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Transparency

Monday, November 12, 2007

Don’t Clinton staffers watch the news?

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I lauded the Hillary Clinton campaign recently for the launch of The Fact Hub, a blog-based website designed to provide rapid response to rumors, inaccuracies, and factual misstatements. It’s only fair, then, that I call the campaign out for a communications gaffe made all the more egregious by the the fact that FEMA was all over the news recently for making a similar move. FEMA, you may recall, came under fire for putting on a fake news conference, with members of the FEMA staff posing as reporters and tossing softball questions. Now it turns out the Clinton campaign was planting questions for the candidate among members of various audiences.

Clinton claims to be unaware of the practice and has condemned it. Whether that’s true or not, you have to wonder, in the wake of the FEMA debacle, what those staff members were thinking. As Clinton’s lead over her nearest rival, Barak Obama, continues to shrink, a bonehead move like this can’t help. Both stories—Clinton and FEMA—should be lessons to anyone seeking to sway public opinion. Candor and transparency must guide your efforts.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Will we never learn?

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Microsoft and global PR agency Burson-Marsteller are in hot water over a tactic that flies in the face of what we now about the nature of business and transparency in the era of social computing.

There have been enough instances of false-front organizations, funded by a client and operated by a PR agency, being outed by determined individuals to make you wonder: What in the world was Burson thinking?

The tale—as recounted in this Guardian story—begins with an email from Burson director Jonathan Dinkeldein promoting the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplaces. The email, delivered to boad membes of several several top UK businesses. The message—characterized by some recipients as an inappropriate cold call—solicited membership in the organization that was opposing Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, the online marketing organization Google acquired in an auction. The email noted that the Initiative for Competitive Online Marketplaces would soon issue messages addressing Google, Internet privacy, and competition.

Microsoft lost out to Google in the bidding and, as it turns out, Microsoft is represented by Burson in such matters. To make things worse, a Microsoft spokesperson would only admit that the software giant and Burson have a relationship but denied that Burson was lobbying on Microsoft’s behalf. Dinkeldein, in the meantime, did admitted that Burson was working with Microsoft on the DoubleClick matter and that Microsoft had formed the organization. Geez, can’t a PR agency and a client even get their stories straight?

There is nothing inherently wrong with Microsoft forming the organization—such organizations can actually have a legitimate cause and serve a worthwhile purpose. Nor is there anything wrong with a PR agency working with the company to promote the organization. What is wrong—terribly, unethically wrong—is failing to disclose those relationships. And there have been enough instances in recent years to make you wonder what it will take for this simple fact to permeate the practices of the public relations profession.

The world is transparent, and many eyes are focused on the lens peering into the business world. Deceit will be exposed. There is no benefit in trying to get away with something like this, which only hurts the public relations profession, including those who would never engage in such practices. A comment by David Binkowski to the TechDirt report on the kerfuffle articulates the same concern:

I know most people hate PR firms but there are people on the inside showing the light—these types of tactics are unethical and need to be exposed. The consumer revolution will take full hold when we start boycotting the brands of the firms representing this kind of dishonesty.

The TechDirt post, by the way, carries this subhead: from the lobbyists-and-shills-and-pr,-oh-my! dept

Can’t you just feel that brush spreading its paint all over you?

Hat tip to Jim Horton.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Wikipedia Scanner: open season on companies

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Since Virgil Griffith launched Wikipedia Scanner, it’s been open season on organizations whose IP addresses are linked to changes made to entries on the popular DIY encyclopedia. For example…

• PRWeek’s UK edition notes that “PR agencies are flouting Wikipedia rules demanding they do not edit the site. At least six of the PRWeek top ten UK agencies have edited the site in the past year...FD is the biggest offender filing 25 edits, primarily concerning clients Russ DeLeon and Ruth Parasol—founders of the online gambling company PartyGaming.”
• Wired is taking and publishing submissions in a posting titled “Vote on the Most Shameful wikipedia Spin Jobs.”
• Over 750 blog posts have been contributed on the topic, and a Google search produces 342,000-plus results.

Cumulatively, the number of organizations being outed for making changes is staggering. Rarely does a single tool produce such an overwhelming indictment of institutions’ predlicition for spinning facts and history.

But a little perspective is in order.

I’ve been visiting the Scanner over the last few days, spending time in the “Editor’s Picks.” For example, I spent a fair amount of time clicking through edits made from Exxon Mobil’s IP addresses. As of right now, there is a whopping 1,205 edits made by Exxon Mobil. Outrageous, right? Well, no. In fact, only about 20 of the edits seem to have anything to do with entries related to Exxon Mobil. 

