Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Friday, 9 April 2010
Julius Malema kicks the BBC out of his press room
It's a pity that the left and right wing exist, otherwise everyone could just get along.
I think perhaps Visagie and this guy should spend a few rounds in the boxing ring together and they could sort out their differences.
I think perhaps Visagie and this guy should spend a few rounds in the boxing ring together and they could sort out their differences.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Cash Gordon
Too many tweets, but who’s the twat now?
The past five days have contained two of the more epic social media fails in recent history. Most of us remember last year’s Skittles fail — the one where the brand reworked their homepage to display a live and unmoderated Twitter stream of every tweet hashtagged #skittles.
It was a bold act, but an epic fail — as soon as the public realised what was going on, they started hashtagging all sorts of things #skittles… and all sorts of non-rainbow of fruit flavours content landed on the Skittles homepage. It was a brave move, but a foolish one, and the brand quickly took the tweet stream down.
Nestle’s big social media don’t
Last week, Nestle opened themselves up to goofy comments, vitriolic — if comedic –criticism and ultimately, brand slaughter with an unmoderated, totally public Facebook page. Unsurprisingly, the brand page (fan page?!) very quickly turned into a Wall of Hate. It’s not the smartest move for a brand that has attracted its share of criticism from some very outspoken groups. It’s even less intelligent given the whole Skittles fiasco. So what gives, Nestle? Did you think they wouldn’t find you? That greenies and breastfeeding advocates don’t use Facebook? Lo, they do, and they’re as happy to speak up here as they are in rallies and on their own blogs:
“It’s not ok for people to use altered versions of ur logos, but it’s ok for u to alter the face of Indonesian rainforest”
To their credit, the brand did post that it was ‘learning social media as we go’… but with an angry audience kicking forth gems like the above, it shouldn’t have taken long for the message to sink it. Alas, no: the site is still live and attracting flak.
Along comes Cash Gordon
If you’ve been under a rock or off the grid for the past few hours, you may have missed Cash Gordon, a Conservative fail so epic, so swift, and likely so catastrophic as to qualify as a nuclear fail.CashGordon.com is — well, was, as of 2:24 today — a tatty little site designed to encourage supporters to take part in the eponymous campaign, which highlights the Prime Minister’s links to the Unite union and attacks him for them.
So far, so typical — standard political jousting with a touch of the old ad hominem to keep things interesting. But it was in the way this site ‘did social media’ that it all went so wrong. Cameron is famously cautious about using Twitter, yet Cash Gordon devoted a huge chunk of real estate to a live, unmoderated Twitter feed that displayed any tweet so long as it included #cashgordon. Unsurprisingly, once the site was live it did not take long for the snarks to come rolling in:
Hello Mum! #cashgordon
#cashgordon Is this why we have yet to have an election called? Because Labour and Conservatives have both fucked up? Doing deals already?
… And so on:
Once people started talking and tweeting about the site, a few more gaping holes were discovered — as this tweet points out:
“You probablty want to avoid the #cashgordon website now — people have just discovered that it doesn’t sanitise tweets for HTML or JS”
Indeed, it didn’t — the site was an easy target for everyone from full-time hackers to bored developers trying to kill some time at lunch. Within minutes, it was fully taken over:
Cash Gordon’s death spiral was truly majestic, first involving flashes of sexually explicit images, then redirecting to Google, then to Nuts magazine, and finally supernova-ing into a sort of chat roulette random site connection engine, before imploding on itself. The URL now redirects to the latest article on the Conservative website.
How could they be so stupid?
This campaign is an epic fail on several very specific counts. Most horrifying for me is just how clearly this venture demonstrates a fundamental failure to learn from others’ mistakes. Skittles and Nestle both got slapped by opening themselves up to the public’s unbridled wrath — so why did the Conservatives do the very same thing? Hubris? Surely not, these are politicians we’re talking about.
Technology #FAIL
Secondly, this campaign is a spectacular, if painful, example of what happens when you fail to make intelligent technological choices. (The answer, Sirs, is that your technology fails you.) Not only was it easy to punk the site, it was relatively easy to hack it. What does this say about the people behind it — do they think we’re idiots, or do they not understand information technology and related security measures? Neither conclusion looks good for Mr. Cameron et al.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that this site isn’t even an original — it was actually based on a template that was developed in the US for use by anti-healthcare lobbyists. Is this an indication of how The Conservative Party approaches the challenge — and opportunity — of conversing with voters? By lobbing old, unsafe technology at us and hoping we don’t figure out how to break it?
