phrase: Caveat Emptor / Buyer Beware. Customer experience is not downloadable, it does not come out of a box and it’s not about automation. In fact, great customer experience is not a technology-driven principle at all.

So what is Customer Experience?

It's a business discipline; customer experience is something you do, not something you install.
It's corporate culture; customer experience is something you inherently think and believe, not something you schedule.

Customers are more informed, sophisticated and social, which only serves to increase the pressure on businesses to better engage and satisfy. Customers have gained a lot of control over the success of the brands they love and hate and so they’re able to demand an improved customer experience. More automation is the opposite of what is being demanded.

A Deloitte and Forbes survey of 192 U.S. executives proves that this phenomena has become a major risk for the corporation. "Social media wasn't even on the radar a few years ago, and we're now seeing it ranked among the top sources of risk, on the same level as financial risk," Henry Ristuccia, a partner in Deloitte & Touche LLP. The power of the consumer voice, as amplified via social streams is forcing businesses to improve the customer experience or risk alienating current and prospective customers who are actively seeking each other out in these channels.

More High Touch, Less High Tech

Is your customer experiencing your brand solely through technologically-based communications such as social media, email, or automated answering machines? Are campaign decisions being directed by marketing software automation? There is definitely a role for software in the Customer Experience Management (CXM) process, but it must be a supporting player, not the director. CXM software must be chosen to augment real customer experience strategies, not have it dictated by the software’s pre-configured workflow.

When architecting the experience, the only universal “best practice” in customer experience design is to consider the customer’s satisfaction with the product or engagement as THE top priority and benchmark. And since every business and customer base is different – not to mention different customer segments within that base – there is no one technology that can effectively create the customer experience for your brand. In fact, there are an infinite number of outside influences on your customers including social channels, technologies, competition and other market forces, which add greater importance to human intuition and human touch.

It’s time your business stop looking to social media managers to bolster the engagement you have with customers and look to customer experience professionals that will infuse the discipline and culture across all customer touch points with your brand.

Has customer experience become overly automated? Are we building relationships on thin and technology-based connections today? Join the debate below!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Your Product Sucks; What It Does is Amazing.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

A common mistake that many software and product marketers make is to orient marketing collateral, Web site navigation and even brand messaging around its features and functions.

Take a look at most technical product or software web sites and you’ll quickly see a navigation button for “features.” Drill down and you’ll see a litany of sub-navigation listing each specific feature, a clever icon, a description of the feature and possibly a video tutorial on how it works. Everything a customer might want to know about the features – except why they should care.

Make no mistake; this is an ailment that many marketers suffer from. When diagnosed, I dispense a healthy dose of snark by stating,“your product features suck!” The remedy is usually met with guffaws, snorts, and hurt feelings. Undeterred, I continue with the rationale for this tough medicine; it doesn’t matter if the features are good or bad, just think they’re bad. Why? Because I’ve yet to meet a marketer faced with a bad product who doesn’t try to slap lipstick on pig. It’s meant to serve as a cue for marketers to rethink their content strategy.

With few exceptions – especially in the software industry – product features are not unique. Yes, marketers will attempt to wordsmith uniqueness into them, but in reality you can find similar features with a simple Google search.

I advise clients to orient that same collateral, Web site navigation and brand messaging around what the product’s features enable the client to do instead of what the product feature does. For example, sentiment analysis in a social monitoring platform doesn’t “identify positive and negative sentiment around brand mentions”, it “builds a better sales funnel by more efficiently identifying unsatisfied competitors' clients with the best opportunity to convert.” As a business buyer, which would you respond to more?

What’s motivating your customer?

When you ask yourself who is reading your content or visiting your site and what do they really want, it’s really a simple concept. What’s difficult is getting over your ego and obsessive need to talk about yourself or how clever your product’s features are.

