Archive for the 'Social media' Category
If you’ve been following this blog you know that we at Weber Shandwick firmly believe in the “return on advocacy.” Simply, it’s the business benefits of finding and connecting with your advocates. Now maybe it’s time to kick off the “return on BADVOCACY.” Can there be such a thing? Afterall, our own study, Risky Business: Reputations Online™ clearly identified the fear instilled in global executives by customer and employee badvocates.
Employee badvocates are a big concern: executives ranked employee criticism (41%) in a tie for first place with leaked confidential information as the greatest online risk to their own company’s reputation. As employees wrestle with declining pensions and possible layoffs, reputation bandits will be even harder at work online.
The Internet provides innumerable platforms for employees to strike, usually anonymously, at a company’s reputation. However, rather than being immobilized with fear about the potential for such strikes, Nokia, as noted in an article in this week’s BusinessWeek, is embracing employee badvocacy. They are allowing their employees to rant anonymously on an intranet soapbox called BlogHub. “Workers can be savage as they flame thier employer…Nokia managers want them to fire away.” Nokia believes that innovation is accelerated by encouraging employees to say what is on their minds. I would surmise that the other benefit is that by allowing employees to release their frustrations in a “safe” environment, they won’t be tempted to go outside Nokia’s four walls and vent.
It will be interesting to see if Nokia sees a Return on Badvocacy as it struggles in a tough economy with strong competitors. In the meantime, we’ll keep on eye out for other examples of turning badvocacy into a positive return.
Tags: Badvocacy, Badvocate, BusinessWeek, Nokia, Weber Shandwick
How often can a senior executive say his or her biggest ally in the company is the CEO? Well, frankly, I don’t know what the average senior executive says, but I do know that the chief communications officer (CCO) can proudly make the claim.
We conducted our second annual study among CCOs at the world’s largest companies with Spencer Stuart and KRC Research - The Rising CCO II - and found that the CCO’s #1 organizational ally in both North America and Europe is the CEO. Investor Relations is a distant #2 (a predictable ranking given how closely corp comms and IR have had to work together in the tough economic climate).
Our survey asked about top organizational allies and rivals (respondents could choose just one department for each). As communications professionals, we were quite relieved that only 1 person in our sample said his or her biggest rival is the CEO. Worldwide, Marketing is the CCO’s stickiest thorn (as we saw last year) but in North America Human Resources is nearly tied with Marketing.
Why the admiration from the corner office? As our study partner George Jamison, who leads Spencer Stuart’s Corporate Communications and Investor Relations Practice, says, “When many organizations endure critical times, CEOs are increasingly looking to the CCO for their strategic crisis communications and ability to quickly react to a variety of scenarios.”
And Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross adds: “CEOs and boards are under tremendous pressure to navigate through the stormy seas of the current economic tsunami. Like never before, CEOs are depending on CCOs for crisis and issues counsel to steady their company reputations and calm stakeholders. CEOs who do not communicate using traditional and social media do so at their own peril.”
We’ll see when we do the same study next year if the love continues to flourish. But for now, if you’re going to have an advocate in your company, may it be the CEO!
Big shout out to Chris Brogan, Justin Levy and all the folks here at Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas. Just finished my presentation on how Advocacy and Badvocacy are impacting marketing, and the various apple carts that are being upset in the process. For those who can’t make it, you can watch the proceedings live here or join us at the Boston event late September. Here’s my deck, BTW — would love your feedback…
IMS09 Dallas: Advocacy, Badvocacy & Upsetting Apple Carts
Imagine my delight when I picked up Friday’s Wall Street Journal and on the front page was an article about people going after those unwarranted auto-warranty calls. The calls go like this, “This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is about to expire.” I regularly receive these calls on my cell phone and I eventually became so annoyed that I called them back a few times. However, the company only had voice mail and I could not reach anyone. I left a voice mail telling them to take me off their list and please not to call me again. Of course they did. The reason I had reached my limit and turned into a “badvocate” was that I received one of those calls while in Beijing last summer. The call came in the middle of the night and I thought that something terrible had happened at home. After the infuriating call, I had trouble falling back asleep and my jet lag was prolonged.
The article described how an individual began an Internet crusade by leaving music recordings on the company’s voicemail and how an entire posse of angry badvocates or are they rightful advocates? soon overloaded the phone lines at the company in question. Eventually the online mob took down the company’s voice mail system and it started to get too personal. Some people stalked outside the owner’s home (who said his company was not involved) and wanted to take pictures of employees leaving the premises. Although I did not join this online swarm attack with elevator music, songs and rants, I understood how ordinary citizens might want to retaliate. What could be worse than an online army of enraged advocates turned badvocates.
Tags: advocates, Badvocates, Mob, Online, Swarm
Weber Shandwick recently published The Good Book of Badvocacy, the first in a series of Thought Leadership “mini-books.” As you might have guessed, The Good Book is all about badvocacy. Take a look and let us know what you think!
The web celebrated its 20th birthday this month. In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a paper about Information Management thereby coining the term “world wide web.” In The Economist, a discussion about what the web accomplished over these past 20 years caught my attention since it related to advocacy. According to the article, science has benefitted tremendously from Berners-Lee’s vast web of links and networks. Amateurs now can be called upon to help scientists solve knotty problems that would take years and decades to complete. These freelance Advocates joined GalaxyZoo where people are helping to classify galaxies into categories. More than 150,000 have joined in and they are now onto GalaxyZoo2. Another advocate network termed Herbaria@athome reviews and scrutinizes old plant cuttings from British museums to hopefully decipher climate change. Over 35,0000 herbarium specimens have been documented so far. The idea of online advocates banding together to solve scientific problems and social science issues is encouraging.