Don’t they get their voters?
The final flavour of fail here, and surely the nastiest tang, is the Conservatives’ absolute failure to read their audience. How could they not expect this?! They are people and parents as well as politicians. Surely they have some read of the populus, and if that read doesn’t include the possibility that people who don’t like what they stand for might monkey around with their communication apparatuses, I’d suggest they hit the books again.
So how did this happen? It was either stupidity or hubris, but neither bodes well for a political party on the eve of an election. One thing this disaster certainly demonstrates is proof that public debates need moderators. How ironic that a political party, surely a veritable posse of would-be moderators if ever there was one, dropped that ball so majestically.
Trendspotting: self-flagellation of the big brands?
If this isn’t hubris or stupidity, it might be something new and equally cringe-worthy — a sort of self-flagellation on a corporate scale, wherein the big brand deliberately opens itself up to the public’s wrath, even to the extent of facilitating said attack. What is to be gained of this? Are they trying to tell us something? Is this a sort of ideological S&M-type roleplay, wherein little ol’ me now gets to wield the power and tell Nestle/Skittles/David Cameron/{insert next ‘victim’ here} just what I think of them and their policies? I despair…
So my message to the brands thinking of ‘doing social media’ in a really big, splashy, unmoderated way is this: don’t be twats, guys. You know we want to punk you. You know we don’t all like you. Don’t think you’re going to win our loyalty by rolling over and playing dumb. Apply some intelligence to your communication strategies, please.
*This article could easily be read as an anti-Conservative rant. It’s not. I reckon the odds were about even as to which party was going to do this, and I would say the very same thing had Labour launched a similar anti-David site.
The past five days have contained two of the more epic social media fails in recent history. Most of us remember last year’s Skittles fail — the one where the brand reworked their homepage to display a live and unmoderated Twitter stream of every tweet hashtagged #skittles.
It was a bold act, but an epic fail — as soon as the public realised what was going on, they started hashtagging all sorts of things #skittles… and all sorts of non-rainbow of fruit flavours content landed on the Skittles homepage. It was a brave move, but a foolish one, and the brand quickly took the tweet stream down.
Nestle’s big social media don’t
Last week, Nestle opened themselves up to goofy comments, vitriolic — if comedic –criticism and ultimately, brand slaughter with an unmoderated, totally public Facebook page. Unsurprisingly, the brand page (fan page?!) very quickly turned into a Wall of Hate. It’s not the smartest move for a brand that has attracted its share of criticism from some very outspoken groups. It’s even less intelligent given the whole Skittles fiasco. So what gives, Nestle? Did you think they wouldn’t find you? That greenies and breastfeeding advocates don’t use Facebook? Lo, they do, and they’re as happy to speak up here as they are in rallies and on their own blogs:
“It’s not ok for people to use altered versions of ur logos, but it’s ok for u to alter the face of Indonesian rainforest”
To their credit, the brand did post that it was ‘learning social media as we go’… but with an angry audience kicking forth gems like the above, it shouldn’t have taken long for the message to sink it. Alas, no: the site is still live and attracting flak.
Along comes Cash Gordon
If you’ve been under a rock or off the grid for the past few hours, you may have missed Cash Gordon, a Conservative fail so epic, so swift, and likely so catastrophic as to qualify as a nuclear fail.CashGordon.com is — well, was, as of 2:24 today — a tatty little site designed to encourage supporters to take part in the eponymous campaign, which highlights the Prime Minister’s links to the Unite union and attacks him for them.
So far, so typical — standard political jousting with a touch of the old ad hominem to keep things interesting. But it was in the way this site ‘did social media’ that it all went so wrong. Cameron is famously cautious about using Twitter, yet Cash Gordon devoted a huge chunk of real estate to a live, unmoderated Twitter feed that displayed any tweet so long as it included #cashgordon. Unsurprisingly, once the site was live it did not take long for the snarks to come rolling in:
Hello Mum! #cashgordon
#cashgordon Is this why we have yet to have an election called? Because Labour and Conservatives have both fucked up? Doing deals already?
… And so on:
Once people started talking and tweeting about the site, a few more gaping holes were discovered — as this tweet points out:
“You probablty want to avoid the #cashgordon website now — people have just discovered that it doesn’t sanitise tweets for HTML or JS”
Indeed, it didn’t — the site was an easy target for everyone from full-time hackers to bored developers trying to kill some time at lunch. Within minutes, it was fully taken over:
Cash Gordon’s death spiral was truly majestic, first involving flashes of sexually explicit images, then redirecting to Google, then to Nuts magazine, and finally supernova-ing into a sort of chat roulette random site connection engine, before imploding on itself. The URL now redirects to the latest article on the Conservative website.