Understand that when potential customers visit your Web site they already have specific questions in mind that they want answered. And if they don’t come with specific questions in mind, there are questions that are subconsciously driving how they navigate your site. For those in B2B industries for example, there are typically 3 types of users that visit your site from the same prospective customer, and each has their own unique set of questions they’re looking to have answered.

1. The Researcher – generally front-line employees or those in the trenches that have identified a problem that needs a solution. They’re looking for detailed solutions to their problems, what’s going to make their job easier, what’s going to get them that raise or promotion?

2. The Validator – typically a mid-level manager; they don’t care for solution details or demonstrations but are verifying the options provided by the Researcher in order to create cost-benefit analysis to present to their boss.

3. The Executive – spends the least amount of time on your site and are usually looking for one thing: comfort. They want to know they are not the only customer you have in their industry and that others have taken the risk and are happy.

Know that your audience is not interested in your product. They’re interested what it will enable them to do. Now go rethink and rewrite your product’s features. "They suck!"

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Customers Have Run Amok; Get Your Pitchforks

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s about the conversation, not the pitch. Engage your audience, don’t preach to them. Social Media is about the customer, not you. Provide value to your audience; don’t sell your product. Create an outstanding customer experience and customers will become your advocates. The power of social media: the customer’s voice.

Much has been said, tweeted and blogged on the subject of the power of the customer’s voice in social media. Savvy social media marketers argue that a business may craft their brand, but it’s only validated when customers, who tweet, post, share, like and pin their experiences with that brand agree to it. The “wisdom of crowds” paradigm dictates that this collective chatter across social platforms creates consensus around the identity and value of a brand, not the spin marketers are paid to generate. It’s said that social media has given rise to an uncontrollable disruptive force in the traditional brand:customer dialogue, one that brands can no longer control or predict.

Do Customers Have Too Much Power?

The now infamous “United Breaks Guitars” story is an oft-cited example of how one man can dramatically affect the brand – and stock price – of a large corporation. Or the equally infamous “Dell lies. Dell sucks.” blog post that forced the computer giant to completely reinvent its customer experience and communication strategy. Yes, the customer has great power and with great power comes great responsibility. Or does it? Why are customers exempt from this universal rule?

My partner Jeff Wilson wrote a thought-provoking post entitled Social Media is Creating Bad Customers a few weeks back in which he argued that “deep down, people are bullies or at the very least indifferent to bullying.” His point was that social media provides consumers the tools to be bullies and the platform to thrive. Nothing hurts me more than to agree with something Jeff says, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll take that argument one step further: if social media is the drug that creates bad customers, marketers are the enablers that keep them stoned.

If we’re to agree that customers are now creating, shaping and advocating our brands through their social media engagement, should they not also be held accountable for those actions? If we as a marketing agency screw up a client’s branding because of employee error or simply poor performance, we’d be fired. If an employee creates a PR disaster that impacts the business such as the case where Taco Bell franchise employees invited camera crews to come film rats running around the restaurant or the “There’s A Comcast Technician on My Couch” video that captured a service technician sleeping on the customer’s couch instead of doing the job he came to do, they’d be fired. So why are customers let off the hook? Because they’re always right?

I’ve often argued that only true way to control customers and how they treat our brand online is to give them the best customer experience possible, but as my partner outlined so well in his post, that’s not always enough. People can be bullies and social media encourages the bad behavior of smartphone-carrying-YouTube-celebrity-wannabes. Should brands just take it?

I’m Mad And I’m Not Gonna Take It Any Longer

Businesses train customers to be loyalty with discounts, additional services and recognition rewards. Can’t we take the opposite approach for those who are purposely harming the brand? While a solid punch to the gut comes to mind or at a minimum a strong slap across the face, I understand this isn’t feasible – or maybe even legal – but certainly business brands must take back control somehow? What’s the future of our marketing if we allow – nay encourage – customers to run amok with our brands? Will we not be fated to be in PR disaster recovery mode permanently? Constantly on the defensive? Always looking over our shoulders?

