With all the lip-smacking engendered by the recent Weiner scandal, it’s tempting to add my voice to the fray. On the other hand, we’ve all “piled on him pretty good,” and I have nothing useful to add. Instead, what I want to consider in this post is social media in the context of branding, which is certainly relevant to Mr. Weiner’s behavior.
What do companies do when employee behavior online has the potential to damage their brands? I’m indebted to Stuart Elliott, long-time advertising columnist for The New York Times, for some great insights around the recent Chrysler and Aflac scandals.
In his article, “When the Marketing Reach of Social Media Backfires,” Mr. Elliott and his sources make the following points:
- Anything you put out there can echo for quite a while, with retweets creating this “amplified effect.”
- Social media users compete with each other to be first with clever comments. (Daniel Khabie, an advertising exec at San Diego’s Digiaria, says “I think you should think before you speak, and you should think before you Tweet.”)
- Brands should—and indeed have the obligation to—establish a social media policy and require employees to adhere to it. (John Diefenbach, chairman of New York agency MBLM comments that online freedom must be balanced against “responsibility if you’re being paid by someone to do a job.”)
Pretty self-evident, eh? And yet, it’s odd how going online and knowing that you are being heard and possibly agreed with, can prompt us to seek our 15 minutes of fame without much regard for the consequences.
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