Manage Your Online Reputation. Tony Wilson

have been similar branding crises, or you might say, “public relations crises” in Canada. Maple Leaf Foods had a serious outbreak of a disease called listeriosis in its meatpacking plant near Toronto in 2008. Consumers ate deli meat that was infected with the bacteria and became sick. At least 20 people died of the disease.

      At the time of writing this book, Toyota’s brand was suffering badly due to an alleged faulty gas pedal that supposedly wouldn’t allow drivers to decelerate.

      Also at the time of writing this book, millions of gallons of crude oil was spewing from a deep sea underwater well operated by BP, which BP did a disastrous job of containing (and perhaps an equally bad job of managing its reputation in the process).

      Who could ignore the plight of “living brands” such as Martha Stewart, jailed for securities offenses; or Conrad Black, in jail for obstruction of justice; Senator John Edwards for having his assistant be the fall guy for his love child with another aide; or Tiger Woods, whose fondness for waitresses, hostesses, and at least one porn star resulted in the cancellation of numerous lucrative endorsement contracts. His name continues to give fodder to the tabloid newspapers and late-night tv monologues.

      These are certainly brand crises, but as we’ll see, they aren’t so much online brand crises, or at least, crises directly caused by online activities. Online brand crises happen when a dissatisfied customer posts a song on YouTube about an airline breaking his guitar and the video gets millions of hits in a matter of weeks. Or when employees of a pizza restaurant film themselves doing disgusting things with the food they’re making and upload it to YouTube for millions of customers to see. Or when officers of a police force respected around the world repeatedly fire a Taser at a tired, confused, and unarmed Polish immigrant at an airport, and he dies; the entire event being captured on a video camera and eventually posted to YouTube.

      A corporate reputation built up over decades can be tarnished by one disgruntled customer who posts a bad review about your business online to a site like TripAdvisor or an exposé to YouTube, or by a status update on Facebook that berates your business. Or if someone creates a Facebook page dedicated to how bad the page’s authors (who may in fact be employees of the manufacturer or distributer) think your product or service is. Or if someone tweets to thousands of followers (which can be re-tweeted to hundreds of thousands more) about a problem with a product or a service provided by a business like yours. Result? Immediate, instantaneous, and damaging consumer-led revolts.

      Individuals like you and I have reputations to protect. We have to think of our personal reputations as “brands” as well. It’s not only Tiger Woods’ and the Duchess of York’s reputations that are at stake because they’re famous. Our own reputations are at stake by the things said about us online and especially by the things said by us online.

      We all have brands and reputations to protect, don’t we? Even if we work in a bank, a law office, or if we’re students or teachers in a high school. Again, think of it like a tattoo; interesting and provocative when you have it done when you’re young, but painful and very expensive to remove when you get older — if you can remove it at all.

      Our reputations can be harmed by the people around us, people in our online community, and more often than not, by ourselves. In that sense, we have to protect ourselves from others, but we also have to protect ourselves from ourselves.