The Articulate CEO

2012's Worst Corporate Twitter Blunders

Ryan Holmes, CEO at HootSuite has come up with his list of 5 of the year's biggest corporate Twitter blunders and some thoughts on how the right technology and some basic training could've helped. 2012 may have been the year big businesses finally took the big leap toward embracing social media but it’s also produced some of the most disastrous tweets in corporate Twitter history.

Here then, is Ryan's top 5:

1. Insensitive employee tweets a presidential low-blow

On Oct. 3, in the course of the first US presidential debate, President Barack Obama mentioned his grandmother, who died just days before he took office. Moments later, this tweet went out to KitchenAid's 24,000 plus followers. As outrage flooded in, KitchenAid went into apology mode, explaining that an employee mistakenly sent the offensive remark from the corporate handle, rather than his or her personal account.

Sadly, this kind of account mix-up happens all the time. Heavy Twitter users often post to multiple accounts, switching back and forth on the fly. Mistakes are inevitable. That’s why leading social media management systems like HootSuite now prompt users with a special window before they publish to designated, high-profile accounts. Setting up these so-called secure profiles is often all it takes to avert a Twitter meltdown. 

2. Major supermarket chain tries to cash in on Hurricane Sandy

There were an appalling number of  insensitive tweets surrounding deadly Hurricane Sandy. Gap, for instance, encouraged followers to weather the storm by staying inside and shopping on the store's website. But the most spectacularly inappropriate tweet comes from Canadian supermarket chain President’s Choice. The above message linked to a Halloween recipe for marshmallow bloodshot eyeballs, made by slicing marshmallows in half and placing a grape in the middle.

This comes down more to a lack of common sense than a lack of Twitter savvy. Joking about death and tragedy - or using it as part of a sales pitch - isn’t acceptable in normal conversation. It’s certainly not acceptable on Twitter.

3. Fashion retailer riffs on Batman shooting

Hours after the deadly theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., during a Batman movie, UK-based CelebBoutique sent the above tweet. It was left up for an hour before being hastily deleted in a hail of angry comments. According to CelebBoutique, their PR people were totally unaware of the shooting when they sent the tweet. The Twitterverse, however, was not sympathetic.  

When delegating tweets to outside agencies, contractors or even junior employees, assign them limited permissions. Drafts can be fed into an approval queue to be vetted by senior management before publishing, avoiding this kind of PR disaster. 

4. A CFO tweets too much, too soon

Francesca’s, a clothing retailer with stores in 44 states, started the year on the wrong foot when its CFO sent out this tweet after a confidential meeting on March 7. The problem is that Francesca’s is a publicly traded company. The CFO disclosed company info to his followers before it went public, thus sharing inside information - a violation of long-held SEC regulations. He was promptly fired.

Regulated industries - finance, healthcare, insurance and many others - face strict rules governing what they can and cannot communicate to the public. Social media is not exempt. Every firm should have a social media compliance policy and a social media management system that can archive all messages in the event of an audit.  

5. A fashion model posts racist photo, then follows up with ignorant tweet

While in Korea on business to celebrate a new store opening there, a male model for Abercrombie & Fitch clothing label Hollister tweeted a picture of himself smiling, squinting his eyes and giving the peace sign. To top it off, when followers called him out on the offensive gesture, he responded with, “Hahahaha they ruhhvvvv ittt!'.” Korean media picked up the story and furious locals initiated a campaign to boycott the store.  

We must all accept the reality that social media is a public forum. Nearly everything posted on Twitter and Facebook becomes part of your digital footprint - potentially viewable not just by friends but by employers and the public at large. In this case, it’s crucial that companies have a social media policy and share it with employees. First and foremost, emphasize that tweets are public by default and messages sent over Twitter - even on private accounts - may ultimately reflect on the company.  Many social media management systems for businesses include online tutorials that hammer this point home.  

The tragedy is that all of these embarrassing and damaging tweets could have been avoided with a little social media 101 and the right social media management system. Some simple preventative measures would have spared a lot of apologizing, not to mention angry customers and possible lost revenue.

The Only Newspaper You Will Ever Need!

If you watch enough television shows and movies, you might start to notice that a bunch of the same props are used over and over again. Among the more famous is a newspaper that has been passed around from show to show and has, in fact, been reused for more than 30 years.

I don’t know the story behind this prop newspaper, but I assume it was created as a royalty free prop for television shows and movies. Somewhere along the line, the prop became a recurring gag between propmasters or maybe they are just lazy. Don't believe me? Well, here is the proof - try and spot it the next tme you are watching TV.

