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may 2019
Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Three WINS, three FAILS and five considerations in order to get by on social media
photo from “Noisedive / Black Mirror” - © Netflix
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
About us #1
My name is Dino [email protected]@proformaweb.it
I’m a partner of Proforma, responsible for political communication and strategic planning
Political communication Professor at the University of Perugia and Turin
Member of the staff of the Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo in Perugia
Contributor to La Repubblica newspaper
All of my presentations are available for free (both for consultation and download) at www.slideshare.net/doonie (personal)and www.slideshare.net/proformaweb (company)
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
About us #2
My name is Daniele [email protected]@proformaweb.it
I’m in charge of media planning and social media management at the advertising agency Proforma
I have been running for several years a blog and a Facebook page, dealing with the world of non conventional communication
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Contents
Six stories, six remindersTHE WINS1. CIA’s first tweet2. Donald Trump and the “Covfefe” case3. Di Maio, Facebook and the reimbursement scandal case
THE FAILS1. The use of hashtags depends on the users: the Trenitalia case2. Donald Trump and the “Take a Knee” case3. Toninelli and a concession too much
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Premise
Reputation is the real winning “algorithm” in the area of communication.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Setting aside ‘what’ (the product or service) and ‘how’ (marketing strategies), the reputation characteristics of ‘who’ affect buying behaviour exponentially: the higher the reputation of the brand/politician/communication sender, the more the message receivers will be ready to pay/use/remember that particular product/service.
Once your reputation is damaged, any communication effort to promote oneself will gradually be more and more ineffectual.(IPSOS Research available here)
Premise
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
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DISTRUST AGREAT DEAL
DISTRUSTA LITTLE
NEUTRAL TRUSTA LITTLE
TRUST AGREAT DEAL
MEMORABLE ADS BELIEVABLE ADS PAY MORE FOR FEEL GOOD ABOUT PRODUCT USE
34%
54%
18%
12%
7%
38%
58%
39%
25%
13%
42%
46%
73%
37%
16%
57%
74%
88%
69%
37%
76%
85%
96%
87%
64%
Two metrics that are dramatically impacted by trust are feeling good about using a product/service, and being willing to pay a premium for it. Feeling good about using a product/service has a linear relationship with trust – as trust increases, so does the percentage of buyers’ who report feeling good about it. Being willing to pay a premium, however, has the most impact on the most trusted side of the scale, and falls dramatically among those who have a “neutral” or lower trust rating.
Advertising believability suffers most from active distrust, while willingness to pay a premium benefits the most from active trust. People who are neutral toward a company are willing to believe the ads, but they are unwilling to pay a premium. This suggests that companies that avoid distrust will be able to maintain their marketing efficiency, while those that actively build trust are more likely to reap the profits of premium pricing.
(maximum distrust) (maximum trust)
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Consequences for the communication sender
• Reputation is the most valuable asset for any sender, in any context. More than money, more than networks, more than the quality of products/services available (of course, these variables help building an effective communication)
• A blunder damaging one’s reputation can be very harmful if countermeasures are not taken (corollary: a single blunder can require months, or even years, to remedy).
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
• ‘Less is more’, but also ‘be the first’. It would be better to abstain from controversial communication actions, especially if they are not necessary. Even the Facebook algorithm tends more and more to favour quality and the ability to generate interactions over quantity. At the same time, when an issue is about to blow up, one needs to react as soon as possible, in order to prevent a small alarm from turning into a wildfire of unrecoverable extent.
Consequences for the communication sender
WIN 1We can neither confirm nor denyCIA’s first tweet: how to turn a reputation issue into self-mocking humour
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
1. We can neither confirm nor deny
CIA’s first tweet (6 June 2014) enabled their Twitter account to exceed 300,000 followers in the first few hours following its set up.
(more information here)
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. Pretending you haven’t got a public reputation is of no use (whether this is good or bad), also because dismissing it would anyhow be ‘punished’ by disclosing the truth, especially online. When you come to that, it’s better to manage your image first-hand rather than let others make up your reputation.
1. We can neither confirm nor deny
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. When you expect reputation issues (and the CIA was almost certain to have them on Twitter) it makes more sense to anticipate the first move: that tweet could have been used as an ironic answer by followers to a more formal tweet by the CIA, and this would have created a completely different effect.
1. We can neither confirm nor deny
WIN 2The ‘Covfefe’ caseAn unintelligible tweet by the president of the United States turned into an opportunity for self-mocking humour
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
2. The ‘Covfefe’ case
31 May 2017. The president of the United States posts this tweet in the middle of the night. What did he mean to say?
A few hours later Trump (or his consultants) publish a second post making fun of his previous mistake.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. It’s never too late: a number of hours elapsed and nothing happened. ‘Covfefe’ was there, on the Twitter account of the President of the United States. But (appropriately) they preferred facing it instead of trying to hide the mistake – after the second tweet was posted, the first was then removed. Just deleting the original tweet would have generated a Streisand Effect, that is an exponential acceleration of the propagation of the blunder.
2. The ‘Covfefe’ case
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. Reputation rules are not subject to any hierarchy: Trump and his staff managed the crisis exactly in the same way as “any user” could and should have done. Being the most powerful person in the world doesn’t at any rate allow you to ignore good practices in digital communication.
