Month: January 2009

Crisis communications, uSphere-style

Just as I was about to log off for the evening Tuesday, this Twitter post from uSphere CEO Dave Van de Walle flashed across my screen:

@usphere issues apology, pulls all ads – http://ublog.usphere.com

I had no idea what that statement meant, so I clicked on the uSphere blog to read. (uSphere, by the way, is a service designed to help students in their college admissions search.) According to Dave’s post, one of the firm’s advertising partners had exposed visitors to the uSphere site to pornographic ads. Dave didn’t go into detail, but was quick to apologize for the “egregious error by one of our advertising partners” and added that “we’ll shoulder the blame, as it’s our site and our partners should have been chosen more carefully. Especially on a site that serves students.”

The entire blog post is also now on uSphere’s homepage.

Dave did the right thing by taking quick action to communicate the situation to those who use his service. That’s rule No. 1 in crisis communications: get your story out quickly and completely, before the rumor mill has a chance to act. And in the online world, the rumor mill works quickly and can spread bad news far and wide. (Just think back to how quickly Brad J. Ward and a few interested bloggers were able to break and spread the news of Facebookgate a few weeks ago.)

But Dave needs to update his blog post to make it clear that he has indeed pulled all the offending ads, as his Twitter post claims. After reading the blog post, I didn’t see anything explicitly stating that the offending ads were no longer a part of the uSphere site. I know from experience that in our rush to get the word out, sometimes we omit important pieces of information. But Dave needs to edit his post to include that important piece of information.

Other than that critique, I think Dave and uSphere did an admirable job in managing a potential crisis.

Brand Obama takes the helm

Is there any bigger brand in the world today than the soon-to-be-inaugurated president of the United States, Barack Obama?

“Barack Obama is three things you want in a brand: New, different, and attractive. That’s as good as it gets.”

So says a guy who knows a bit about branding, Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide, in an April 2008 Fast Company article about the Obama brand.

But that’s the old-school take on branding. The Obama phenomenon is more than new, different and attractive. As the author of that article, Ellen McGirt, explains:

The fact that Obama has taken what we thought we knew about politics and turned it into a different game for a different generation is no longer news. What has hardly been examined is the degree to which his success indicates a seismic shift on the business horizon as well. Politics, after all, is about marketing — about projecting and selling an image, stoking aspirations, moving people to identify, evangelize, and consume. The promotion of the brand called Obama is a case study of where the American marketplace — and, potentially, the global one — is moving. His openness to the way consumers today communicate with one another, his recognition of their desire for authentic “products,” and his understanding of the need for a new global image — all are valuable signals for marketers everywhere. …

Obama has risen above what he calls a “funny” name, an unusual life story, and — contrary to the now popular (and mistaken) notion that nobody sees race anymore — a persistent racial divide to become a reflection of what America will be: a postboomer society. He has moved beyond traditional identity politics. And whether it’s now or a decade from now, the new reality he reflects will eventually win out. Any forward-thinking business would be wise to examine the implications of his ascent, from marketing strategies and leadership styles to the future of the American workplace.

How will Brand Obama fare in the global marketplace over the next four years? Today is the official rollout. Tomorrow, the product testing begins in earnest.