I’m getting my pitch fork…who’s with me?!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Social Media is Creating Bad Customers

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Do you remember the disaster called #McDStories? The now famous story of how McDonalds was hijacked on Twitter by people tweeting negative stories on their hashtag. Poor planning combined with outright naivety about the their own brand perception quickly attracted a growing, “angry” mob of real customers and trolls who completely derailed the whole McDStories campaign.

Now, I’m not a big believer in social media on the best of days and this type of story adds more weight to my argument – Social Media is Creating Bad Customers. Why? It’s simple… because people deep down are bullies or at the very least indifferent to bullying. Add to this how easily the social media public is influenced by a mob mentality and you get recipes for McDStory after McDStory.

Social Media provides the average person with 4 factors empowering bad behavior, particularly against companies.

No Guilt. There is no remorse about bullying a brand. It’s much easier to do because no one gets “hurt”.
The Mob. Lots of other people are doing it. Whether they are the instigator with a real story or a troll making them up, its easy to find others who will join you.
Relative Anonymity. Anonymity strips many people of fear. “No one will know if I say this” is the common feeling and easily overwhelms any feelings of restraint a person might normally have.
No Accountability. Probably the most significant factor is the sheer lack of accountability in anything said in social media. Without accountability as a “natural check” on actions, you get an environment devoid of any punishment.

Proceed with Caution

My first two questions to companies that ask me about social media are:

What are the risks?
What is the compelling reason for you to use social media? (And please don’t say because my competitors are…)

For me, it always boils back to risk. The more risk you have the less likely you are to succeed. Most organizations are ill prepared for customers they already have let alone a new group of social media empowered customers. Social media creates risk even in a docile customer base because it can change the natural state of behavior in a single person or group of people. A social media environment provides fertile ground for unrest and poor behavior.

More McDStories are waiting to happen. Are you one of them?
How will you manage the bad customer social media is creating?

Jeff Wilson- Sensei

The Grand Paradox of Social Communications

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You cannot read a marketing or social media blog today without stumbling across the advice: “humanize your brand.” The advice is certainly not a new concept to marketing, but one that has had new importance breathed into it in the face of the ever-evolving digital relationships businesses have with their customers.

It’s the grand paradox of digital and social communications; we’re racing to connect through inanimate computers and mobile phones in order to build stronger relationships with people.

Messages are often misconstrued by our inability to effectively translate our intent to the written word. Doing so is a task that requires tremendous training and skill and very few of us are either so trained or skilled. Yet, with social networks and blog content management tools in hand, we’ve all become active brand publishers attempting to fabricate relationships through social channels.

Some argue that the real problem lies in the consumer’s inability to interpret our intent because each views the same message with his or her own personal filters. The emotional, financial and social states of each member of a business’ community impact how they process the communications received. Businesses using social channels to sell products and services often create content without understanding where the customer is in the decision making or purchase cycle, thus decreasing the likelihood that their efforts will contribute to any form of relationship-building.

Regardless of which theory you subscribe to, digital communications have distanced us from our customers as much as they’ve embedded us in their lives. As a result, the need to “humanize our brand” has become a more urgent priority for marketers. Nuances, colors or even a headline could make the difference between your digital handshake being perceived as firm and strong or limp and weak.

The Relationship Gap

Business leaders are being trained to do more with less, generate more profit with less investment, and sell more with fewer sales people. The very ethos of our capitalist-based civilization moves us towards this goal, so it’s no wonder that social media’s appeal of mass communications with less effort and expertise has captured the imagination of marketers and business executives everywhere. Sadly, the push to communicate digitally has decreased our ability to truly connect with people, build strong personal relationships and create truly outstanding customer experiences. The connections we are making are fickle and tenuous.

Now don’t mistake my intent, I’m not advocating we remove social or digital communications from our vocabulary but I am sounding the alarm for those who have become singularly focused on the social channel to humanize the brand. Social media has become a black hole of sorts, sucking us in and forcing us to create strategies and tactics to counter the impersonal nature of the technology that drives conversations today.

