Type “woman” into Google search today - in fact, go as far as “w-o-m” and you will be presented with “woman puts cat in bin”; 1.97m searches on this term alone, just a day after a Coventry woman was filmed putting kitty in the litter.
Not only is the story a shocking example of animal cruelty, it’s a salutary lesson to any organisation that hasn’t yet recognised the power of social media. Imagine that the hapless Coventry woman at the centre of the furore was, instead, your company or brand.
Look at the facts: number one in Google search; more than 50,000 views on YouTube; nearly 30,000 fans on Facebook, posting nearly 1,000 comments on the matter; 743-and-counting online news articles and, now, a police guard on the offending woman’s home.
Granted, the ire of the British animal lover should never be underestimated.
But where did this firestorm take hold? Within social media.
PR Media Blog, when it comes to religion, is at the very least agnostic and certainly non-denominational.
But when the venerable institution of BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day talks social media, quotes Mark Zuckerberg and namechecks YouTube, we simply have to listen.
But, sometimes, the chosen TFTD speaker manages to harness the zeitgeist and build a meaningful connection between faith and a modern, technological world, seemingly indifferent to the church.
Read here or listen to here what the Rev Dr David Wilkinson says about social media and the importance of relationships.
Could social media be the saviour of religion or, ultimately, become its replacement? To paraphrase Karl Marx, could social media be the new opium of the people?
And how can your employees offer a meaningful voice at a time of crisis?
These were the questions facing Asda yesterday, when an ex-staff member at its Fulwood, Preston store went on a clandestine, night-time rampage - and then shared his antics via video film.
Adeel Ayub certainly succeeded in making himself look moronic with a trail of random destruction at his former place of work. But grabbing media attention presented a different challenge to Asda’s communications team.
“There was a chance people would think this was still happening in that store or that we’d turned a blind eye at the time it happened.
“But once we’d seen it, we were quick to say how disgusted we were and then worked fast to find out who the person was and whether he was still part of the business. Colleagues at the store, aware of the vandalism from the first incident, were glad the perpetrator was now out in the open.”
And it was the wish of the store manager to express her and her colleagues’ feelings about Ayub’s actions that prompted the comms team to come up with the idea of filming a personal video message, later to be uploaded to YouTube (see top of post).
Burch adds: “The manager simply asked a few colleagues on the night shift to respond to the video in their own words. The resulting clips were posted on YouTube unedited.”
In the video, the shared bemusement and dismay among the staff about why a former colleague would behave like that has an authenticity and real, unembellished quality; something that says more about the impact on them and their loyalty to the store than any official, corporate statement could.
As they are the people who work in the store and live in the area, who better to reassure the local Asda customer that unpleasant things have happened, but it’s business as usual now?
For me there are two fascinating questions about the Brand and Ross debacle. Why did they put out the show with the item in when it wasn’t live and why did the furore gather so much momentum in such a short time over a week after the broadcast?
Why was it broadcast? Any fool could have guessed there would be an issue and there were some very experienced heads in the approval chain. I believe that the reason for broadcasting may lie in the fact that by recording the messages on an answer machine the comments were already potentially in the public domain. With the social web anyone can publish and Ross and Brand realised that. By not broadcasting they would have acknowledged fault and the recording could still reach the public via the web. The evidence might be there is in their comments in the a part of the programme that was edited out of the final broadcast:
Ross: “let’s both put on striped t-shirts and break into his house, merely to delete the answerphone message - let’s see what happens. What could go wrong?”
Brand: “Nothing, literally, nothing could go wrong as we smash our way into Andrew Sachs’s house”
Ross: ”break in like cat burglars tonight when he’s in bed”
Brand: “yes while he sleeps”
They must have felt that they had escaped censure when a week went by with no outcry but the press got hold of the story when Andrew Sachs complained. It might have ended there but for the intervention of the social web once more. The recording appeared on YouTube and there have been a million hits - somewhat more than the average listenership for Brand’s show. As the hits on YouTube went up so did the complaints. A week after the show went out there were just 69 complaints to the BBC at the last count there were more than 30,000. A coincidence? I doubt it.
Against my better judgement I listened to the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand radio debacle, not on the radio you understand but on Youtube. To put this in context I should say that the Jonathan Ross show on Friday night is one of my few ‘appointments to view’ on tv these days. I’m not a big fan of Russell Brand - he’s very clever, I like reading his column in The Guardian but I find him almost impossible to listen to.
If you are new to this story, on Brand’s Radio 2 Saturday night show, Ross and Brand left a string of offensive answerphone messages for 78-year-old Fawlty Towers star, Andrew Sachs. They claimed, using slightly more direct language, Brand had slept with Mr Sachs’ 23-year-old granddaughter.What I heard of the excerpts from Brand’s radio show was not what I’d expected. We expect the f-word from both Ross and Brand and that’s fine, we want sharpness but what I heard was akin to bullying. What was really embarrassing was that it sounded very much like they were trying to outdo each other in terms of shock value. It felt very much like Ross (47) was trying too hard to hold onto his crown as the emperor of edge and that’s just well…not at all cool.
We want Jonathan Ross to be cool. That’s part of his brand and we all pay a lot of money for it and I’m not sure I want to any more.
PR Week have covered Gordon’s foray onto YouTube this week. I think its the best thing he’s done, hot on the heels of Paddick’s Twitter, the key to politicians on social media is to recreate the old days, when people were actually able to ask politicians things live! And then they would talk back!
Since TV took over politicians have gone into ‘top-down’ soundbite mode and people are now massively cynical about it. So Gordon has got the medium and the principles right but it will still be Gordon and that’s the bit PR Week have quoted me on!
Seems Drew B didn’t quite have his full view expressed as well:)