How could they be so stupid?
This campaign is an epic fail on several very specific counts. Most horrifying for me is just how clearly this venture demonstrates a fundamental failure to learn from others’ mistakes. Skittles and Nestle both got slapped by opening themselves up to the public’s unbridled wrath — so why did the Conservatives do the very same thing? Hubris? Surely not, these are politicians we’re talking about.
Technology #FAIL
Secondly, this campaign is a spectacular, if painful, example of what happens when you fail to make intelligent technological choices. (The answer, Sirs, is that your technology fails you.) Not only was it easy to punk the site, it was relatively easy to hack it. What does this say about the people behind it — do they think we’re idiots, or do they not understand information technology and related security measures? Neither conclusion looks good for Mr. Cameron et al.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that this site isn’t even an original — it was actually based on a template that was developed in the US for use by anti-healthcare lobbyists. Is this an indication of how The Conservative Party approaches the challenge — and opportunity — of conversing with voters? By lobbing old, unsafe technology at us and hoping we don’t figure out how to break it?
Don’t they get their voters?
The final flavour of fail here, and surely the nastiest tang, is the Conservatives’ absolute failure to read their audience. How could they not expect this?! They are people and parents as well as politicians. Surely they have some read of the populus, and if that read doesn’t include the possibility that people who don’t like what they stand for might monkey around with their communication apparatuses, I’d suggest they hit the books again.
So how did this happen? It was either stupidity or hubris, but neither bodes well for a political party on the eve of an election. One thing this disaster certainly demonstrates is proof that public debates need moderators. How ironic that a political party, surely a veritable posse of would-be moderators if ever there was one, dropped that ball so majestically.
Trendspotting: self-flagellation of the big brands?
If this isn’t hubris or stupidity, it might be something new and equally cringe-worthy — a sort of self-flagellation on a corporate scale, wherein the big brand deliberately opens itself up to the public’s wrath, even to the extent of facilitating said attack. What is to be gained of this? Are they trying to tell us something? Is this a sort of ideological S&M-type roleplay, wherein little ol’ me now gets to wield the power and tell Nestle/Skittles/David Cameron/{insert next ‘victim’ here} just what I think of them and their policies? I despair…
So my message to the brands thinking of ‘doing social media’ in a really big, splashy, unmoderated way is this: don’t be twats, guys. You know we want to punk you. You know we don’t all like you. Don’t think you’re going to win our loyalty by rolling over and playing dumb. Apply some intelligence to your communication strategies, please.
*This article could easily be read as an anti-Conservative rant. It’s not. I reckon the odds were about even as to which party was going to do this, and I would say the very same thing had Labour launched a similar anti-David site.
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
The small business marketing and advertising conundrum
The small business marketing and advertising conundrum
Its always excites me when I come across diamonds in the rough. Individuals or small businesses which have massive potential which for some reason have not managed to realise this potential. These diamonds in the rough, are opportunities for liberation and that’s the greatest thrill which marketers face.
The reason I believe that these diamonds in the rough exist is that not all people are marketers. Great singers, plumbers, beauty therapist or Doctors are not always skilled at finding new potential clients or communicating their skill.
History is full of cases where products or businesses are launched ineffectively and fail only to be launched by another company years later and rush to success. Ever heard the saying, “The best thing since sliced bread” Well sliced bread had to be launched twice before it become the best thing.
Here’s why I believe that this problem exists. Small companies are often big enough to spend maybe 20000GBP a year on marketing but not big enough to hire a marketer of significant talent to truly grow a business. At the same time everyone in a small company is busy and so marketing becomes an ad hoc portfolio for someone who isn’t necessarily a marketer.
So what’s the solution? A solid, considered, well thought out marketing plan is where you need to start. Generating a sound marketing plan is something you can do within your company but my suggestion would be to enlist the assistance of a marketing expert. For a fee, you can ensure that your plan is more effective giving you a greater ROI and you will also gain the advantage of tapping into their network of agency partners and other strategic marketing alliances which can save you money in the long run.
I often speak with colleagues who tell me that they write their own marketing plans and I’m sure they’re pretty good but in the same way that everyone can write a short story or paint a nice picture, it doesn’t make them an expert novalist or artist. Get the right assistance at this stage because its often the difference between success and failure.
Once the marketing plan is in place, you can either ask the marketing consultant to drive the process or more cost effectively, you can hand the plan over to a project manager within your organisation to execute as agreed.
