The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #398: November 17, 2008

Content summary: Plans for show #401 on Thanksgiving Day; Shel on a Media Bullseye panel; Neville reflects on a Windows Live briefing in London from Microsoft; FIR Interview with Chuck Hester coming; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on internet addiction in China, IBM’s Virtual Forbidden City and more; discussion 1: Chris Brogan’s tale of ‘Fortune 500 Bob’ and lines crossed with social media; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; discussion 2: Motrin advertising and a social media firestorm from offended MotrinMoms.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for November 17, 2008: A 63-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

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So, until Thursday November 20…

Posted by neville on 11/17 at 09:53 AM

  1. Great show, as always.  For the record, this ad has been running on the Motrin site for about a month now, and in print for about that long.  It just took a few people on Twitter to start the whole fiasco.

    A 24 hour response time, especially considering that the first Tweets came through east coast time USA at about 10pm, is remarkable considering they don’t actively monitor social media.  Suppose they did have their ear to the ground on this and took down the ad after 3 hours, or 100 Tweets, or some arbitrary number?  Companies would have to be at the mercy of every micro-focused group of people.  Big pharma may as well take down everything, as there are always people against them.

    If I were a focus group for that particular ad, I would have actually approved it (and I currently ‘wear’ my baby).  Twitter and social media in general seems to equalize out everyone’s voice.  For better or worse, a stay at home mom has the same voice as a brand manager at a large corporation.

    Now I fear if they don’t publicly anoint a social media team they will still be raked over the coals.  This is a large corporation after all, and even in a crisis groups don’t materialize overnight.  Even if the flack does.

    Posted by Lynette {Radio}  on  11/18  at  06:29 AM

  2. I think Lynette makes some great points (and show#398 was a great show. Nearly 400 and just getting better and better).

    Predicting when, where and why these ‘organisational attacks’ occur is tough.  I hope I can build upon Lynette’s comments by offering the following.

    Motrin, Bob, Ross and Brand; listening to recent FIRs made me wonder whether these kerfuffles ( and others) you have highlighted have anything in common.

    Bob is in a sad situation, but one we all recognise. He finds himself ‘crushed’ inside an organisation. He dared to think, but was slapped down. And Shel, you are right, sometimes that’s what organisations have to do when an employee doesn’t toe the line. We know Bob has to put up - with being powerless, with recognising he’s dependent, with marching to the beat and perhaps having his intelligence insulted - or shut up.

    Now turn the tables. We are customers or consumers. Yet for much of our lives we find ourselves just as powerless.  We have to pay the TV licence fee or we want to view the Superbowl as a family but some overpaid ‘star’ feels they can ignore basic decency and offend us. The cell phone company/bank/utility wrongly double bills, but customer service don’t believe their system can be wrong and our contract or the hassle of switching means we stick with the provider. We see an advertising campaign addressed to us and it is condescending, or we go to the store and they don’t have the goods.

    Organisations depend upon customers or employees as a group, but as individuals they can make us feel powerless, dependent and insulted.

    Before we might have moaned, been a lone complaining voice or just had to suck it up.  But now social media empowers us as individuals to be able to make these organisations take notice.  And even if we might not feel too strongly about one specific issue, people may join in because the target of a campaign represents all the other organisations who have ever made them feel powerless, dependent or insulted whether as consumers or employees.

    As well as media frenzies (like Ross and Brand) organisations can face social media frenzies. While their cause may be obvious in hindsight or, like the Motrin case , difficult to understand how it could have been predicted, the thing organisations have to do is have in place the crisis communications measures to be able to react quickly whether they face the targetted attention of the media, social media or any other audience.

    As ever, thanks for all you do.

    Neil Chapman

    Posted by najchapman  on  11/18  at  11:15 PM

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