JetBlue says “I’m sorry”

People are sick of corporate-speak. They were sick of it a long time ago, but in today’s era of conversation, corporate-speak stands in stark contrast to the authentic human voice conveyed in most blogs, podcasts, and other social media. Who would want to read a blog post labeled “Synergy” that talks about “shifting paradigms by leveraging core competencies as part of our quest to achieve world-class status as a leader in best practices…” (Credit to Steve Crescenzo, who is the master of parodying this kind of corporate crap.)

One of the worst bits of corporatese is employed virtually any time a company screws up, and PR people are… Read More »

GoDaddy’s “any reason whatsoever” policy creates PR problems

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been registering all my domain names at GoDaddy. The domains are dirt cheap and even cheaper if you use a promo code from the hundreds of podcasts the domain registration service sponsors. They have great technical support. They offer a range of related services and are pretty good at them.

But that may not be enough to keep me loyal to GoDaddy in the wake of the news that the company suspended a domain name based on the content of the site. According to a story on Domain Name Wire, the suspension resulted from the discover that SecLists.org was publishing MySpace user names and passwords on its site.… Read More »

When company bloggers aren’t enough

The beating Microsoft is taking in the blogosphere and elsewhere over a patent filing leads me to wonder whether this isn’t an instance where some solid, formal communication might be in order. Leaving it to Microsoft’s employee blogging force doesn’t seem to be doing much good.

The kerfuffle erupted when the patent filings from June 2005 became public on Christmas Day when a year-and-a-half privacy window expired. Quickly, the web and blogosophere began proclaiming headlines like this one, from All Headline News:

“Microsoft Reportedly Tries to Patent RSS”

A Technorati search for Microsoft, RSS, and patent turns up 2,391 posts.… Read More »

Dow, Bhopal, and Corporate Social Responsibility

Dow‘s view of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) is pretty easy to find on the company’s website, only two clicks from the home page. There, the company covers charitable giving, education, community involvement, and worldwide social investments. On the social responsibility landing page, the company points with justifiable pride to its foundation, which contributes more than $18 million each year to education and charitable institutions in the communities where the company does business.

A search of the entire Dow site for the term “Bhopal,” however, produces only a single result, the 2003 Global Public Report, available in… Read More »

Edelman-WalMart Update: Richard speaks up

On his blog, Richard Edelman has responded to the flurry of conversation about the Wal-Marting Across America flog. To his great credit, he has apologized, acknowledged that the tactic was wrong, and indicated the company is going through an education process. He has replied to comments posted to his item, and has even posted a comment among those left to my original post on this blog.

Edelman has also noted that the company refrained from comment until all the facts were in; Steve Rubel has also posted an item explaining this reason for the prolonged silence.

Comments posted to both Rubel’s and Edelman’s blogs run the gamut from… Read More »

Newsmaker, commenter, it’s all the same

I was just on the phone speaking with Gerald Baron, who blogs as Crisisblogger. Nobody’s better qualified to write about crisis communication. Gerald wrote the book “Now is Too Late” (about to come out in a second edition that addresses blogs, among other new topics) and started the PIER System, owned by Audience Central, of which Baron is CEO.

Gerald regaled me with the tale of of Michael De Kort, the Lockheed Martin whistleblower who, after failing to get anyone to pay attention using traditional channels, uploaded a video to YouTube to tell his story. De Kort’s viral video appraoach was covered by The Washington Post and Time… Read More »

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