“With the Internet connecting everyone, companies are becoming more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about a bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire. The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously… The fundamental problem: you can't anticipate every possible touch point that could influence the perception of your brand.”
These words are absolutely true for an agency but even more applicable to companies who aren’t professionally trained in advertising or public relations. When I’m not at BG, I’ve been helping with some marketing and design work for the 2010 YMCA National Gymnastics Championships that is being held in San Diego. It’s an enormous event (over 2,500 attendants) and the Y has created and maintains a Facebook page for the event. A company with no real advertising or PR knowledge can undoubtedly manage an event without assistance, but the Facebook page has seen a surprising number of problems. It has made me realize just how vital attention to PR is for any company and the amount of effort it takes for anyone who puts company information on the internet to interact with their customers in a positive way.
Oops #1: The Opening Ceremonies of the event are being held at Sea World- Shamu Stadium in particular. As soon as plans were finalized and the announcement could be made, it was done via Facebook with the message “Who’s excited to see Shamu??!” Unfortunately, this was done less than a week after the Florida Sea World trainer was killed and got a response from a little girl that said “Well I was excited… until Shamu killed that lady.”
Lessons learned:
-Paying attention to timing is everything. Knowing when to announce information for the best possible response is a skill that requires experience and constant attention.
-It also requires being up to date with everything involving your company or brand and making sure that is prominent in your mind when connecting with customers, particularly online. It can be so easy to post things online that it’s sometimes done without a tremendous amount of thought, but for a company, every post or comment should be analyzed and double-checked to prevent a costly mistake with customers.
Oops #2: One team entered to compete had to be disqualified from the meet for not technically being a YMCA. The team was informed of their disqualification on Friday before Memorial Day Weekend and the event Facebook page immediately exploded with spiteful, angry and hateful responses from their team and parents. By Tuesday morning, the entire page was filled with threats, protests, and negativity that had gone unsupervised and unregulated for days, which was really damaging for the event.
Lessons learned:
-Whenever something negative happens, try to anticipate how and where this will influence your brand. Being on top of things when something negative is on the horizon could prevent a lot of trouble, time, and money for a company.
Helping with this competition while being at BG has been incredibly valuable for me- I find myself constantly relating things between the two and using experiences or knowledge I’ve learned here to help plan this event. This has been my first real venture into public relations and I’m finding it is so much more complicated than I thought. I’ve realized that anticipating fluctuations in a company’s image and being vigilant in preventing negativity is a full-time job that requires constant thought and effort. I am planning on paying much closer attention to BG’s outstanding PR team and how they manage a brand’s image and reputation on the internet now that I’ve witnessed how easily things can change for a company!
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