Marketing Pilgrim

We hear so much about social media. It’s the this and the that and all things in between of business. You can reach more, do more sell more, relate more etc.etc etc. It’s hard to argue this line of thinking. It makes sense and it is real but is it overshadowing what appears to be a much bigger concern which is less sexy but possibly much more important which is the security of the online space?

Earlier we talked about the security breach at Zappos that exposed millions of Zappos customers account information (supposedly not credit card info but time will tell). As Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh put it

“We’ve spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers,” Mr. Hsieh said. “It’s painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident.”

If there is one organization that is usually held up as the poster child for how you should run an online company (or any compnay at all for that matter) it is Zappos. CEO Tony Hsieh gets interviewed it seems like on a daily basis to discuss the best practices that the online shoe and clothing selling machine uses to run its operation. Not the least of which is their laser beam focus on customer service as noted in their logo on the web site.

Well, as is usually the case in business and in life, it looks easy when everything is flying along just fine but when something goes terribly wrong that is the real measure of a company or organization. Today it is Zappos turn to be tested. The company’s systems were compromised over the weekend and according to TechCrunch

Last week Andy Beal blogged about the latest stupid human trick performed by a food chain employee which has caused an online reputation issue. This time it was Papa John’s. It appears as if pizza chains (remember the Domino’s incident?) have trouble hiring minimum wage workers with any scruples.

The long and short of the story is that a Papa John’s employee in NYC was stupid enough to use a racial slur to describe a customer. It’s not like they just said something either. Rather this employee (who has since been fired) decided to immortalize their ignorance by adding the customer description to a field that appears on the customer receipt. Boy, if there wasn’t morons out there like this we may not have anything to write about, would we?!

Here is the receipt from a CNN story about Papa John’s apology.

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People say they want something new and different, but the truth is, we gravitate toward old, familiar images and brands. Sometimes these brands return with a clever, modern update (Can you say, “Old Spice.”) Other times, it’s just the mere reminder of why we loved them in the first place that makes us a fan all over again.

Forbes has just released their list of brands they expect to make a comeback in 2012. Let’s take a look and see if you agree.

The Muppets

This one is a no-brainer, since they’re already on the upswing. Back in November, The Muppets released a new movie which, ironically, was all about them making a comeback. Since then, Kermit and friends have been popping up everywhere, reigniting original fans and bringing in a new, teen audience.

GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman got a Christmas card from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. It said simply, “welcome to my world.”

It all began when GoDaddy announced that they were supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act or SOPA. The act calls for a block on any domain that allows the posting of materials protected by copyright. Sounds reasonable, until you realize that Facebook could be blocked if someone posts a celebrity photo that is owned by one of the big licensers like Getty.

GoDaddy initially said they were behind SOPA and instantly, thousands began pulling their domains away from the company. Some went so far as to put up a boycott GoDaddy site and declare December 29, “Leave GoDaddy Day.”

After writing about the FedEx delivery driver that was caught on video, throwing a customer’s expensive computer monitor over a fence, many asked if the video was faked, a FedEx publicity stunt (huh?) or the antics of a competitor.

Well, it turns out that the FedEx video–which now has over 2.6 million views–is legit.

In fact, FedEx has apologized and apparently resolved the issue. Though, unless you went digging around, you wouldn’t know that.

You see aside from these few tweets…

…FedEx doesn’t appear to have taken the issue seriously enough to warrant much of an official apology.

No Facebook update.

No YouTube video response.

No press release.

Not even a blog post. Update: There’s now a blog post.

If you’ve not yet seen this YouTube video of the FedEx delivery driver throwing a shopper’s new LCD monitor over a fence, then let’s get you up to speed.

Did your jaw drop? Mine did! You can read the back story here.

The question I have for you is, how should FedEx respond to this reputation damaging incident? I’ve listed a few ideas below, but leave a comment with your thoughts.

• Fly the poor guy out to FedEx headquarters–on a FedEx plane–to receive a personal apology from the CEO and receive a new LCD TV.
• An apology from the FedEx worker responsible, perhaps with an offer to come and personally set up the new monitor.