Posts Tagged ‘video’

  The trading scandal at UBS brings to mind the long journey that companies undertake to recover and restore reputations. UBS is now back at square one as they deal with the recently revealed $2.3 billion rogue trading. This reputation disaster brought me back to the days of the Societe Generale SA rogue-trading incident three years ago. If you recall, Jerome Kerviel managed to lose $7.2 billion on his derivatives scheme. The reputation drag on SocGen’s reputation today and on UBS tomorrow is quite real. The SocGen scandal has not entirely faded in the past three years. In fact, everytime one reads about what happened last week at UBS, the SocGen scandal gets replayed. This is unfortunate for those who go down the path of reputation recovery like SocGen. SocGen’s recovery program was quite extensive when you look at it from a three year vantage point – they dismissed Kerviel’s bosses, demanded that the bank move slower as new security systems were put into place and launched an internal controls program called “Fighting Back.”  In addition, other measures were set forth such as spending on new IT security, starting a newly independent accounting group, beginning a SAFE (Security and Anti-Fraud Expertise) program to oversee financial operations and training 7,800 employees about fraud. Ultimately the CEO and chairman stepped down one year later.  All these remedies for recovering reputation came from an article in yesterday’s WSJ and I was glad to be able to list these steps for other companies contemplating what to do when faced with sky rocket type scandals.

Yesterday morning started off with an email to me from Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings. I immediately went to the Netflix‘s CEO apology on the blog.   What confused me however was the tone of the video. Although I am a loyal customer and fierce advocate of what Netflix has done for delivering movies to my home, I thought that the video apology was abit too cheery (outdoors in sunny California. albeit a parking lot) and efficient.  Maybe too rehearsed is the right word. I did not get the sense that this was a very repentent CEO who had seen his stock value decline 52% since the change in pricing occurred. But what really threw me was that he did not share the stage alone. In the video, CEO Reed Hastings had the new head of the DVD spinoff, Qwikster, Andy Rendich, joining him.  I always say that CEOs get all the credit when things go right but all the blame when things go wrong. Why did Hastings deflect some of that blame on this poor soul. I cannot remember the last time (if ever) I witnessed a CEO apology tied to the announcement of a new spinoff. I sincerely doubt that was a good launch plan for Qwikster. My sense is that there’s more apologizing to come. This poor guy Andy looked like he too was somehow responsible for the communciations debacle.

Despite these ramblings, the article on the Netflix problem in today’s New York Times made me smile. The authors wrote, “But in the short term, the risk to corporate reputations is palpable.”  It is not often that I even see the words “corporate reputation” in a top tier publication. Usually it is referred to as brand health or brand reputation or positioning.  It is fairly rare to see corporate reputation used as a commonly understood concept.  My two cents is that short term feels like long term these days when you are in the spotlight. As someone said to me, it’s like a nuclear assault whether it is 6 days, 6 weeks or 6 months. Ultimately, Netflix will be forgiven but like the SocGen example above, reputation damage takes its toll and lingers longer than most CEOs care to imagine.

As I mentioned in my WSJ Europe post on tips on defending your digital reputation, video has taken off and is an excellent means of communications and telling your business narrative for CEOs. Especially for getting CEOs comfortable with social media in general. As I quoted in the article, 75% of Internet traffic will be video this year. In our research on Socializing Your CEO, we talk about the benefits of using video for your CEO, particularly the ones who are wary of too much attention and visibility.

Therefore I nodded to myself when I read about the major expansion of the WSJ’s video unit. Now it is producing 3 1/2 hours of live daily programming. I did not realize that the Journal produces more live video than other newspapers in the US. I think we will be seeing a WSJ business network soon that rivals CNBC (who they partner with) and Fox (their parent company’s network).  Will be interesting to watch and as I said, a good opportunity for CEOs as well. How much trouble can you get in three minutes live?