Why Missions, Values and Visions Fail

The common mission statement or vision, supposedly the bedrock of an organisation is often nothing more than a foundation of sand. Most corporate visions are too broad to be useful and too vague to be implemented. It isn't that the vision doesn't mean anything so much as it could mean anything. Too much is left open to interpretation and the result is our people, unsure of performance expectations, start working at cross-purposes. Where organisations have tried to go a dstep further by developing values statements there are often similar issues. The values are either poorly defined and open to interpretation or they merely reflect what an organisation thinks people would like to see rather than the reality. Look at this example:

Our Values

Communication
We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another… and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.

Respect
We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment.

Integrity
We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it.

Excellence
We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.

They sound good don't they? Until, that is, you realise they are the stated values of a company you may have heard of - Enron. Do they in any way reflect the reality of that particular company? Of course not. But they are the perfect example of how values and mission statements have become nothing more than rhetoric. Now, here is a test for you.

Make a copy of your corporate values, a copy of Enron’s corporate values, and a copy of corporate value statements from a couple of other companies. Remove the company names from all documents. Take these lists to a random cross section of your employees and ask, “ Which of these corporate value statements best describes our company’s actions?” “Which least describes our company?” While you are at it also ask several suppliers and several customers.

Each time, as an afterthought, ask each group “By the way, do you happen to recognize which – if any – of these is actually ours?” Chances are that none of your suppliers, none of your customers, and very, very few of your employees will be able to tell the difference between Enron’s corporate values, your corporate values, and the values of any other random company.

What does this mean to you?

1. Most corporate value statements are virtually indistinguishable from each other.

2. Actions are what count – not what’s on paper.

3. If there’s a disconnect between what you say is important and what people do, you need to fix that right away. Rather than building a series of rules, build a series of examples. People learn from examples and role models – not from a list of words.

It’s all about alignment. What you say you want, what you really want, and what you reward all have to be in alignment. If not, then you are doing nothing more than trading in rhetoric and you will be undone by your actions... much like Enron.

 

Qantas Finish 2011 A Winner - For All The Wrong Reasons!

The list that stops a nation - Australia's Biggest PR Disasters of the Year - is out and in an unprecedented achievement, Qantas won three of the top 10 gaffes of 2011 when the list was released by social networking tracking site Cyber Chatter. It's never been done before and it is hard to see how anyone could ever do it again but, then again, Qantas is still with us and 2012 is a brand new year. Who would bet against them? So, here it is, Australia's Biggest PR Disasters of the Year together with links to news.com.au for anyone who missed the stories first time around.

1. The Qantas grounding inconvenienced and angered a nation. People are still waiting for refunds yet CEO Alan Joyce still has a job.

2. "Qantas Luxury" Twitter scandal. The plan was to get people tweeting good things about Qantas. They got thousands of complaints.

3. Troubled footballer Brendan Fevola's contract termination with the Brisbane Lions ends up in court.

4. Tony Abbott freezes during a TV interview with Channel 7's Mark Riley in the "shit happens" tape.

5. Qantas "golliwog" social media promo causes a race brouhaha.

6. Ricky Nixon and the fallout from his unseemly association with a teenager.

7. Indigenous writer Larissa Behrendt describes bestiality program as "less offensive than Bess Price", an Aboriginal woman in favour of the Northern Territory intervention.

8. Kyle Sandilands goes on a personal vendetta against a journo. Austereo loses more than 20 advertisers and the shock jock is forced into a humiliating apology.

9. Australian Defence Force cadet is violated when she is filmed having sex.

10. Gasp Jeans become a mockery after their startling email response to a customer complaint goes viral.

Steve Jobs - So Close and Yet So Far

In finally losing a brave battle with cancer Steve Jobs has been the subject of an outpouring of grief not unlike that seen when Princess Diana passed away. He has been eulogised exhaustively and the Apple faithful have lit candles and laid flowers at the foot of many a retail store. Most of the copy written about Steve Jobs since his death has been extremely positive with many hailing him as one of the world's great communicators but much of this commentary is hubris and more an acknowledgement of his undoubted success than a realistic appraisal of his legacy as a communicator.

He certainly left behind a dominant Apple, fulfilling his original promise to save the company from the brink when he returned in 1997. It has enormous strength in both music sales and mobile devices, and more power than at any time in its history. It has come a long way since its early days as a maverick company with pirate boxes and open schematics

But that success was built on almost machiavellian communication techniques. Apple may have been created on principals like freedom and openness but Steve Jobs didn't practice them. He was intensely private, defensive and litigious. If you are an Apple user then your experience under the reign of Jobs became less free, more locked down and more tightly regulated as the years went by. All of Apple’s iDevices — the iPod, iPhone and iPad — are shrouded in secrecy and are designed to stop users having access to their workings. Faced with criticism such as that over the effectiveness or otherwise of their iPhone 4 antennae, the standard Apple response was to deny, obsfucate and obstruct. Much of Apples growth is attributable to its brilliant design but it is also attributable to its ruthlessness in driving down costs by outsourcing manufacturing to China with factory conditions that see its workers commit suicide on a regular basis. Jobs was often hailed for his ability to reinvest profits back into the company but this also ignored that one reason this happened was that Steve made a point of banning any form of philanthropy. You look at what Apple has become and how it got there and you have to ask: Is there any tech company today that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s legendary 1984 commercial than Apple itself? In my opinion, Apple and Jobs are more evolutionary than revolutionary.

There is an oft repeated anecdote about Jobs that kind of sums it up - the CEO, in search of a space in the company's crowded parking lot, regularly left his Mercedes in a handicapped space, sometimes taking up two spaces. The pattern became so noticeable that employees put notes on his windshield that read, Park Different. The message was obvious - standard rules didn't apply to Steve. The rhetoric just didn't match the reality.

We can admire the design perfection and business acumen Steve Jobs possessed but I'm not so sure that, ultimately, there is all that great a legacy here. With all of Apple’s immense resources at his command if Steve Jobs had been truly committed to "thinking differently" who knows what he could have achieved. As it was, beyond some cool products he, and his company, ended up looking pretty much like everyone else in the corporate world.  Perhaps he didn't have time. Perhaps he was taken too soon. I hope so, otherwise a great man who demonstrated enormous genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world fell desperately short of his true potential.

What Does Your Digital Footprint Say About You?

Just as consumers are becoming more and more aware of their environmental footprint so too are they becoming increasingly aware of their digital footprint.

And with that awareness comes concerns about the lack of controls available to manage it. We’re realizing that as society grows more comfortable using the web to learn about each other, our public records, data, photos, videos, and blogs may paint a picture that is less than safe, accurate or flattering.

In a recent survey by Harris Interactive around 90% of Americans indicated they wanted more control over the information that is available about them online. I suspect that, in this case, Americans are speaking for all of us.

Because people use websites and search engines to find out information about others, the fact is that our online identity is now as important as our “offline” personal or professional reputation.

It is starting to dawn on us how much information about ourselves is online and that this information is impacting how others view us. In the survey:

* 78% said they believe it is very important to look up information about people and/or businesses online before deciding to interact or do business with them;

* 74% claimed they would most likely refuse to interact or do business with a person or company if they found negative information about them online;

* 69% stated that they would be much more likely to interact with someone on a personal level if they found positive information about them online.

It means that every company and every individual must participate in the online world if only to present their side of the story. Increasingly, our online reputation is becoming the means by which we are judged and potentially the major determinant of our future success. That online reputation cannot be left to chance nor can it safely be left in the hands of others.

 

 

 

 

 

What the...? The Weirdest Job Interview Questions in 2010

Glassdoor, a job-posting and community site for job-seekers, has compiled a list of the oddest interview questions of 2010 to “shed light on the process” and “give job seekers a leg up in their next interview.”

They combed through 80,000 interview questions shared by job candidates on the Glassdoor site to find the wackiest queries and, in so doing, have also managed to identify some of the dumbest companies on the planet. If you are getting questions like these at a job interview it is probably a good time to run. 

At best they indicate someone who is completely out of their depth when it comes to interviewing a job candidate and, at worst, someone who is being deliberately difficult, obtuse and manipulative. 

1. If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?
2. How many ridges are there around a quarter? (Reportedly from Deloitte)
3. What is the philosophy of martial arts? (A spokesperson for Aflac, where this question was used, says she hopes the candidate quoted Kwai Chang Caine from the 1970s TV show Kung Fu: “I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.”)
4. Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years (Reportedly from Boston Consulting)
5. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird you are (Reportedly from Capital One)
6. How many basketballs can you fit in this room? (Reportedly from Google)
7. Out of 25 horses, pick the fastest 3 horses. In each race, only 5 horses can run at the same time. What is the minimum number of races required? (Reportedly from Bloomberg LP)
8. If you could be any superhero, who would it be? (Reportedly from AT&T)
9. You have a birthday cake and have exactly three slices to cut it into eight equal pieces. How do you do it? (Reportedly from Blackrock Portfolio Management)
10. Given the numbers 1 to 1000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint “higher” or “lower” for each guess you make? (Reportedly from Facebook)
11. If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner? (Reportedly from Amazon)
12. An apple costs 20 cents, an orange costs 40 cents, and a grapefruit costs 60 cents. How much is a pear? (Reportedly from Epic Systems)
13. There are three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of its box. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly? (Reportedly from Apple)
14. How many traffic lights are in Manhattan? (Reportedly from Argus Information and Advisory Services)
15. You are in a dark room with no light. You have 19 grey socks and 25 black socks. What are the chances you will get a matching pair? (Reportedly from Convergex)
16. What do wood and alcohol have in common? (Reportedly from Guardsmark)
17. How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine? (Reportedly from IBM)
18. You have 8 pennies. Seven weigh the same, but one weighs less. You also have a judge’s scale. Find the penny that weighs less in three steps. (Reportedly from Intel)
19. Why do you think only a small portion of the population makes over $150,000? (Reportedly from New York Life)
20. You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year. (Reportedly from Schlumberger)
21. How many bottles of beer are [consumed] in the city [in a] week? (Reportedly from Nielsen)
22. What’s the square root of 2000? (Reportedly from UBS)
23. A train leaves San Antonio for Houston at 60 mph. Another train leaves Houston for San Antonio at 80 mph. Houston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100 mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Houston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide? (Reportedly from USAA)
24. How are M&Ms made? (Reportedly from USBank)
25. What would you do if you just inherited a pizzeria from your uncle? (This question comes from Volkswagen.)

 

Source: Ambro

 

Google Says…

Google Suggest offers you real-time suggestions to complete your search query as you type. 

One of the factors that determines what those suggestions might be is the overall popularity of searches by other users who might have gone before you.  As a result Google Suggest is a sometimes illuminating, sometimes entertaining and almost always scary insight into the collective search psyche of our fellow human beings.

For example, type in “Tom Cruise” and the inference is that people think Tom is a high Net-Worth Movie Star Scientologist with Height issues who, despite being Gay, has been known to be involved in Risky Business with Katie Holmes.

Type in “Why my g” and you can quickly see there is a preponderance of problems with Girlfriends, Guitars and Gums… not necessarily in that order.  Replace the “g” with a “p” and the problems change to multicoloured Periods or Poop and Printers and PS3’s that just can’t get their act together.

Fun as it is, perhaps Google Suggest also offers some interesting insights into what people may think of your brand.  Simply try typing in “Your brand is” and see what suggestions are thrown at you.  It may well be the fastest way to see what people are thinking about your brand right here, right now. 

I tried it with a few well-known ones and some of the results I got were surprising:

Not looking good for re-election at this early stage is it Mr President?  Try this one…

Perhaps 3g is not the technological saviour the Telco’s would have us believe… then again maybe the public have more faith in beleaguered GM than the media…

And I think it might be safe to assume that the Mom and Pop investor won’t be heading back to Wall Street anytime soon either.

Try it yourself and try it on your own brand if you dare!

Show 19: Podcast - Why It's Important to Get Your Story Straight!

Word of mouth – the most cost effective and powerful form of marketing but is it achieving its potential?

In this episode we discuss the value of storytelling to get your message out via word of mouth. But don't rely on others' interpretations of what they think your business' story is.

To get the best results from storytelling it is vital to firstly figure out what your story is and what you want people to be saying about your business. And then you need to tell it in a way that people can easily remember and share.

If you have any feedback, questions or topics you would like me to cover please email me at [email protected].

To listen to The Articulate CEO podcast:

1) Click here to listen now

2) Subscribe via iTunes

Communicating Your Social Status Online

Given how important status symbols are in the real world it was kind of inevitable that they would start to be seen in the virtual world as well.

Being connected is suddenly seen as the thing to be and what started with showing off the number of visitors to your Flickr page or Wordpress blog now also encompasses the number of your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, YouTube Channel subscribers, LinkedIn connections and a host of other measures that tell the world you are tech savvy.

According to trendwatching.com, in the next 12 months you can’t go wrong supplying your (online-loving) customers with any kind of symbol, virtual or 'real world' that helps them display to peers their online contributions, 'interestingness', creations or popularity.

Just as people like to be seen consuming luxury products to show off their wealth, or driving a Prius to let us know they care about the environment, they also like their virtual offerings to be somehow recognised.

As more and more people invest in building a digital brand such as their own blog or online diary you can expect to see a greater demand for all sorts of digital endorsements of that brand.

Interestingly, one extra element to watch out for is new status symbols that straddle the 'real' and 'online' worlds.

From physical manifestations of digital status (think personalised Facebook and Twitter memorabilia), to online recognition of physical activities (status updates or badges based on real-world visits), consumers will seek to display their online status symbols in all arenas.

For example, Twournal enables Twitter users to transform their tweets and pictures into a real-life published journal. In addition to creating their own 'books', users can also buy and sell publications from other users. US based CrowdedInk offers an app that allows users to generate mugs filled with pictures of their Facebook friends or Twitter followers. Users only need to enter their username and a preview of the mug is automatically generated in minutes.

As more and more businesses look to create fans from consumers they are also going to need to be conscious of recognising those fans and rewarding them for their patronage in every world they might inhabit – real or otherwise.

Learn more about Twournal