“Humanizing your brand” is certainly an important tactic of modern content marketing strategies, but social content does not humanize your brand. Social content, generated by your marketing team or your customers, is a testament to how human and relatable your brand is; it’s a time-capsule tchotchke that future generations will use to better understand what you were. It does not create what you are. Humanizing your brand requires a culture change that embodies everything a business, its staff and the products and services they produce represent. It’s a way of doing business, not a content marketing strategy.

Do you agree? Can you humanize your business through social media and content marketing strategies? Or is it what I’ve argued, just a testament to the humanity of your brand (or lack thereof)? Share your thoughts below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The Corporate Blog Challenge

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last week I posted an article asking if corporate blogs had become sacred cows. I questioned the logic of a corporate blog remaining the center of a social communication hub when readership is down, competition for attention is increasing and our audience’s preference is evolving towards shorter, more visual content. Why are marketers so unwilling to accept that, in some cases, the value of a corporate blog is diminishing?

The question sparked a good conversation across many of the social channels that it was shared in. A common theme to those who disagreed with my suggestion was that if readership is down, the problem is not competing social channels or the audience’s changing preferences but the quality and format of the corporate blog itself. Most argued that the corporate blog is still THE place to represent your brand and maintain control of your message without the public or social-spin that can derail your efforts in other channels.

I agree that a corporate blog is an important element in the social mix and also that most corporate blogs fail to provide the value readers seek and thus fail to retain regular readers and/or drive value from it. However, I disagree that simply revamping these blogs will make a large difference. The reality is that our audience has moved on.

I’ll Take The Challenge

Those of you who know me know that I love a great debate and that I never back down from a challenge. So for a moment, I’ll accept the argument that the fortunes of corporate blogs can be reversed by reimagining their structure and content. So let’s consider what would have to be done to a typical corporate blog for it to remain a viable social hub for its business.

My point of view: today’s corporate marketing challenge is no longer the lack of quality blogs, but the audience’s content consumption habits and preferences. With this in mind, below are the 3 key changes required by corporate blogs to remain relevant:

1.   Go On a Diet
Blogs posts need to shed a few words around the middle. Few visitors have the time or desire to read long, drawn out articles. Shorter, hyper-relevant and more frequent messaging is critical to attract and retain readership today. Further, the audience is increasingly accessing content from mobile devices that are not ideal for long-form content. I’m not suggesting that longer articles should not be posted, but they might be better served as downloadable whitepapers or e-books.

2.   Get a Make Over
In his SNL skit “Fernando’s Hideaway,” Billy Cristal stated so eloquently, "It's not how you feel...it's how you look...” Corporate blogs must take a lesson from the market, which is exploding with more visual content. So instead of posting 1,500 word articles, why not create and post visual slide decks, video interviews, podcasts or image galleries (please no kittens) instead? Get out of your comfort zone, try on something new and watch the reaction.

Secondly, your site should be refitted using responsive design so that its layout is dynamically reshaped based on the display capabilities of the device accessing it such as smart phones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and oversized desktop monitors. Maintaining a consistent customer experience is critical to branding efforts as well as content consumption.

3.   Start Dating
Once you’ve lost a few words and had your makeover, get out there and meet new people! You can convert your blog into a true social hub by replacing infrequent posts with a grid of feeds from all your other social channels such as Twitter, SlideShare, YouTube, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn Groups, etc. This creates a speed-dating environment within your blog that allows your audience to better mingle with you and your content. Alternatively, you can join blogger communities using services such as Triberr which connect complementary bloggers who support each other through distribution and commentary.

Lastly, allow your audience to generate some of the content within your site. This might be the biggest challenge for most since a corporate blog is seen as “the voice” of the brand but in reality, your audience is more interested in their peer's experiences with your brand than your views on it.

So there you have it. Me arguing the "other side". Not sure I've convinced myself that a corporate blog should always be the center of a business' social efforts, but if it has to, a change in strategy is certainly in order.

