Justin Case You Were Wondering

At this point, I think it’s official. The conversation about the Groupon Super Bowl ads has actually passed the amount of conversation about the game itself. One week later, Packers and Steelers fans are still talking about the game. But everyone else is talking about Groupon. You want to know why? Because in the social deals Super Bowl, Groupon is the only team qualified to take the field.

Crisis communications is not just about managing the communications process during a crisis. Sure that is important and we need a plan for it. But true crisis communications is an everyday process that factors into a brand’s overall listening and engagement strategy. The “every day” is when companies build trust, relationships and advocates – I like to call it building goodwill. You can’t build those things in minutes, hours, days or even weeks when a crisis strikes. Just ask BP, Dominos or Amazon.

Since President Obama gave his state of the union address yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to look at the social state of the union and reflect on how far we’ve come with the integration of social media into the business world and how far we still have to go.

What do you want your brand to stand for? That’s the first question I would ask Etsy’s PR team if I had the chance to talk with them about the best way to handle the “hate cards” issue — it’s not a PR crisis at this point — with which they are faced. If you aren’t familiar with the controversy, Shel Holtz offers a thorough explanation in this recent post. Shel tells the story of Jonathan Mast, a friend of ours, in his post and how Jonathan has tried to get Etsy to remove cards being sold on its site that appear to make fun of down syndrome — Jonathan’s daughter has DS. Since Shel wrote the post, a new set of cards congratulating women for being raped have been posted for sale.