"#MostUsedWords App" Launches #PR Offensive After Criticism [Abbott PR Blog]

Not that giving all one's personal data to a third party has ever been safe, and not that Facebook "quizzes" have ever been safe, either, but the firestorm around the new Facebook app "Most Used Words" really struck a chord with the 17 million Facebook users gave it permission to use its data.

And after the Comparitech blog did a breathless take-down of the Korean-based Vonvon, creator of the App, on its site Sunday, Nov. 22 in which it called it a "privacy nightmare." Comparitech specifically attacked the App's "oxymoronic privacy policy And called the company and the App a "shady data dealer" but not the only one to "masquerade behind a viral quiz mill."

The "nightmare" angle spread like a virus, shared across Facebook, becoming a trending topic there and also on twitter, where many accused the App of "stealing" personal data.

By Tuesday, the company had already sprung into action.

It posted updated language on its website that it was, as of Tuesday, Nov. 24, acting to "proactively" address the concerns by "significantly" reducing "the magnitude of access privilege" required by the App. It also clarified that the App does not collect users' email addresses, "so there is no way we can spam you." It also note

It's CEO Jonghwa Kim also took to the battle to Comparitech itself, sending a rather predictable legalistic and threatening message to the firm (noting that he was "deeply concerned about your false accusation") but also mentioning the positive steps it had taken, and explaining that the information collected, "is never stored in our databases." Comparitech published his letter as an update to the original post.

As for emails, Kim notes bluntly that, "As we do not store any personal information, we have nothing to sell. Period." He swears that the App never deals with Third Parties.

The company has been in existence for less than a year, but says it has more than 100 million unique users from US, UK, France, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc. and operates in 15 languages.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

It remains to be seen whether this coverage will damage this Korean startup. It also remains to be seen whether this App is any more damaging or dangerous than any other Facebook App.

But the PR response by Kim and his company seems on point, and an effective demonstration of how crisis management is done: directly address both the alleged technical and ethical problems, then let people know.


By Stephen Abbott, Principal of Abbott Public Relations, a division of Abbott Media Group, which creates written messages which inspire, inform, educate and engage, in mass media, publishing and public relations. On twitter and Facebook.

#PR Isn't About "Happy-Talking" Customers [Abbott PR]

I’m sure it’s happened to you before. You drive by a business, and, perhaps not even noticing it at first, you cringe.  

"It’s funny," you may think to yourself, "but I haven’t been in the place since last November." Maybe you can't even remember why.

One way or another, you were put off by the place, and never went back.

Then you drive by a second business, and you almost want to invent a reason to stop and go back in, even though you may have no business to transact there. 

How does that happen? And (you might be thinking) how can I make THAT happen for MY business?

Some people view public relations as the domain of glad-handing, back-slapping "yes-men" or pretty faces who tell clients whatever they want to hear. But the  truth is, this kind of PR person wouldn’t be much help to the client who cringed, above, or to that client’s business. These efforts instead could be an expensive distraction; or worse, a waste of money. Simply trying to distract customers from a bad experience doesn't fix the underlying reasons for the bad experience. And it won't change perceptions if they have new bad experiences if they return.

Changing a negative reputation into a good one, or at least a neutral one, or reinforcing a business’ already-positive image, is really what public relations is all about. 

In the negative example above, becoming aware of the company's problems - whether it's poor service, shoddy merchandise or even the bad odor of the establishment - by using customer feedback effectively, then making sure that current and past customers know you are aware of their past bad experiences and are taking steps to correct them, are the first steps to changing bad perceptions.

Perhaps a sign out front, reading, "Newly remodeled," touting a new product line, or, even better, new management, would help entice disgruntled customers back into the door. But of course, real changes will have had to have been made. Customers are savvy, and can see through the old "new paint job" or "new signage" approach, IF there aren't real changes made along with them.

An ad in the paper and a mailer to past customers trumpeting a totally new approach to customer service, may help, too, as long as that claim is then TRULY backed up with EXCELLENT service and products and a clean environment when customers begin to return. (Because, again, savvy customers can not and will not be fooled - and you should not try.)

For the business with an already good reputation, but with little repeat business, a company e-newsletter, mailed every other month to regular customers and containing special deals to reward their loyalty may help remind them why they liked the business so much on previous visits. 

A Facebook page is also a great way to interact with customers on a daily basis, posting specials, customer and employee profiles and promoting new services and products.

Special programs to reward regular customers solidify that important base, and increase word-of-mouth buzz about a company. And of course, an effective social media presence on facebook and twitter, with perhaps a video element on YouTube, also backs up a company's reputation and are channels for effective and immediate feedback.

A paid advertising campaign highlighting satisfied customers may also be necessary to let people know that they, too, can have good experiences there. Advertising - online and in print - can also reinforce the good work you've done to improve customer experiences.

All of this underlines the seriousness of the profession of public relations. It involves the art of effective communication, writing skill, and  the ability to determine a course of action that will truly be effective in widely varying situations and appealing to diverse publics.