Its always excites me when I come across diamonds in the rough. Individuals or small businesses which have massive potential which for some reason have not managed to realise this potential. These diamonds in the rough, are opportunities for liberation and that’s the greatest thrill which marketers face.
The reason I believe that these diamonds in the rough exist is that not all people are marketers. Great singers, plumbers, beauty therapist or Doctors are not always skilled at finding new potential clients or communicating their skill.
History is full of cases where products or businesses are launched ineffectively and fail only to be launched by another company years later and rush to success. Ever heard the saying, “The best thing since sliced bread” Well sliced bread had to be launched twice before it become the best thing.
Here’s why I believe that this problem exists. Small companies are often big enough to spend maybe 20000GBP a year on marketing but not big enough to hire a marketer of significant talent to truly grow a business. At the same time everyone in a small company is busy and so marketing becomes an ad hoc portfolio for someone who isn’t necessarily a marketer.
So what’s the solution? A solid, considered, well thought out marketing plan is where you need to start. Generating a sound marketing plan is something you can do within your company but my suggestion would be to enlist the assistance of a marketing expert. For a fee, you can ensure that your plan is more effective giving you a greater ROI and you will also gain the advantage of tapping into their network of agency partners and other strategic marketing alliances which can save you money in the long run.
I often speak with colleagues who tell me that they write their own marketing plans and I’m sure they’re pretty good but in the same way that everyone can write a short story or paint a nice picture, it doesn’t make them an expert novalist or artist. Get the right assistance at this stage because its often the difference between success and failure.
Once the marketing plan is in place, you can either ask the marketing consultant to drive the process or more cost effectively, you can hand the plan over to a project manager within your organisation to execute as agreed.
Friday, 12 February 2010
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Friday, 11 December 2009
Online reputation management and the killers
So I went to watch the Killers in Paarl this weekend and what a concert it was. Getting there was a bit of a nightmare and so we missed Goldfish and Zebra and Giraffe but the Killers were out of this world. The R100 extra for Golden circle was well worth it and we had a killer time (sorry, couldn’t resist). We went to the party at the Polo club afterwards which was also great fun. All in all it was an awesome jol but that’s not why I’m writing.
The reason why I am writing is because some attendees of the concert spent 4 hours getting to the concert and 5 hrs getting back home afterwards and I’d like to have a look at the manner in which Big Concerts responded.
The bigger question is, if a brand or organisation has stepped out of line or blundered massively, what is the best course of action online? I’m not certain of the answer to that but lets see what Big Concerts had to say and perhaps we can let you decide the rest.
Firstly to Big Concerts credit, they were very quick, they had a press release out the following morning and this is what it said:
The thing which created frustration is that they stated that they had planned thoroughly and what had happened was beyond their control. The thing with social media (the comments box on 24.com and 2oceansvibe) is that it does not allow one sided stories. There were 1000’s of eyewitnesses who said that it was very poorly planned and it was impossible to expect that many cars to exit on one dirt road. What made this problem worse for Big Concerts is that all these readers who disagreed with the press release were also angry and had spent 4 hours in their cars and so they really wanted to vent….
So what unfolded was hundreds of responses across numerous websites and pretty much all of them had the same sentiment. Have a look below at a few comments from the 24.com site and just a note, I wasn’t taking the really bad ones, these were just three short comments in a row
I think this is a great example of how different today’s media is. In the past Big Concerts would have published this press release and the job would have been finished but now angry readers get to have their say and challenge the integrity of the statement for the world to see.
So this brings me back to the question on which I started this post, if there is a “Reputation Crisis” of this nature online, how does an organisation deal with it.
I think the most important answer to that question is that one must be 100% transparent and honest on every point. If an online statement misrepresents the actual events in any way the online world will expose the truth. There were 20 000 people at the concert and they all had to exit on one road and so, the truth is that the “rigorous logistics guy” should have foreseen a problem.
It is also vital to monitor digital media and online forums, this allows you to react appropriately when you can see a problem getting out of hand. There were 180 comments on the 24.com blog alone and yet no response from Big Concerts.
At the end of the day, I have been to plenty of Big Concerts gigs and to date and they have all been great. This is the company who have brought everything from Roxette and the Spice Girls to U2 and Counting Crows to South Africa over the last 20 years and I think that is something important to remember in times when things go wrong.
So Big Concerts, thanks for making South Africa a better place over the years but this time you cocked up, I say you stand up and own it and this little youtube clip from Jet Blue is a great example of a company doing just that.
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