Too many brands still react heavy-handedly when faced with online criticism or PR failures, and all too often they end up adding fuel to the fire. Bad news travels fast – faster still online – and online audiences can be quick to turn against brands when they come out on the offensive, guns blazing and spewing fire.
There has been no clearer example of this than the recent behaviour of the US Government in relation to the so-called “cablegate” crisis and the embarrassing publication of 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables by WikiLeaks.
From the outset the US has taken an uncompromising stance, refusing to negotiate with WikiLeaks, and insisting that the site is guilty of violating US laws. In a publicly-released letter addressed to Julian Assange the WikiLeaks founder, Harold Koh (legal adviser to the State Department) said: “We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained US government classified materials,” before demanding that the files stop being published, are returned to the US government and are deleted from the WikiLeaks server.
This has been followed by a barrage of comments from US Government officials, representatives and political commentators attacking the site, including Sarah Palin’s demand that Assange be pursued like the leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and Canadian political scientist Tom Flanagan suggestion that that: “Assange should be assassinated” … “I think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something.”
Other comments include:
- Assange is guilty of treason against the US (he’s not)
- WikiLeaks have broken the law by publishing the documents (they haven’t – it’s illegal to leak confidential information, but not to possess it)
- US federal employees and contractors should not try and view the secret cables unless the have the requisite security clearance.
So what has been the result of this barrage of attacks levelled at both Assange and WikiLeaks from the world’s most powerful government? Surely they have crumbled and collapsed in the face of such an overwhelming onslaught?
Strangely not. In fact the reverse seems to have happened, and despite a Denial of Service attack, the arrest of Assange in London, and the blocking of the site’s main web address, the information now appears to have been disseminated even more widely, through mirrors of the site, torrent downloads and the WikiLeaks twitter feed.
In addition, web users around the world have been quick to criticise not only the US Government, but also Amazon (for removing the site from its hosted servers), PayPal (for freezing its account), Twitter (for apparently removing WikiLeaks from its trending topics) and both MasterCard and Visa (for not allowing payments to the site).
Furthermore, WikiLeaks seems to have now been given the moral high ground, and is perceived by many as a subject of bullying and persecution from the US government and political establishment. As Jack Shafer neatly wrote: “Don’t they appreciate that they’re making anarchists out of baristas and housewives?”
So how can the US government have handled this differently? Firstly they needed to take control of the dialogue and be seen to be acting in a measured, reasonable fashion – in short, acting like leaders. The more drama which is created around a story, the more people want to get involved, and the more people start taking sides. People will tend to go – particularly online – for the underdog rather than the big corporate. And the US of A is ABSOLUTELY the big corporate.
They had to engage the public, acknowledging that while WikiLeaks were clearly in a position to release all the information, some of the leaks would be not just damaging but directly put lives at risk. They had to put the case that all governments keep things secret and that sometimes there is a legitimate reason for this, even if it is not immediately clear to the public why this is the case. A joint process of redaction (on this basis) could have followed and while much information would still have come out, the site would not have garnered the same level of publicity, support and sympathy.
Is it truly possible to turn a situation like this around? Four years ago, a number of Dell laptops began to suffer catastrophic battery failures: they were literally catching fire. The problems were widely reported, driven by websites, blogs, and YouTube videos featuring the infernos in question. As a result, Dell launched the biggest recall in computing history. It’s hard to picture a worse position for a computer firm to be in.
Since then Dell has spent the last four years talking to its customers, engaging with them to not only improve its hardware but also to improve its customer services. In 2007 it joined Twitter as part of this strategy. In the company’s own words: “Dell’s evolution on Twitter is driven by the realization that social media has centralized the customer experience.” And the results of this activity? Last year Dell revealed that it had generated over $6.5m from its Twitter accounts.
If Dell can recover from products that burst into flames on people’s laps then surely almost any brand or organisation can overcome their customer perception issues but it all starts with getting involved in the conversation and not ignoring or being aggressive to your customers.
Tags amazon assange issues mastercard PR reputation security state department Twitter USA visa wikileaks