PR isn’t just happy talk, it’s a profession that helps make companies more successful through an approach of identifying positives and negatives and creating plans to addressing them in a systematic way.

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Stephen Abbott is a public relations consultant and political messaging specialist, and the principal of Abbott Media Group, specializing in helping political candidates, business leaders, groups and start-ups craft effective messages. Visit Abbott Media Group for more information.

4 Ways To Build #Trust With Your Customers [Abbott Media Group]

4 Ways Your Business Can Build Trust With Customers

People will do business with those that they trust. Public Relations can help to build that trust.

There are several ways a business can begin to build trust with their customers and future (potential) customers. Among them are Consistency, Courtesy, Care, and Community Involvement.

Being Consistent is critically important to a business. There's a reason why restaurants, pet stores, hotels, and hardware chains, among others, are so popular. Ideally, they offer consistent service and products offered professionally in multiple locations. Customers know they can get the same products and services offered for about the same price, wherever they go. For some, that may seem "boring," but customers actually yearn for boring over the alternative: inconsistent service and the inability to get their favorite products. Public Relations professionals can guide a business to accept and disseminate internal policies and standard graphics and messaging that will help create a consistent experience for customers.

Courtesy is also an important factor in building Trust. If service is offered in a cold manner, or worse, in a rude manner, the bond of Trust between a customer and a business is broken. This is even the case in a long-term relationship. There's no such thing anymore as a small incident of discourteous conduct. Even one incident in which a customer is treated poorly can ruin a company's reputation in this era of instant online reviews. A Public Relations professional can help isolate and identify areas in which internal standards aren't being met, and can, once those are addressed, help repair and rebuild Trust with customers who experienced a lack of courtesy during a business transaction.

Care is shown in a multitude of ways by a business, and customers recognize when it's not there, contributing to a lack of Trust. Products or services offered in a sloppy, slapdash way can instantly signal to the customer that the business doesn't really care about them. Caring isn't a small thing, it's a major thing, and in fact, should be the top concern of any business. If you're not in business to care for the customer, why are you in business at all? Care can be demonstrated by proper training and internal messaging that makes it clear that business owners have high expectations of their employees. PR can deliver those messages in a compelling and clear way that leaves no doubt that Care is required from everyone.

Finally, Community Involvement can be a tremendous trust-building tool. While some effort should be made not to alienate a customer base with involvement with overtly political or controversial causes, showing concern for one's community is more than a gimmick to grab headlines. Instead, it shows that a business is intimately tied to the community in which they do business, and that they care about their customers' well-being, more than just as a source of cash. Public Relations professionals can help identify community activities that reflect well on a business and help show that concern that leads to stronger feelings of trust with their current and future customers.

For more information about building Trust, visit Abbott Media Group at www.abbottmediagroup.com.

4 Keys to Building a Positive #Reputation [Abbott Media Group]

Your reputation - how you're perceived by others - is bound up in a host of factors, the most important of which your clients or customers are observing when they interact with you, or when they interact with people who have had dealings with you.

And in this Internet age, even millions who have never dealt with you can form an opinion of you based on what OTHERS who have never heard of you are saying!

So it's more important than ever to take control of your reputation and mold it in a favorable way, because uninformed people and forces well beyond your control will take hold of it if you don't. An like a boat that's left un-moored at the  dock, it will be drawn out by the tides and tossed with the winds whichever way they choose.

What factors will help "tie down" your reputation so these capricious winds can't get hold of it?

1. First to consider is the quality of your service or product. No amount of PR can paper over a consistently horrible product. The job of PR isn't to make a bad thing look great, because people can easily see through a snow job. And that snow job boomerangs back onto you rather quickly. But a great product, well conceived, unique and useful to customers, speaks for itself. The core of a good reputation is something of good repute to give to the world.

2. Similar to the first, the second point is to ensure that the way in which you deliver products or services is professional. It's not enough to have a great product or service. If you deliver it without passion, care and true professionalism, it will still be seen as a "negative." Having great food will bring them back to the restaurant. Once or twice. But a rude wait staff will cause them to forgo the experience again, and lead to bad-mouthing online.

3. How you treat your clients and customers is the third point that can make or break your reputation. Not only will an overworked and under-appreciated staff be less productive, they'll fall down on points 1 and 2 - the quality of the product and the professionalism of how it's delivered to the customer or client. You'll also experience heavier turnover of staff, and dozens or thousands of unhappy former employees again will not bode well for your company's reputation.

4. The final point of reputation is how the public perceives the good you do in the community. Good works is a plus and definitely has value in Public Relations and reputation-building efforts. In fact, it's seen by many as the key tool in the tool bag of Public Relations. While it can be over-used and its value overstated, good works done in the community is counted as a positive and helps "move the needle" towards a good reputation. However, as noted in 1 above, no amount of good deeds (charity and other things that are unrelated to your business model) can paper over a horrible product, poorly delivered, by unhappy or disgruntled employees. And doing charity work as a way to paper over some bad press is transparent, and is easily seen for the fraudulent effort it is.