What, then, were all these other edits? Here’s a very small sampling:

• Correction of a typo ("choose" instead of “chose") in an entry about Disneyland’s Autopia ride
• Addition of a paragraph about how refrigeration cycles work in an entry about air conditioners
• Removal of an offensive addition to the biography of country singer/actress Dolly Parton
• Removal of a gratuitous addition (I LOVE YOU JENNY) to a listing on the history of American Football
• A section on “Economy” was added to the listing for the city of Natchitoches, Louisiana, suggesting that the city’s tourism industry needs little promotion.

Are these blatant abuses by Exxon Mobil? Clearly not. These are employees who also happen to be Wikipedia fans; they don’t care whether they’re at home or at work when they make their corrections and additions. But because their entries from work computers get aggregated with all other revisions from the company’s range of IP addresses, they get added to the total. Without these entries, Exxon Mobil probably wouldn’t have attracted the editor’s attention and become an editor’s pick.

A look at Amgen’s results shows a similar pattern. Most changes were made to entires dealing with a band called Caustic, the late Monty Python alum Graham Chapman, the term “mnemonic,” the New Progressive Party of Puerto Rico, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the like. Reviews of other companies produced the same kinds of results.

And what about the edits to Exxon Mobil entries, the ones that clearly violate Wikipedia’s policy? While some are egregious (deletion of content about the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for instance), others simply correct facts. For example, the entry about Mobil 1motor oil originally stated that Mobil 1 was introduced two years after Amsoil “marketed the first API certified synthetic engine oil.” The change reflects the fact that Mobil 1 was, in fact, the first API (American Petroleum Institute) certified synthetic motor oil.

At this point, you also have to wonder how many of the edits to company-specific content were business-motivated—that is, deliberately executed by the PR staff—and how many were individual employees who visited the company’s listing and said, “Hey, that’s not right,” and made the change without understanding the consequences. Companies now need policies that limit employee edits to company listings in Wikipedia.

I’ve been on the record opposing the Wikipedia rule that bars companies and their agents from editing company content. Honest efforts to correct mistatements of fact are prohibited by the rule (such as changing the number of employees from 500,000 to 50,000 because the original author added an extra zero) while unethical companies will simply make their inappropriate changes from non-work computers or use proxy services that mask their identities. Meanwhile, thousands of people who don’t work for the company but do have a biased point of view merrily post entries that obviously were never crafted with objectivity in mind.

But my objection doesn’t matter. The rule is the rule and if companies can’t play by it, they deserve whatever heat they take as a result of being outed courtesy of the Wikipedia Scanner. And, to be fair, most of the companies that have been the subject of news reports since the Scanner opened for business have been caught trying to rewrite history.

Still, it’s important to separate the wheat from the chaff, and not much of an effort has been made so far to draw the distinction between truly unethical manipulation of content, minor factual revisions, changes made unwittingly by front-line employees and changes to non-company content by employees accessing Wikipedia from work computers.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Dell, delays, and transparency

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Dell Computers may have a lot of problems, but transparency isn’t one of them. I learned on Jim Horton’s blog about a post on Direct2Dell from Consumer Product Group Sr. VP Alex Gruzen announcing a delay in shipment of a new Dell laptop. The post drew 189 comments as of today, most of them slamming the company hard for the delay.

Some of the comments chastised Dell for waiting until the last possible moment to announce the delay, which is not a shining example of transparency. But the blog itself could serve as a poster child for transparency, given the volume of negative comments the company seems to have no problem posting.

What’s more, Gruzen was back on the blog today with more details and a forthright apology:

I want to apologize for the frustration that these delays are causing you. I understand that no amount of explanation is a substitute for shipping the system, but hope this helps addresses some of your concerns.

Regular readers will know how highly I value apologies from businesses. “I’m sorry” goes a long way.

Further, the explanations—by Gruzen and lead blogger Lionel Menchaca—provide insight into production issues few companies seem willing to share. None of this makes those customers who expected to have a laptop in their hands by now any happier, but at least they’re not left wondering, “What the hell happened?” Dell is incredibly upfront about what the hell happened.

As for those who wonder what company in its right mind would allow such negative content to appear on its own online properties, Horton offers this (with which I wholeheartedly agree):

While the episode is painful, Dell could have had its customers expressing their rage on their individual blogs and on bulletin boards all over the internet. At least, customer dissatisfaction has been captured and the company knows what it needs to do to get on its customers’ good sides. Blogs are not only for good news.

C|Net covered the story, too.