Banks and Financial Services companies obviously need a PR face-lift.  With public opinion and trust levels plummeting to new lows some are ready to try completely different approaches.  Such is the case with the current Goldman Sachs website.

The corporate feeling, powerful, almost graphic-free save for a logo imagery we are all used to seeing for Financial Services homepages is gone – replaced with a site that looks more like it belongs to a non-profit organization for empowering women.  At first glance I thought I had made a mistake in typing the domain name, then I saw the Goldman Sachs logo placed subtly in the upper corner.

The new design highlights the firm’s philanthropic efforts far more prominently than any of their asset management services.  It’s clear the firm and their PR team is trying to project a more friendly, approachable – or for lack of a better phrase “warm & fuzzy” – image.  An interesting change to say the least, but will it help with the current public relations crisis the industry is going through?

Note: Archive.org was, unfortunately, unable to give me a screenshot of how the site used to look.  However, for comparison purposes the previous homepage design was a cross between Fidelity’s and Merrill Lynch’s.

This morning anyone who visited the Skittles Brand homepage (www.skittles.com) was probably a bit surprised to find themselves suddenly on Twitter.  With a new slogan “Chat the Rainbow” Skittles linked their homepage to the Twitter search results for Skittles

Its generating a lot of buzz – and prompted everyone on twitter to try to get onto the skittles homepage by tweeting something about skittles.  Pretty brave when you think about it, with apparently no means of moderating the tweets Skittles has opened the door for open communication on their company homepage.

We like the idea…its a great PR stunt – get people talking about your brand in a completely new, trendy and different way.  However there is real potential for this plan to backfire.  First of all, Skittles isn’t active on Twitter, neither is its parent company Mars.  For a social media strategy to work long-term it’s got to be a 2-way conversation, which isn’t happening at all here.  What they’ve done is pull up a stream of anyone using the word ‘Skittles’ in their tweet.  Because of this there have been a few incredibly inappropriate tweets showing up – including offensive language and links to ‘adult’ sites.  Furthermore, what happens when the initial “wow” factor wears off and people aren’t tweeting about skittles every second?

Skittles also should have thought about the Fail Whale a bit before launching this.  Twitter, although getting better on this front, is notorious for not being able to support the amount of traffic it draws on a regular basis.  Especially with all the buzz surrounding this…is it worth relying on Twitter to keep your homepage up and running?

It’s a great PR stunt, but is it a good social marketing strategy?  We’re not sure…

A new survey, Online-Reputation Management, from Weber Shandwick reports that 67% of top execs feel that their company’s reputation is vulnerable online.

This isn’t news to many PR/Online-Marketing people that work ‘in the trenches’.  The social nature of today’s internet allows for many more potential reputation damaging situations, and the fact that execs seem to be sitting up and taking notice is great.  The report shows that a majority of execs are worried about e-mails that can end up in the wrong hands, in fact 87% of execs admit to having accidentally sent or received some type of electronic message – and about 27% admitted to doing it intentionally.

Aside from rogue emails and traditional media outlets, companies (and their PR people) should be paying attention to their reputation in social media circles.  Especially in rough economic times, when layoffs are at high levels and pensions/compensation often suffer, employees are more likely to be dissatisfied and perhaps be tempted to bad mouth their employers online.  Only about a third of execs admitted to knowing about an employee engaging in this type of activity and their response to the problem is to pay attention to employee satisfaction surveys, attempting to resolve the issue before the employee takes action.

Perhaps the most alarming section of the report was that only 10% of execs consider building relationships with prominent bloggers is an effective strategy for online reputation management.  Depending on the industry this could be a mistake, bloggers and online personalities can wield a great deal of influence over their readers and having a good relationship with them could lead to great PR opportunities – or at least help to avoid potential online reputation crises.

Online reputation management is an increasingly important component of any company’s PR efforts.  While execs obviously realize this, they need to include newer social media strategies, as well as their more traditional strategies, in their efforts to manage the brand’s reputation online.

#10 – Lee Ryan’s 9/11 comments
This one is older, but a classic example of why a PR person should be the best friend of anyone in the public eye.  While trying to break into the ‘music scene’ of a new country its good PR for bands to do interviews and appearances to create buzz and interest.  During the aftermath of 9/11, Lee Ryan of the band Blue was giving such an interview and was quoted as saying “What about whales? They are ignoring animals that are more important. Animals need saving and that’s more important. This New York thing is being blown out of proportion. Who gives a f**k about New York when elephants are being killed”.  Ryan claimed the comments were taken out of context and publicly apologized, but the damage was done and the band never recovered.