All of these keys to a good reputation work together to create a positive reputation among your "publics." This includes your current customers, your past customers, your future customers, your employees, local and regional news media, these publics and others online, and those these various groups happen to encounter second- and third-hand.

A professional Public Relations person who is skilled in how to build a positive image for you and your business can reach out to these groups, tailoring just the right messages for each.

Let Abbott Media Group's PR division help you present these to publics that need to hear more about what you're doing!

The Value of Bad News and Negative Feedback

Justin Bieber has a tattoo of his mother's birthday (1975) to show how much he loves her. How sweet.

The tat, which he got in January, 2013, joined 15 others, including a crown, an Indian head (his high school mascot) and an owl, a Jesus portrait, along with LOVE spelled out on his knuckles. How bad-ass of the boy.

But there's a tiny problem with his inky tribute.

The tattoo reads: "I IX VII V" which is NOT the year 1975, but simply "1, 9, 7, 5" - a mere list of numbers. The year 1975 in Roman Numerals is ACTUALLY rendered "MCMLXXV." M = 1000, CM = 900 (or 1000-100) LXX = 70 (50 + two 10s) and V = five.

So, yeah, that was unfortunate. And it received heavy and snarky coverage online when he first revealed it. (see here, and here, and here.)

This raises a couple of questions. Who got this wrong - was it the tattoo artist? Unlikely. Even an artist who's been in business for a week would have known better.

Or did he come up with it himself? Well, that's possible. He might have looked in a book and seen the numbers, and put this together himself, presenting it to his friends and then to a tattoo artist.

But the most important question is: If he showed this list of Roman Numerals to others and to an experienced tattoo artist, why didn't someone tell him it was not a rendering of the year?

If he did show others, it's entirely possible that they simply were too afraid to tell him it was wrong - a case of "The Emperor's New Clothes," in which no one will tell the emperor that he's not wearing an invisible cloak, but is simply naked - out of fear of offending the emperor.

In the case of Bieber, is he surrounded by sycophants who were afraid to say "no, you're plan is wrong" to the Star who may send them packing for scuttling his poorly laid out plans?

If this is true, he’s not alone. Business owners and political leaders are often presented with “bad news,” by their advisers, including their public relations consultants. 

Sure, negative feedback is not always welcome, and not always fun to hear. It also should be offered tactfully and presented gracefully.

But it must be presented, and should be welcomed. 

To demand that, “We want only positive feedback here,” is a remarkably bad policy, which can lead to something far worse than a tattoo, which can in most cases be fixed.

As Elon Musk said recently, "I think it's important to take as much feedback as you can from as many people as you can about whatever idea you have. You should seek negative feedback, especially from friends." This is a lesson Justin Beiber needs to heed, as do we all.

What those in business and politics (as well as the arts, the military and any other institution) can take from Bieber’s tattoo flub is that it pays to listen to your consultants in good faith. They are not simply paid to be “yes men” and sycophants, but to give honest and frank advice designed to both avoid reputation-damaging mistakes and help to claw your way back when you make them.

Another problem is that often, consultants are not included in major decision-making meetings, and are left out of the loop. That’s a huge mistake, because they are there to prevent major screw ups and poor ethical decisions that can quickly come back to haunt them — like Bieber’s tattoo.

Sadly, either no one has told young Mr. Bieber that he made an error or he didn't care, because a recent photo shows the same erroneous numerals on his chest.

Don't likewise ignore the good advice of your PR professional when it's offered. Even if it's "negative."

Nutella Goes Nutty, Bans Fan's Celebration of Its Brand

Fans of the hazelnut-flavored spread Nutella are going nuts over the company's lawyers sending a "cease and desist" letter to fan Sara Rosso, who, since 2007, has sponsored an unofficial "World Nutella Day" on Feb. 5th each year. (See Time magazine reports.)

While I'm not a fan of hazelnuts, or hazelnut spreads, sending out the lawyers to attack an unofficial FAN holiday celebration of your product is a rather NUTTY way to handle a fan base. 

As Gawker notes, "Many brands would kill for a hugely popular, entirely fan-fueled International "holiday" dedicated to expressing affection for their product by buying it by the boatload."

A post on Rosso's facebook fan page notes that the factory in Italy doesn't even have tours. The company clearly is missing out on generating a lot of goodwill here, and may not know how to reach out to customers properly.

This is all the more amazing when we learn that Russo had frequent (though unofficial) contact with the company's PR department to coordinate activities. In her farewell address on the fan page, she writes,

The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I’ve had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA., and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants, and I’ve always tried to collaborate and work together in the spirit and goodwill of a fan-run celebration of a spread I (to this day) still eat.

Let's hope the company comes to its senses and realizes the massive PR error it's making by deliberately antagonizing its huge fan base across the globe.