Where do you weigh in (see what I did there?) on this debate? Can a corporate blog upgrade to compete with the changing needs of its audience? Or should it bother? Share your arguments for and against in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Have Corporate Blogs Become Sacred Cows?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

“Sacred Cow” is an idiom referencing the eminent place cows have in Hinduism. Figuratively speaking, a sacred cow is something which is immune from question or criticism. After challenging the #bizforum community on Twitter last night with the question: “Are corporate blogs still relevant?”, I’m beginning to think that corporate blogs have become sacred cows.

A corporate blog is defined as one branded by a corporate, non-media entity such as Staples, Proctor and Gamble, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Family Insurance, CitiGroup, Chrysler, etc. and not spearheaded by a single social-celebrity employee.

Blog readership as a whole is increasing but bloggers are on the decline as many are choosing to put their words down on Facebook pages or bite-sized quips on Twitter, as reported in eMarketer’s study on blogging entitled The Blogosphere: Colliding with Social and Mainstream Media. The increase in blog readership seems to be based on the rise in popularity of media or curated blogs such as Huffington Post, Mashable, Forbes, McKinsey Quarterly and the New York Times. Many of these blogs have the same content, but adoption and readership for the latter is growing while, for most, corporate blog readership is stagnant or declining.

My premise is based on the following realities:

    - the public’s appetite for content and information has grown and continues to increase
    - the consumer’s desire to engage with the brands they love continues to grow
    - the channels and devices that share content continue to innovate and expand
    - the competition for readership is growing exponentially
    - the reader’s attention is increasingly challenged by digital “noise”
    - the average person has less free personal and professional time to read

As the consumers’ need for – and access to – information grows, their appetite for content channels is evolving beyond the current mediums.   New channels and engagement options such as micro-blogging (eg. Twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) and visual media (YouTube, Pinterest, SlideShare) are disseminating content with fewer characters and greater speed than blogs could ever hope to achieve. The more content the public wishes to consume and has access to, the greater the appeal of new media that provide easily digestible headlines.   These new channels are syndicating the same content for corporations that their blog predecessors shared, yet drive much more interest, engagement and return.

I’m arguing that the long-form corporate blog post that was once mandatory and the preeminent forum to educate customers, provide value-added information and demonstrate a brand’s personality, has proven to be just a stepping stone to modern delivery channels.

Holistic Content Strategy

Last night, many within the #bizforum community stated that you cannot argue for or against the value of a corporate blog, because the ROI from social engagement comes from an holistic content strategy that integrates content across many channels. I agree with this sentiment but refuse to be bounded by the gravity of past business practices, especially after reading Rebel Brown's book on Defying Gravity.

An holistic content strategy does not require the dissemination of content across EVERY social channel. Most agreed with that concept yet few are willing to acknowledge that the one channel which could possibly be removed from the mix is the corporate blog. Ask marketers to remove Twitter or Pinterest from the mix and they don’t bat so much as an eyelash. Suggest that the corporate blog might no longer be a relevant medium within the social mix and I’m branded a heretic.

When challenged, most presented an argument for what a corporate blog can do for the business, when the real consideration should be what IT IS doing for the business. Few even know.

See: The Corporate Blog Challenge

Should corporate blogs be forgotten completely? Of course not. Faxes are not commonplace in everyday business communications but they still exist. Even with a declining audience, a corporate blog can provide value in SEO link strategies and fodder for Google ranking but even then, social sharing and other tactics are beginning to challenge that value as well.

What started off as me questioning the current value of a corporate blog has evolved into a question about the reverence marketers give the blog. Has it been elevated to sacred cow-status? An untouchable deity in the social media mix beyond reproach and questioning?

What are your thoughts? Has the need for and value of a corporate blog diminished?

Sam Fiorella

Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The PR Value of a Well-Apologized Brand

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I challenge you to quickly recall five great product stories that went viral and made national headlines. If you’re like 99% of the population, you’re struggling to think of them.

