4460 blog 9: TV and Twitter

These days, practically everyone has a Twitter account. Twitter is used to create personal and business connections, start trends, and give a public opinion on various topics. Twitter has the power to make or break a company’s reputation and people will often use it to express opinions or anticipation about a TV show or movie. This influence is the driving force behind the partnership between Twitter and “The X Factor.”

According to this article, people who watch “The X Factor” can then use Twitter to express their opinion about the latest episode of the show. Simon Cowell, the show’s producer and one of the judges, will read the Tweets and use the information to tweak his show to better reflect popular opinion. In return, Twitter gets multiple mentions during episodes of “The X Factor” and watchers are encouraged to take to Twitter and express their opinions. Producers of the show are currently working on allowing viewers to vote for their favorite performance by using Twitter.

This partnership between television and Twitter is inevitable. It is a mutually beneficial relationship, and the ability to use the Twitter brand to promote a television show should be a no-brainer for PR practitioners. Chloe Sladden works in Twitter’s content and programming unit, and it is her job to help popularize the Twitter brand through the use of television. Sladden does this by helping TV personalities to realize how they can shape their brands and images through the use of Twitter. Her job now is what every PR practitioner in the future will be able to do. We are already beginning to understand the power social media wields and how that can positively or negatively affect a client. It is only a matter of time before Twitter becomes mandatory in shaping a public image or public perception, if it’s not already.

Though the relationship between television and Twitter seems obvious now, it will only become more useful in the future. More and more often, social media is being used to help PR practitioners in their jobs. To people involved in public relations, as well as those involved in the television industry, keeping up with this relationship will soon become as natural and mandatory as breathing.

4460 Blog 8: PR really does help

Lots of people know Amanda Knox’s story by now. She was an American studying the Italian language in the town of Perugia in Italy in 2007. Her roommate was found murdered and Knox and her then-boyfriend were arrested and convicted of the crime by Italian courts. When she appealed her case, Knox’s conviction was overturned and she was allowed to return to her home in Seattle after two years of imprisonment.

While Knox was going through her trial and in prison, the Italian newspapers trumpeted her guilt loudly, calling her “Foxy Knoxy” and insinuating that she and her boyfriend murdered her roommate during a sex game gone wrong. The Italian media painted her as a cheap and easy American, and this public perception of her was embraced by media outlets all over the world. There was nothing to prevent the American media from doing the same, especially the tabloids. Knox had some holes in her story that would have been all too easy to blow out of proportion and she could have been torn apart by the media. But one man helped to reshape the public opinion of Knox.

Three days after Amanda Knox was arrested, her family hired David Marriott to be Knox’s publicist. According to this article, Marriott reshaped the public opinion of Knox, turning her from a sex-crazed party girl into a young woman wrongfully imprisoned, afraid and alone. Thanks to Marriott, when Knox was finally freed she was embraced instead of reviled. Knox’s father Curt is quoted as saying that hiring Marriott “was one of the smartest things we ever did.” Now that Knox is free, Marriott is working with her and her family to secure interviews, book rights, and all of the other benefits of publicity.

As a PR student, this story holds a lot of interest for me. I look at Amanda Knox and then I look at someone like Casey Anthony and I wonder how things would be different if Anthony’s family had hired a publicist for her. We deal in public perception and it is fascinating to observe how the public attitude can be changed through the use of PR tactics. It was Marriott’s job to make Amanda Knox appear innocent and he did it to the best of his ability, though he later said “The British and Italian tabloids created this horrible person, and I felt it was our responsibility to tell the truth.” If Marriott hadn’t been hired, I believe it is safe to assume that Knox’s appeal may have turned out differently. Marriott was instrumental in giving the media the information about Knox’s innocence that they may not have received otherwise. He got Knox’s parents to give interviews about their little girl, putting a human element into an open-and-shut court case. He helped to rally her supporters and never gave up on her, even when she was found guilty.

