Integrity: the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
Last week I had a professional difference of opinion with a colleague, which was the catalyst for this post, so I’m particularly interested to hear people’s thoughts and comments this week.
I was invited to join a Brisbane Lions group on Facebook at the start of the AFL season. The logo is the profile pic, there was a link to the official Brisbane Lions website, professional photos of players, links to articles, regular status updates… for all intents and purposes, it looked like their official Facebook page. But I was wrong.
After pointing out a spelling error in a status update one night, the administrator of the page sent me a message to say he was just a fan, not someone who worked for the Brisbane Lions. As a fan, a PR professional, and someone who’s passionate about upholding brand integrity, I was appalled. I felt like I’d been ripped off, cheated, deceived.*
After learning a PR colleague is maintaining a Twitter profile for a brand they don’t work for, I was just as unimpressed. I reckon we should know better. To their credit, the brand knows this person is managing the profile. However I fear their followers do not, and this is misleading. Even as PR/communications people, we’re still consumers. And we all know what it’s like to be misled by a company.
In Australia, PR people are required to abide by a Code of Ethics (if you’re a member of the PRIA). Just like accountants, lawyers, doctors and countless other professions. Read the first couple of Codes and you should get where I’m going with this…
These two recent experiences have really driven home for me how transparency and integrity in all forms of communications, especially social media channels, are paramount.
The rules of how we engage with a brand’s stakeholders haven’t changed. However, we now have the opportunity to talk and interact with them directly though sites like Twitter and Facebook, making the conversations we have with them even more important to how our brands are represented. Gone are the days when a CEO or Chairman was the only heard human voice of a brand. As brands (and people) establish identities online they’re stepping into a new world where the community is more actively taking part in the shaping and defining of their brand. There are now potentially millions of voices.
Your brand is not just an image or word, sign or symbol. It’s a promise. A promise to deliver a product, service or experience, to live up to expectations.
Life is injected into a brand by eliciting an emotional reaction and connection with stakeholders, resulting in the branding and marketing holy grail: loyalty.
Promise, loyalty… it all implies a level of trust. And the stronger the trust, the stronger your reputation (and we’re all aware of what lies at the opposite end of the trust/reputation spectrum).
Social media is, without a doubt, providing countless opportunities for us to talk about our brand and our brand’s promise, and build trust with consumers directly. If someone else is doing that on a brand’s behalf without being upfront to its customers and stakeholders and misrepresenting who they are and the brand, they are potentially doing long-term damage to that trust and reputation. This goes for any communications channel, not just social media. Social media has simply exaggerated the possible outcomes, whether they be positive or negative.
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I’m speaking at an event tomorrow (Thursday) night for AIMIA Qld and PRIA Qld, titled “Feeling a Little Overexposed Online? Why Online Reputation Matters“. Starts at 5.30pm at Central Eagle St Conference Venue. Would love to see you there.
*As a result, I shot them a rather curt email asking them to make it clear they are running an unofficial page, keep in mind they’re bordering on breaching copywrite laws by not having permission to replicate the Lions’ brand and not referencing where they were getting their information from, not to mention potentially angering a club they’re so passionate about. I’ve noticed they’ve since made the adjustments I’ve suggested and sent them a thank you.
Alistair
May 19, 2010
Interesting post and I agree with most things you’ve said. However you have not addressed an organisation’s responsibility to take control of their own brand. While you ctiticise fans that run pages that are purportedly ‘official’, shouldn’t large scale companies be stepping in to a) be proactive in establishing their own social media strategy and b) ensuring that nobody is potentially in a position where their brand can be compromised?
While we can talk about ethics and morals ’til the cows come home, the buck stops with every organisation who wants to be active in the online sphere. What are they doing to engage their consumers? If someone else is doing it on their behalf (for nothing), clearly they are not making a big enough effort.
marissatree
May 19, 2010
Thanks for the comments Alistair. You’re right, I haven’t addressed an organisation’s responsibility to take control of their own brand – on purpose. That’s next week’s post! Stay tuned…
GenericBox
May 19, 2010
I remember back at the turn of the century, when the internet was littered with fan sites, forums, and groups dedicated to a brand – the ancestors of the ‘Facebook’ Page.
Back in those days, it was simple to tell an unofficial site from the official; generally, a fansite’s url would be hosted on a free server, the design would be crude and simple, and the content slow to update.
What ‘new’ social media has created, is a platform for fans to create pages that eliminate most of the telltale signs of a traditional fansite. It removes the need for professional design, makes redundant the url, and provides creators an avenue to update content by hitting just one button.
Social media has allowed these fansites to develop from brand advocates to corporate identity thiefs.
Facebook and Twitter are laden with duplicate accounts and unofficial pages. Do we just accept that we can no longer trust who is behind social media identities?
Furthermore, what is the brand to do? Most fans are not trying to cause harm or damage an organisations brand – and in fact a frequently updated unofficial page is a sign that a fan cares too much.
So how should a brand tell them to stop? How does a brand maintain it’s brand integrity when approaching unofficial pages.
The example Brisbane Lions page is now advertising as unofficial, so I am not sure how it looked before, but at nearly 4000 fans – what if Brisbane Lions had Facebook shut it down – what would be the reaction from those fans?
In the end, I think social media has detached many consumers from the ownership of fan Pages and profiles. Even on ‘official’ Pages it is not clear who is writing the status updates – is it a dedicated social media expert, as they have at Virgin Blue – who may or may not even work for the organisation, but a Media Agency – or is it the CEO from his mobile phone on the way home from work.
The dilemna that social media fan pages creates for organisations is reminiscent of some of the previous great internet debates: Music v Napster, Television v YouTube… It boils down to two options (as it often does in PR) – do they be proactive and embrace these groups, providing unofficial creators with information and insights, while asking for respect and response in return? Or do they be reactive, banning social media duplicates and possible identity thefts to maintain strict control over their brand?
History would ask if they have learnt anything from what happens to reactionary organisations.