If I had asked you to think of five stories about brands that made national headlines because their product or service failed you’d be thinking KitchenAid, United Airlines, Domino’s Pizza, Kenneth Cole, Motrin, Chrysler, Toyota, BP, Exxon, Belkin, KFC/Taco Bell, Comcast, and so on.

Isn’t it funny how negative stories are so much easier to remember? Are we wired to search and recall negativity? Are we more attracted to negative stories? We’re certainly quick to jump on the viral bandwagon when we can sink our teeth into a juicy PR disaster perpetrated by our favorite brands. Social media amplification of brand miss-steps has become a new national pastime.

Forget the product fail, today a good public apology is even more “viral-worthy.” Brands that follow post-PR disaster best practices (acknowledging the issue, taking responsibility and issuing public apologies with corrective actions) receive a greater boost in our collective memories and dare I say even pop culture recognition. Think of the video apologies by the President of BP after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which became an internet sensation including the many parodies of that apology. Or the tweeted mea culpa by KitchenAid and their apology letter to Mashable.com after an employee accidentally tweeted negative statements about US President Barack Obama from the brand’s Twitter account instead of his or her own.

Apologies – On The Attack

Looking back, few – if any – of the businesses involved in these high-profile viral stories were negatively impacted in the long run. In fact, many have profited from them. On her popular blog SpinSucks.com, public relations maven and author Gini Dietrich argues that Americans “love to build people (and organizations) up so we can tear them down and build them back up. We love a good underdog story.” I wholeheartedly agree as do the many socially-savvy brands that are beginning to purposely court what I call apology-controversy because they understand the PR value in a ~~heartfelt~~ creative apology.

An excellent example of the apology-as-marketing-art-form comes from Bodyform, a UK maker of feminine hygiene products who was called out by a snarky male follower on its Facebook page:

Bodyform, understanding the PR value of a good apology, took the concept to new heights in this video post with an equally snarky and witty response:

Others choose to court the controversy. Retailer Kenneth Cole made national waves for a Tweet by its designer and founder during the Egyptian riots:

Instead of pleading for the public’s forgiveness, the fashion brand went on the attack by courting more controversy with a series of new social media tactics including the “What Do You Stand For” campaign that asked people to take part in “a series of provocative debates.”

Apologies are certainly an art form today. Domino’s Pizza, after accepting years of bashing from the public over the taste and quality of their menu, famously took to the media and social airwaves with an admission that their pizza “sucked” and publicly committed to making it better, one ingredient at a time.

Is this the lesson we’re teaching our young marketers? That a well-apologized bad brand is better than a great silent one?

Those of us not in the GenY age bracket remember the saying, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right!” which referenced the importance of media, the power of public relations and the arrogance of celebrity. Have we returned to this philosophy in the social media age? Have social networks become the National Enquirer of business brands?

Join the debate! Is a well-apologized brand more powerful than a squeaky clean silent brand?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Adopting a New Perspective on Success

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This is not a typical Sensei Wisdom blog post. Today I’m taking a break from the usual insights, experiences, opinions and rants I post on customer experience strategies to share a story that challenged my thoughts on the meaning of success.

Professionally, over the last few years I’ve started a new business, travelled extensively, designed international campaigns, delivered keynote presentations to thousands of people, increased my net-worth, and connected with many professionals that have opened even more doors for future growth and success. All I’ve worked for the past 20 years is paying dividends and I’ve soaked it all up, focusing every available minute on exploiting those opportunities. I have arrived.

Or have I?

A friend shared a story with me recently that has me rethinking success. Although it’s an old story and one you may have heard before, I’m sharing it in hopes that you’ll take the time to rediscover its meaning and add some perspective on your business success.

.......

A professor stood before his philosophy class and wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

Next, the professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous 'yes.'

The professor then produced two beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions – and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else; the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.” The same goes for life.

Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, “I'm glad you asked.” The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

.......

Shall we grab a beer?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego