Entries Tagged 'Reputation Management' ↓

It’s not often you see full front page apologies like the one that appeared in the Boston Herald over the New England Patriots spygate scandal.

Despite the false allegations that came the day before this year’s Super Bowl, the Patriots have a ton of work to do to get back their brand mojo following a year of tremendous highs and lows. The Pats were certainly owed an apology after the Herald could not substantiate accusations that the team had taped the walkthrough of the St. Louis Rams the day before Super Bowl XXXVI.

Even so, the Pats had been caught illegally taping other teams and were rightly slapped with a major penalty by the NFL. People within the organization dealt the brand a major setback, but there is optimism that spygate may be finally coming to a conclusion.

The Kraft family, which owns the Pats and the Revolution, have been a great asset to the New England region for years and if there is one thing owner Robert Kraft knows is that having a respected brand is priceless. “I must compliment the Boston Herald for doing what is unprecedented in terms of recognizing their error in a major way … (we) had our brand damaged,” Kraft said.

The Kraft family should look start to look at ways to rebuild its brand by connecting with the media and its fans in new ways and reaching beyond traditional marketing and communications to communicate how and why the organization has changed for the better.

Mike Spataro

Recent example of an emerging social media tug-a-war between Engadget and T-Mobile over the use of the color magenta for mobile products/services. Engadget launched their mobile product as Engadget Mobile (logo magenta) which got the T-Mobile marketing teams fired up see story below.

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Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Todd Friesen and myself are sitting here with Justin Hopkins and Kiyomi Taguchi from KOMO-4 news being interviewed for a segment they are doing on what consumers can do to build and manage their online reputations.  We both spoke about how people are their own brands and that individuals need to inspect and manage their reputations.  Some basic tips we discussed are: own your domain name, create a blog, think before you post, actively participate in the space.  We had a chance to highlight some noteable examples of things gone wrong and right and what consumers can do to take control of their reputations in search engines.  It should be interesting to see what of an hour of our commentary gets edited down to for their report.

Stay tuned.

Blake  Cahill

Visible Technologies 

I am not sure how this one slipped by me late last week but thought I would share the update from the IPA in the UK. Effective on the 26 of May 2008 certain activities will become a criminal offense when the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations becomes effective.

Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand will be an offense. Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential customers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors will be an offense.

Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner to suggest you are an ordinary member of the public will also be an offense. Legal Director at the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Marina Palomba warned agencies and marketing departments that not assessing their activities could lead to hefty fines and potential prison sentences. She said, “If advertisers and their agencies ignore the ethics of responsible advertising, the damage to the advertising and marketing industry generally will be considerable, undermining all commercial messages, their effectiveness and the self regulatory systems.”

This is one of the foundational elements and principles of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association based in Chicago with affiliates in the UK and my company. Marketers globally are continuing to understand and embrace transparent conversations with consumers - it is the only way to have dialogue otherwise governments will begin to regulate as we are seeing happen in the UK.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Last week I heard from Toby Bell at Gartner that we had been selected as a “Cool Vendor in High Performance Workplace” in their semi-annual report on emerging companies and technologies.

A thank you to Toby and the rest of Gartner team for investing time in learning about Visible Technologies and our solutions. The report from Gartner highlights vendors with a common goal of brokering better relationships, whether between users in an enterprise, a social community, or both.

Gartner defines a “Cool Vendor” as a company that offers technologies or solutions that are:

• Innovative; enabling users to do things they couldn’t do before.
• Impactful; have, or will have, business impact, i.e., not just technology for the sake of technology.
• Intriguing; caught Gartner’s interest or curiosity in approximately the past six months.

We are extremely honored to have been acknowledged in the report. Will follow up with more commentary and link to report on the Gartner site as it becomes available.

Blake

Visible Technologies