#9 – Ellen’s Dog Fiasco
When you deal with a personality as big as Ellen DeGeneres you keep your PR team on-call…its just common sense.  The back story goes like this:  Ellen adopted a pup, Iggy, from agency Mutts & Moms.  When said pooch didn’t get along with her cats Ellen decided to give Iggy to her hairdresser’s family instead of returning it to the agency.  While this action was clearly against their policy, Mutts & Moms’ reaction was a huge PR misstep.  They repossessed Iggy from the family – aggressively, and were caught on tape doing so – prompting Ellen to appear in tears on her show begging for Iggy’s return.  As a result, Mutts and Moms received thousands of scathing reviews and threats from outraged Ellen viewers.

#8 – O.J. Simpson’s Book
Entitled “If I did it’” and about the hypothetical murder of his ex-wife.  In today’s world of sensationalist news it might be possible (although would require a healthy dose of fantasy) to understand why some marketer out there thought this was a good idea.  It was scheduled to be published and promoted on a TV special by News Corp subsidiaries – but the general uproar over the book and a few affiliates refusing to run the show led to Chairman Rupert Murdoch stepping in and canceling both.  Oh – and the book’s super high profile editor was fired.

#7 – The Tom Cruise Debacle
It all started with the infamous Oprah couch-jumping incident.  It was a little endearing, a little frightening, and generally assumed to be an isolated incident.  Until he butted heads with Matt Lauer on the Today show, and got into an all-out fued with Brooke Shields over psychiatrics, and his manic appearance in that Scientology video got leaked on YouTube…you get the point.  Where was his PR team during all of this?  They’ve kicked it into gear now, with his new movie coming out and making normal appearance again, but the lapse did a lot of damage to both his public image and the already not-so-stellar public image of Scientology.

#6 – Sony’s Botched Launch of the PS3 & PSP
Specifically the alliwantforxmasisapsp.com “blog”.  It was an attempt at viral-marketing by people that obviously didn’t understand the concept – predictably it failed miserably.  Readers were supposed to believe it was made by fans but the edgy-style writing came off forced and fake and the downloadable material was so sales-y that is was quite obvious Sony was behind it.  So obvious that perhaps they were going for a sort of inside-joke type site…whatever their intentions it didn’t take gamers/readers long to figure out the blog was a fake and they took it personally.  The angry backlash was only made worse by Sony’s handling of the PS3.  Their response to consumers’ concerns about the $600 price tag was “It’s probably too cheap”, they also insinuated that anyone who loves gaming would work the extra hours needed to be able to afford one…ouch.  When the Wii started outperforming PS3 instead of considering why this might be, they dissmissed the better selling console as an ‘impulse buy’.

Sony’s management was arrogant and completely out of touch with their core consumers.  This is the one blunder on our list that is almost entirely due to bad PR.

#5 – Hot Coffee
Short story: A gamer/hacker found something naughty hidden in the PC version of the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.  He then released the infamous Hot Coffe mod, which unlocked a disabled (note: not deleted) interactive mini-game featuring a character *ahem* ‘making whoopie’.

There are tons of opinion pieces and articles/posts out there about corporate blogging, and most of them seem to have a negative spin.  They focus on the risks that a company takes by having a blog and all of the potentially negative outcomes associated with them.  We’re of the opinion that a bad corporate blog is just that, bad – bad for your reputation, bad for your business, and ultimately a risky venture.  However, when corporate blogs get things right it can be a public relations gold mine.

Here are 5 of the top reasons that corporate blogs succeed:

1. They Take It Seriously. Blogs are extremely easy to set up and pretty difficult to maintain in a meaningful way.  Corporate blogs who succeed take it seriously, often dedicating an entire team of staff members to their maintenance.  They put a specific plan in place so that content is created on a regular basis and realize it is a long-term investment.
2. They Take the Time to Brand their Blog. Successful corporate blogs take the time in the beginning to define how the blog will fit in with the firm’s existing corporate culture and set up specific objectives/goals.  They realize that a blog is just another type of communications tool, and they make sure it fits together with the rest of their PR efforts.
3. They Don’t Use the Blog for Blatant Self-Promotion. Yes, we all know that the reason a company has a blog is probably to promote itself.  However, no one will bother to read it or get involved in a discussion if the blog is just a glorified advertisement.
4. They Research the Blogging Community Before Launching a Blog. The human voice is a big part of why blogs are different than websites.  Bloggers will want a certain level of interactivity (comments/feedback) and will be turned off by overly corporate-y, structured, or impersonal language.  Corporate blogs who realize this fare better, and it is a reason that a blog may not be the best option for all companies.
5. They are Original in Both Structure and Content. Successful corporate blogs realize what makes a blog a blog and structure theirs accordingly – using visual elements, links, comments, and layouts that make the content easy to digest.  Blogs that just type up their latest press release for the next post, or only serve as a news feed suffer.  Also, blogs that are doing well are contributing to the community’s discussion in an original way, either by offering a new idea/point of view or putting a new spin on an old topic.