David Marriott was a good publicist, and he did his job to the fullest.

The Customer is Always Right!

We are taught in our public relations classes that the formats of customer complaints have changed. We know that if a company has a Facebook page and customers complain on it but the company makes no comment, that’s a big no-no. In this changing social media world, an online presence is essential to a company’s customer service. Customers want to feel that a company is listening to them, and if that company refuses to answer to an online complaint, customers are more than happy to spread their anger all over the internet.

According to this article, a study was performed by Maritz Research Company. Maritz polled 1300 customers who had tweeted a complaint about a company or service. Out of those 1300 customers, only 1/3 were responded to. The article goes on to say that nearly half of the customers expected a response. Of those customers who received a followup on their complaint, 83% said they appreciated hearing from the company. Of those who did not get a followup, 86% said they would have loved to have heard a response from the company. This presents a large problem in the way that customer service is being handled.

The problem with this should be obvious. Customer feedback and customer service should be a number one priority for any company. It is embarrassing and harmful to a company’s reputation if they don’t respond to customer complaints. Netflix learned this when it began charging separately for DVDs and Instant Streaming. Angry customers flooded the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages and wrote hundreds of complaint comments. The company chose not to respond at all, which only fanned the flames. Netflix is still struggling to come back from that mistake, which could have been lessened or mitigated if they had only opened a line of communication with their customers. I’ve said it before, but it obviously bears repeating: in this day and age, companies must learn to play by the new rules. A complaints box just won’t cut it these days, and the ugly side of the internet is that a customer who doesn’t receive a response can spread that information everywhere. It’s not just bad PR, but simply a bad business tactic to ignore customer complaints, even if they’re only 140 characters long.

4460 Blog 6: ESPN doesn't play that.

Since we are discussing ESPN and their crisis handling skills in 4470, I thought that I would do my blog tonight over the recent crisis that ESPN had to face and how they handled it.

ESPN employed Hank Williams Jr. to sing the theme to their Monday Night Football games. He’s been singing the theme for a few years now, but on October 6 ESPN released a statement saying that they no longer would require his services. According to this article, on October 3, Williams Jr. made derogatory comments comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. ESPN released a statement distancing themselves from the singer and pulled his song from their program. Three days later, Williams Jr. was fired.

ESPN did waffle a bit before firing Hank Williams Jr., the article says, but ultimately did the right thing and fired him. His comments created a backlash that reflect on ESPN’s reputation, and there was really only one option that they could have taken. I found this situation interesting because we are doing an ethical case study right now involving ESPN’s handling of the Mike Leach controversy. In that case, ESPN did everything wrong and in this case ESPN made a lot of good decisions. They realized that, even though Hank Williams Jr. is obviously not a sportscaster or announcer he still reflected on them and his choice of words also reflects on them. ESPN could not be seen as condoning those words in any way, and so the network took the ultimate step.

ESPN did pause before they fired Williams Jr. They released a statement first distancing themselves from him and then, three days later, they fired him. This could be interpreted as ESPN trying to see what steps they needed to take. If it hadn’t been such a controversial thing, they probably could have gotten away with suspending his song for a while before bringing it back, to make sure that he had learned his lesson. However, many people were angered at these comments and so ESPN had to take the appropriate steps to ensure that no one interpreted the network as being racist. I personally would not accuse an entire network of supporting the eradication of Jews, but stranger things have happened and ESPN needs credibility just like any other news network. They can’t have any doubt or blemish on their reputation.

It is my belief that in this case ESPN acted morally and ethically. Firing Williams Jr. may have seemed a little extreme (after all, the guy only sings a theme song) but in my mind it is the equivalent to Tylenol pulling all their products off the shelves many years ago. Extreme actions are usually the best, especially in a case as sensitive as this one. ESPN could not be accused of playing favorites in any way and they had to do everything above and beyond what was required of them. I feel that they did so, and should be commended for their actions.