I was delighted to see this forecast for 2011 in The Economist about CEOs. The article, Words Fail Them, strikes a chord with me as I look ahead too. As I mentioned in my last post, I made some predictions about Reputation Trends for 2011 on Huffington Post.  One of the eight trends was the Ascendancy of Social CEOs. In our research on Social CEOs, we advised that CEOs consider video as a primary tool for communications. The Economist article agreed that video was critical to this new age of communications but was much bolder than I was:

• Email as a mass communications tool for corporate messages will be finished. Video will be recognized as more effective for reaching internal and external stakeholders.
• Video is expected to be more than 75% of Internet traffic by 2012. The Economist believes that over the next 12 months, companies will be driving video usage and leading it.
• A different kind of person will ascend to the corner office who can take advantage of video’s simplicity and immediacy. That’s an interesting prediction! A little too close to the CEO celebrity argument that died a sudden death a few years back.  The Economist said: ”Charisma will be back in:  all successful business chiefs will have to be storytellers and performers. Just as political leaders have long had to be dynamite on TV to stand much hope of election or survival, so too will corporate leaders. They must be able to sell not only their vision of their companies but their vision of themselves.”
• The Economist then made this rather shocking prediction which I don’t buy: “With this shift will come a change in management style. Numbers and facts will be supplanted by appeals to emotion to make employees and customers do what they are told. The businessperson’s emotion may be no more genuine than the politician’s, but successful bosses will get good at faking it.”  Obviously you can’t fake leadership and performance through video, as good a tool as it may be. I agree that CEOs will need to master video and master it fast but they cannot pretend to be what they are not and cannot say that which is not true.

I agree wholeheartedly that video will move up the communications chain with lightning speed but authenticity and transparency will still matter when it comes to reputation….no matter who is speaking.

 On my way to work today I read an article about the West Wing Week video series which I had forgotten about until now.  The article is focused on Arun Chaudhary who is the White House videographer in charge of capturing the activity of the President every week. He is the first person to hold this job. There are segments that are fun, some serious and some very stately. The aim is to document the presidency for historical purposes and no doubt they will be extremely valuable 25 years from now.

The video is approved by the White House Comms Shop (that is what they call it) before it goes live. Essentially it is what we in the comms business call “owned media.”  The White House is the content provider and is sending the message of an active, friendly, presidential occupant of Pennsylvania Avenue.

What interested me after watching this week’s video was how positive the message was compared to what I tend to read in the press, online and on cable news.  Most of the latter is neutral to negative. The video does a fine job of changing perception, interesting to watch (speechwriter working on board Air Force One, Michelle Obama serving food to military in Germany, Obama and his wife dancing with children in India who pull them in) and a reminder of the stateliness of the office. I get the point that it is put out by the White House but it is more reassuring than what the media delivers to us every day. In fact, it was a relief because the news can be downright depressing.

In an article I wrote on Reputation Warfare appearing in December’s Harvard Business Review, I mention the saliency of video as a way to communicate directly with stakeholders in defending and safeguarding reputation. The best reputation antagonists use video strategically, so why not the President?

Interestingly, in the article and the short video with Arun and the writer, they mention that there is tremendous interest in the West Wing Week video internally. Always a side-benefit that companies should seriously consider…..

As I mentioned in my last post, our new research on executive placement at the right conferences covered some interesting information on social media. It would be difficult not to explore how executives were using or not using social media to tell their company story in addition to taking the podium.  Not surprisingly, the results show that online channels are not being used as effectively as they could.

• The tool most widely used to communicate externally by the C-suite is posting written messages on the company web site (66%). And that is a big step from a few years ago, so this is good news. Despite its widespread usage, executive communications professionals surveyed do not regard C-level web statements to be among the three most effective ways to communicate externally. Instead, the #1 most effective channel, according to respondents, is recorded video on the Web site, followed by live webcasts and blogs.
• Among the social networking tools, Twitter is considered more effective (25%) than Facebook (19%) and LinkedIn (16%) for external C-suite communications. Yet Twitter is woefully under-utilized by executives as a way to connect or communicate. It is reported by only 6% as a means that the C-suite uses to communicate now with external audiences. There is alot of debate about whether execs and CEOs should spend time on Twitter and Facebook. The best answer to the question is “Depends.” It depends on the industry, the regulations governing the industry, whether the company is customer-facing or not, and whether the executive has the time. Few execs have the time to commit and after talking to CEOs, they do not usually have the time. I keep wondering if there is an in-between but have not found one.

Video, on the other hand,  is a preferred communications channel today because of its ability to viscerally humanize executives. Right now, video of CEOs or other execs talking, interacting, and engaging can go a long way to attracting candidates, putting a human face on the company and just saying, “I’m showing up.”