Take control of your good (brand) name
Barack Obama has a long, hard battle ahead of him to win the Presidency this year. One area where he has excelled and continues to do so, is online.
He has had to put up with a number of smears, which have been put out to discredit him (not unusual in the political space), but he has now decided to take control of what is being said. He has done this in a very clever way with his Fight the Smears campaign which you can see here.
Major kudos for him doing this, for a number of reasons:
- He is not sweeping the smears under the carpet, he is acknowledging them
- He is then putting people straight, and setting out his version
- He is being honest and open
- He is not taking it lying down, and is making sure that he is heard
- Great use of a good url – fightthesmears.com
One of my clients has a slightly similar situation at the moment, not smears, but reputation management.
Their highly succesful, customer-focussed business (an online store), has been copied by someone else. They have used a VERY similar URL, which is leading to confusion. When the pretender does not live up to the reputation of the original business, (great service, excellent communication, superb delivery) people then complain, and do so publicly.
The problem is that those people have been conned into thinking that they have been dealing with the original business, because of a very similar online name. So when they publicly complain in forums and on blogs, they don’t make the differentiation clear.
That means big trouble.
The original business, having spent many years, thousands of pounds, and countless hours of work building their brand, is damaged by the poor service of the pretender. Major brand degradation which can have a very negative impact. We can now take the example of Barack Obama and do a number of things:
- Acknowledge the problem
- Empower the loyal customers to protect their brand name
- Communicate with the customers and make sure they are very clear what is happening
- Let the customers know that they don’t want them being conned
- Communicate that customer satisfaction is their number one priority
This will make sure that the problem is nipped in the bud before getting too big. Loyal customers will often come to the defense of a company who they like, especially in cases like this, where someone is being dishonest, and trading of someone else’s good name.
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3 Responses to “Take control of your good (brand) name”
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Senator Obama is NOT a Dirty Muslim!
“What you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge,” says Mr. Obama, while denouncing statements of him being a Muslim as a smear. Why is the presidential candidate who claims to be religiously inclusive is treating the word “Muslim” as an insult? Apparently, it is OK for Mr. Obama to be associated with terrorists like William Ayers or racists like Jeremiah Wright, but God forbid somebody would call him a Muslim! No, he won’t stand for that kind of smear! We admit that most terrorists are Muslims, but most Muslims are not terrorists and the statement on Mr. Obama’s website is insulting to hundreds of millions of people.
How could a man who discards his family heritage in favor of political expediency be even considered for presidency of the United States? Where are all the so-called “Islamic civil rights groups” like CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, MAS, etc. who are quick to defend every Islamic terrorist, but are silent when Muslims in general are being denigrated? Would Mr. Obama have the same reaction if someone claimed that he was raised as a Jew? We sincerely doubt that.
Muslims Against Sharia demand immediate removal of “SMEAR: Barack Obama is a Muslim” statement from the official Barack Obama’s website as well as an apology for giving the word “Muslim” a negative connotation.
http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/06/senator-obama-is-not-dirty-muslim.html
A very interesting and thought provoking comment, and one I am a little ill-equipped to answer. However, from my limited knowledge, I think that the majority of Americans do associate the word Muslim as negative, purely from the way they are portrayed in the media, especially after 911.
I really blogged about this purely from a reputation management point of view, but you have made some good points.
I will be interested to see what other readers think.
When an average Joe whose knowledge of Muslims consists of a few TV clips (most of the Muslims that are interviewed on TV are Islamofascist scumbags) thinks associates Muslims with negative, it is one thing. When someone who has a good chance to become a leader of the Free World associates Muslims with negative, it is quite different.