2. The ‘Covfefe’ case
WIN 3When social media prevent further trouble
Di Maio and the way the controversy about fake bank transfers was managed
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
3. When social media prevent further trouble
13 February 2018: while the controversy about phony bank transfers ordered by some of the candidates of the M5S party very close to Di Maio rages on, the current Deputy Prime Minister decides to open the doors of his office to the editorial staff of the TV programme Le Iene, who are investigating about the scandal, defusing their report with this Facebook post, as a matter of fact.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. Defensiveness isn’t (any longer) a winning strategy: in the pre-social media era, this kind of storm was often handled by standing still and waiting for a new controversy to blow, so that the previous one could be forgotten. Nowadays this strategy is inadequate for two reasons: controversies could endure on social media, regardless of the wishes of the subjects involved, and a proper use of social media can often help to hasten the disappearance of an annoying controversy.
3. When social media prevent further trouble
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. Investing (for years) in the management of digital communities can turn social media into “personal broadcasting”. Di Maio’s post obtained 152,000 likes, 123,000 shares and more than 21,000 comments (latest data as at September 2018). According to an estimate of the “L’Espresso” weekly, this post was viewed by nearly 10 million people: by far a bigger audience than the audience of the TV programme Le Iene.
3. When social media prevent further trouble
FAIL 1Hashtags belong to the usersBetween communication choices and the reaction of users there is a R variable (reputation), steering their results
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
4. Hashtags belong to the users
Trenitalia launched #meetFS, a campaign aimed at involving Users.
But the hashtag was “overturned” by users, who used it to communicate the inefficiencies of the railway company.
(more information here)
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. If a company, especially one with digital reputation issues, decides to launch an online campaign and chooses to do it through a hashtag, people in charge of communication must ask themselves the right question before they begin. And the right question is not “What does the company want to communicate to consumers?” but “What will consumers want to communicate to the company?”.
4. Hashtags belong to the users
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. The mechanisms of engagement are “safer” if they are structured within specific actions. A campaign based on the absolute freedom of expression by the receivers equals to giving up the control of the results to the choice of the community, and this will produce a positive feedback only if you have an excellent reputation, for a start.
4. Hashtags belong to the users
FAIL 2Making enemies out of thin airDonald Trump and the “Take a Knee” case
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
5. Making enemies out of thin air
14 August 2016. Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the American football team San Francisco 49ers, kneels down during the national anthem of the United States (which is played before any national sports event), in order to express his opposition to the way president Trump deals with ethnic minorities.
Trump, shortly after, demands that all players who will make the same gesture should be given the sack. The protest spreads through all American states and all sports. Kaepernick has now been chosen as Nike’s global poster child thanks to his struggle.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. David is more likable than Goliath: Trump’s attack appeared as totally out of place because of the unbalanced playing field. A President of the United States cannot confront a single sportsman on a single act of defiance. Someone who holds a higher hierarchical position must take an aggressive stance only “among peers”, otherwise they will inevitably cause dislike and arouse sympathy towards the weaker party.
5. Making enemies out of thin air
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. Attacking someone who’s got more credibility than you is extremely risky: the world of sports is hugely popular in the United States and not only. Battling on the reputation field is possible only if one is really unassailable. In this case Trump has expressed a subjective and certainly less than democratic point, generating an immediate reaction effect among leading and very popular American athletes and losing this communication battle.
5. Making enemies out of thin air
FAIL 3Toninelli and a concession too muchInappropriate humour after the disaster in Genoa
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
6. Toninelli and a concession too much
15 September 2018: the Minister for Infrastructure Danilo Toninelli publishes a post where he jokes about the revocation of the concession for the operation of motorways to the Company Autostrade after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa.
The post is first removed and then published with the same photo and a different caption. But it’s far too late to escape controversy.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
1. You can joke about (just about) anything, but not tragic events: a Minister can’t make fun of a disaster whose circumstances need still to be clarified.
6. Toninelli and a concession too much
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
What do we learn from this story
2. Sweeping the dust under the carpet is useless: not only Toninelli doesn’t apologize, but he tries to delete the contents and then to repost it: it’s the best way to make the users who have already viewed the previous contents even angrier, escalating its negative viral spread (Streisand Effect).
6. Toninelli and a concession too much
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
6. Toninelli and a concession too much
Note
The satirical website Lercio.it had posted, seven days before, the joke “Concession is revoked for Toninelli’s barber”, together with a photo of the Minister.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
In a nutshell
1. Self-mocking humour is often an effective tool for managing online reputation, both for those who have long-established reputation issues and for those who stumble over communication blunders. However, this rule has an important exception: you don’t make jokes during a tragic event.
2. Long-term investments (in terms of time, human and financial resources) in the management of your digital communities prove extremely useful when you have to face a communication crisis: having a loyalized community and a large user base can turn an issue into an opportunity.
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
3. Real-time marketing = SAY GOODBYE to conventional office hours!
4. Before launching a hashtag, make sure this choice doesn’t backfire for your communication purposes (launching a hashtag isn’t essential, by the way. The world will go on all the same).
5. Errare social non est (“to err is not social”). Social media management = Chuck Palahniuk’s rule: No matter how hard you work or how smart you become. You’ll always be known for that one poor choice.
In a nutshell
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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
Conclusion
Learn all you can from the mistakes of others. You won’t have time to make them all yourself.
(Alfred Sheinwold)
Thank you.
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