Will Execs Experience the Same "Star" Treatment Britney, Paris and Lindsay Endure Online?
In this edition of .Next, published from a July 2007 article from Bulldog Reporter’s Daily ‘Dog, Nicholas Scibetta, Ketchum's Global Media Network Director, explains how a person's 15 minutes of fame can happen in two seconds and how one has to remember that he or she is always "on" in today's Internet-searchable world. Reprinted with permission from Bulldog Reporter's Daily 'Dog news Web site. Visit the site to subscribe to the daily service: www.bulldogreporter.com/dailydog.
Celebrities are perfect fodder for gossip blogs, the online versions of the People magazines of the world, and other similar sites. We've come to expect to see and read, almost instantaneously, news about Paris Hilton hitting a tree, Paris getting arrested, Paris doing just about anything.
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But the online world doesn't stop there. Corporations also need to realize that the antics of their CEOs and top executives could get their own "star" treatment.
Traditionally kept on the down-low, stories about top executives at Time Warner, Citigroup, Whole Foods and Wal-Mart that have made their way onto the Internet, with harsh consequences for some of the individuals involved. With the threat of a shift in stock price and/or soiled public image, corporations are demonstrating little patience for "inappropriate" behavior. What's interesting is the ongoing debate that asks the question: Should companies in certain industries be held to different standards? Think about it for a second. Is a drunken rage by a Hollywood executive just par for the course?
Media personalities obviously are not immune to all of this, and their foibles are favorites for YouTube and sites like it. One only has to remember the situations with MSNBC's radio personality Don Imus or news talk show host Chris Mathews, who recently provided some sub-par commentary to a night's segment while unaware that it was being broadcast live.
(OK, Chris had a different word choice to describe it.)
Another interesting example with a twist involves BBC journalist John Sweeney and
his confrontation with the folks at Scientology. Capturing a spat between Sweeney and a top Scientology member, a Scientologist posted the clip to YouTube to state their case, and things took off from there. Turning the tables, Sweeney posted his own story, complete with a video of the fight, where he takes Scientology to task again and also apologizes for his actions.
Juxtapose all of this with the fact that if you're not "findable," you're almost nothing nowadays. People Google everyone from potential dates to classmates to job candidates. In fact, just about everyone should assume someone's done an Internet search on them at least once. There are no virgins in the land of search. With this reality comes the fact that everything you do, say and write can quickly find a home on the Internet and live forever.
For corporations, small businesses and entrepreneurs, this is a harsh reality. On one hand, you need to be searchable. Achieving respectable rankings on a Google search can be worth its weight in gold, giving those with top-ranked sites the ability to potentially blunt a crisis, demote a competitor, or successfully showcase products or services. At the same time an individual or corporation can find search rankings to be a major source of angst for many of the same reasons mentioned above.
It's not surprising that this reality has given rise to a host of companies such as ReputationDefender and Naymz, which will "scrub" your image and increase your search quotient. Now I don't think there's anyone out there who doesn't have that photo by the beer keg in a moment of say, acute overindulgence, that would best be burned and buried. Or maybe it's that negative post on some blog that refuses to drop off the radar in an Internet search. That said, the cold reality is that in the fast-food world of the Internet and all that comes along with it, one has to remember that he or she is always "on." Fifteen minutes of fame nowadays happens in two seconds and it doesn't discriminate. PR practitioners, corporations and their employees, spokespeople, and anyone else who represents a brand or company need to commit this to memory and act accordingly. If Paris Hilton has taught us nothing else, it's that fame or infamy, depending on how you look at it, can live on forever.
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