Tags: advocates, Economist, GalaxyZoo, Herbaria, Tim Berners-Lee, world wide web
How big are people’s networks? This is a question that has always intrigued me. I recall learning about the Dunbar number years ago and often wonder how it applies to Facebook. I keep thinking that everyone has a deeper and wider network than me since they are always talking about their “friends” on the social media site. By the way, the Dunbar number is “a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships” (Wikipedia) or how many people you can reasonably know without it getting out of hand. The Dunbar number is 148.
I was recently delighted to read an article in The Economist on the Dunbar number and how it applies to Facebook. The Economist asked Facebook’s in-house sociologist Cameron Marlow about average size of a person’s Facebook friends (your personal advocates). He said that the average number is 120 which is somewhat close to the Dunbar hypothesis. No surprise that women have larger networks than men. The more interesting question posed by Marlow was how many individuals do people interact with on a frequent basis. I felt much better after hearing what he found:
“Thus an average man—one with 120 friends—generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual’s photos, status messages or “wall”. An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.”
Essentially, people still keep their inner circles small and personal although they have wider networks of casual friends and distant acquaintances. If that is the case, why does Facebook and Twitter count your friends and followers?
Tags: Dunbar number, Economist, Facebook, personal advocates, social networks
Took a look on Facebook (if you belong) to see what was cooking for AIG in light of the disturbing news about AIG bonuses. There were several sites but one that had many members (400+) has a picture of a pig with an AIG logo on a party hat on top of its head. The group is described as “Take part and put an end to the party AIG has been having at our economic expense. AIG is the epitome of unconscionable greed, corruption, and the sociopathic corporate mind set. Together we can unite and put an end to the vile gluttonous reign of AIG, one canceled policy, one personal choice to boycott at a time.” The language is getting more colorful as the story develops. The knives are out and my sense is that people feel better being able to vent their anger as AIG continues to be the poster boy for greed and a damaged economy. The New York Times has a good article on why we can’t let the government change the rule of law and why we must abide by our contractual agreements.
Tags: Advocacy, AIG, Facebook
No one can argue that the challenge of managing and protecting company reputation is an enduring leadership agenda item, taking on priority status as the online co
mmunity becomes more sophisticated. Opportunities abound for companies to connect with their staunch, passionate, and highly influential supporters – their advocates – to help build and protect reputation. New technologies seem to surface every day that allow organizations to build relationships with these advocates and cultivate new advocates.
To assess the online reputation risks and vulnerabilities in business today, and how advocacy can reduce threats and create opportunities, we recently completed a large global study about online reputation management, called Risky Business: Reputations Online™. We conducted it in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveying more than 700 senior executives from 62 countries.
Risky Business determined that executives believe the threat level to their companies’ reputation is high – a striking 67% of top executives regard their company’s reputation as vulnerable. However, the study also found that advocacy helps safeguard company reputations in many ways. Below are a few highlights to whet your appetite, but we’ll be releasing more from the study over the next few weeks.
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Reputation threat levels are lower at companies with loyal advocates. Less than 6 in 10 executives (56%) who believe that most of their company’s advocates would stay with them if they faced a reputational crisis (i.e., those with “very loyal” advocates) report high or moderate threat level to their company’s reputation today. Comparatively, 79% of executives whose company’s advocates are not loyal (i.e., most would abandon them in the face of a reputational crisis) consider the threat level to their company’s reputation high or moderate.
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Executives at companies with very loyal advocates are far less worried about online badvocacy from dissatisfied customers or critics than executives at companies that lack loyal advocates (31% vs. 47%, respectively). This confidence is probably a result of their companies’ rigor in managing reputation online: those with very loyal advocates report having a more rigorous approach to online reputation management than those whose advocates are not loyal (65% vs. 44%, respectively).
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Companies with very loyal advocates
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Companies without loyal advocates
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The threat to my company’s reputation today is high or moderate
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56%
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79%
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I am concerned that a dissatisfied customer or critic will launch an online campaign against my company
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31%
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47%
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My company is very/somewhat rigorous today about managing its reputation online
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65%
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44%
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More proof to come of the benefits of finding and nurturing advocates…
The Obama stimulus plan is looking for advocates. An email was sent to hosts of stimulus plan parties seeking support and info on explaining the bill. New DNC chairman Tim Kaine is videoed urging support and instructions on how to achieve that: “Don’t forget to gather stories and questions from your guests — they will be featured on BarackObama.com to tell the story of the economic crisis, and our recovery.” Advocacy is all about telling stories and sharing them– much like Obama has done. Kaine also answers questions from ordinary people in his 13 minutes on video. I received a 4 minute video from President Obama this morning asking me to advocate the plan and explaining why he needs my support. [Where does he find the time? Does he sleep?]As soon as the plan is passed, www.recovery.gov goes live and we can see how our money is being spent and is meeting its objectives. Advocacy has never been so viral, so social and so immediate.
Tags: Advocacy, advocates, Kaine, Obama, Stimulus plan
