Week in and week out, I and thousands of others in the PR field look to PRWeek to tell us how companies and nonprofits respond to a variety of crises and PR problems.
This week, it was the newspaper’s turn to be embroiled in controversy and trouble. Online marking expert BL Ochman blogged about the nightmare she endured when she was the victim of a spam attack by PRWeek and its email consulting firm, Adicio.com.
Adicio sent out more than 3,200 emails to an OPEN list of PRWeek newsletter subscribers, and then re-sent that message and the passwords of everyone on the list to each person as many as 1,000 times over the next 24 hours.
The “incident” corrupted her Microsoft identity database and rendered Word and Entourage unusable, forcing her to spend $161 to buy Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac.
“But this isn’t a post about why PRWeek sucks or why Adicio.com sucks. It’s a post about the real impact of social media on corporate reputation. And about the cluelessness of the PR industry in general about social media, and the inability—or maybe it’s the refusal—of corporations to believe that consumers really do have the tools and the power to influence brand reputation and sales.”
BL turned to the social networking community for help. Andrés Bianciatto, a friend whom she met online through Twitter, where she chronicled her entire nightmare, spent five hours on the phone with her early this morning helping her to recover from the spam attack. She writes:
“Corporate CMOS, CEOs, CFOs, listen up—what is said and done in Twitter and other social networks has more to do with your brand reputation than anything else you are doing to sell your goods and services.”
After she blogged about the incident and demanded that PRWeek and Adicio reimburse her the $161 for the software and send her a free iPod nano, the topic of the spam emails, PRWeek editor Julia Hood called her and said the newspaper would meet her demands. So far, she says, all Adicio has done is issue a lame excuse.
I commented at BL’s blog and said that I think the newspaper should assign its own columnist, Hamilton Nolan, to write about the crisis in the next issue. His column, “PR Play of the Week,” highlights a PR play and rates it on a five-point system, from a #1 (clueless) to a #5 (ingenious).
We know exactly which rating that PR mistake deserves. But I’m curious, Publicity Hounds, what’s your best advice for PRWeek and Adicio?
Before you answer what they should do, you might want to know more of the backstory.
The way this was handled by PR Week and particularly by Adicio was insipid. I just kept calling PR Week editors until I got the very nice Keith O”Brien on the phone. He told he that he reads my blog and respects my work and he gave said they had not a clue about a fix for Mac. He genuinely tried to help, but of course he’s an editor, not an IT person. Where were haymarket’s IT people? Who knows?
Adicio people were soon hiding behind voicemail, and when I did get the general manager on the phone he promised to call me back and never did. And they didn’t pull the plug on the damn emails for at least a day because they kept on coming. Simply stupid behavior.
I told everyone I spoke to at PR Week and Adicio that I was twittering the events, names and numbers live,and that I would be blogging about the “incident.”
Julia Hood told me to call Microsoft but didn’t offer to pay for the assistance. She said there was nothing they could do, it was just a “mistake.” But surely someone approved that email and should have seen that they were sending to an OPEN list. And if they didn’t, well, why not?
I waited almost a whole day before I blogged about the situation because I really wanted PR Week or Adicio to solve the problem.
But then frustrated recipients of the email started to hit “reply to all” with their take on what was happening, and before you knew it, there were tens of thousands more mails floating around.
The real damage to PR Week and Adicio.com comes in search engines as the news spreads. I did my level best in the two posts I wrote to be sure they come up in the top 10 results for Adicio and PR Week, and as of today, my posts are moving on up. They’re not going away, nor are the posts other people are writing and search optimizing their posts, comments, etc.
So, no matter what lame excuses PR Week gives in their paper, PR Week blew it. People make mistakes. And other people can either compound them or fix them.
If PR Week had apologized prominently and genuinely and transparently IMMEDIATELY people would have had warmer feelings toward them. Now PR Week and Adicio can examine their asses off, but the bad will remains from thousands of people and their friends and acquaintances.
The same thing happened with the house e-mail list of a very well-known publicist here in L.A. (name on request) about 4 or 5 years ago. Somehow his system started spewing out hundreds of copies of the same e-mail, with all the addressees showing. Many of these addressees started hitting “reply” to request removal from the e-mail list, but the same malfunction caused their replies to go out to the entire list. Of course everyone else hit “reply” to tell the first group to knock it off, and these messages also went out to the entire group.
Meanwhile, my calls to the PR office reached only a clueless intern who had no idea what was going on or how to fix it, but didn’t think it was such a big deal.
I finally managed to set up a block on my incoming e-mail to filter out all of this junk, and eventually got myself permanently removed from this guy’s e-mail list. Meanwhile, however, I had multiple copies of an outstanding set of e-mail addresses for movers and shakers here in L.A., none of whom probably wanted their information shared in this way!
There was no follow-up of any kind from this PR firm. In these pre-blog days, the incident probably faded into obscurity.
GLB
Even without reading the facts of the case, the first thing I would do as a crisi communications manager is make sure that pundits like BL Ochman and others were on my short list of people to call or email regularly (once a quarter, or once a
month) so I’d have credibility with them. That way, if something bad happened, they’d believe me.
Bad news travels fast and it is nice to have an open line of communication with the people who spread the word. Better yet, they will know they have an open line of communication so they feel comfortable calling you to get both sides of the story.
Hi Joan,
I know this isn’t a “current” topic anymore, but it’s something I’m still dealing with. I’m very worried about my personal information floating out there in cyberspace.
I emailed Julia Hood weeks ago, and she said she would have her executive team “look into it.” Since then I have sent a few more follow up emails which have gone unanswered. I’m pretty sure I’m being ignored.
I don’t want to drag anyone through the dirt, but I’m pretty sure the only reason B.L. Ochman received priority treatment is because she has a strong internet PR presence, and I feel that Julia and PRWeek are ignoring me because I can’t do as much damage to her brand. What should I do?
A.J., Julia was promoted within the last few weeks to publishing director. I’ll bet she’s concentrating on the duties associated with her new job.
You can try emailing the new editor, Keith O’Brien, but I’m guessing he, too, is feeling his way as editor.
I’m not sure what else they can do at this point.