Can we stop overreacting please?

This morning’s piece by Michael Nutley in Marketing Week, ‘Loose lips place brand reputation on the line’, has an edge of hysteria I’ve noticed all too often in word of mouth articles.

Citing the case study of Yahoo! boss Carole Bartz, who “claimed that recent revelations about Tiger Woods’ activities were better for business than the news of Michael Jackson’s death” and was subsequently “pilloried” online, Nutley concludes that “there is no longer any such thing as an unguarded remark. For anyone in a position of power or responsibility, the flippant, the offhand and the humorous aside are things of the past.”

This reaction to Bartz’s comments, as with many other ‘furores’ caused by unguarded bons mots from execs, needs to be taken with a big dose of common sense.

There were probably a lot of people who found her candour refreshing and funny. We all love piling in with criticism, but has it truly endangered her reputation or that of the brand? Probably not.

with thanks to Miss Brendalina Badchild

This sense of rigidity - that if you put one foot wrong and let the image of a loving, caring, people-focused brand crack, social media will pile on you like vultures and your reputation will be destroyed - is misguided and unhelpful. Do you really think people care that much about some provocative comment by your company? Sure, they might love to fuel the finger-pointing, but two hours later they’ll be back surfing their RSS reader. I sincerely doubt they’ll suddenly start thinking of Yahoo! as a hard-hearted bunch of infidelity advocates.

Yes, it’s important to remember that social media is a casual, personal space, which can lull employees into letting slip beliefs they regret. But we don’t want our brands to be perfect, we want them to have conviction and personality, and we’ll forgive (and even like them more for) the odd off-message comment. Giving the impression that social media is an unforgiving minefield will only encourage companies to be more formal, more controlling and more scared of getting involved in the space and learning from their mistakes.

Can we stop with the quivering?

Brought into the world on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 and filed under 1000thoughts.