Reputation

Last week, PETA tweeted a picture of a character from the next installment in the upcoming “Pokémon” video game series, a sheep pokémon named Wooloo. Suffice to say, video game fans weren’t having it. There’s much that communicators can learn from this bizarre campaign, including how to engage your detractors on socials in a constructive way along with when not to jump on a trending news story just for engagement.

Keeping research a secret is a bad look for Pfizer, especially during a time when a spotlight shines on the Alzheimer’s disease. And upon further reading, it can seem somewhat baffling to have kept the information, which may have proved useful to researchers, from the public. Pfizer now faces a brand crisis in which a large population of those affected by the disease may garner distrust to a company that looks like it kept profits the first priority.

To kick off Pride Month, Budweiser UK announced its partnership with London Pride by launching a “Fly The Flag” campaign featuring nine different brightly-colored Budweiser pint glasses, each depicting a different pride flag. Suffice to say, Twitter wasn’t having it. Advocates in the queer community resented seeing their flags used to sell beer, calling it opportunistic and insincere. Others lamented that Budweiser went too far by over-explaining what the various flags meant.

IHOp is at it again. During the Memorial Day Weekend, a traditionally slow news period, it tweeted that the p in its name soon will stand for something other than pancakes. Of course, last year it raised its blue roof when it announced the letter b would replace the p. That short-lived stunt left the brand seeming inauthentic to some, though sales rose and IHOp was a topic of conversation for at least seven days. Has the brand learned from last year?

Brand personas as a concept has been gaining ground as businesses seek for new ways to differentiate themselves and gain competitive advantage in the face of increased competition and generational shifts in loyalty. Differentiation through personality is a way to keep consumers loyal to a brand even though other elements may resist differentiation (i.e., service, product selection, and price). How can you determine your brand’s persona and apply this to your strategy?

Nike found itself in the midst of a major PR crisis when The New York Times published an opinion piece on Mother’s Day that revealed Nike did not provide pregnant athletes with paid maternity leave. Nike has now released a statement saying that all future contracts will be written to protect pregnant athletes from discrimination. In this action, Nike is clearly following the crisis management playbook and changed the narrative in its favor in its quick remediation. What can we, as PR professionals, learn from this?

Call it a target market, tribe, or online community: In all cases, building and maintaining an audience for your products or services is now key to maintaining a competitive edge. What’s more, with the amount of time that audiences spend online rising, even as attention spans are declining, it’s more imperative than ever for businesses to find clever ways to engage end users.

There’s no rule in media relations that says communicators need to answer a reporter’s question immediately, particularly during a crisis. Never lie to a reporter, but sometimes doing the best thing for a brand means deferring on a question until you’re ready with an answer that’s carefully crafted. Veteran communicator Arthur Solomon offers tips about how to do this well.

We can speculate about why Wells Fargo created bogus credit cards or the motivation other brands had for doing things they knew were wrong or even illegal. Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is trying to remake itself into a purveyor of smoke-less product. It says it wants to discourage teen smoking. Then why was it flouting its own rules and using young, attractive influencers to tout its cigarette alternative?

This past Mother’s Day, The New York Times ran an opinion piece featuring several female athletes who are sponsored by Nike, focusing on the fact that Nike did not provide these athletes with paid maternity leave. The scandal reminds us that brand communicators should close the gap between what’s promoted and what’s practiced, and partner with legal teams to make sure that contractual language is consistent with brand values.