chrisbrogan.com - Latest Comments in George Did a Great Job

Re: George Did a Great Job

fred perry sale — Thu, 26 May 2011 09:00:22 -0000

I think this is another example of social media and blogging being still
"new enough," so that users are still learning best practices, and
other "influencers" are still learning boundaries.

Re: George Did a Great Job

melaniekissell — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:03:05 -0000

Trust is at the forefront of everything you do in social media. Social media users are learners, leaders, and influencers that should never succumb to bullies. After all, we teach third graders not to give in to playground bullies, right? Same principle applies here. I support George.

Re: George Did a Great Job

carriewriter — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 18:14:09 -0000

I think this is another example of social media and blogging being still "new enough," so that users are still learning best practices, and other "influencers" are still learning boundaries. Even so, this is an ethical situation no matter what the medium, and George was totally correct in holding his ground.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Ted Coine — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:11:07 -0000

Chris, Is this even an issue? Who ISN'T with George? Integrity is all we have. We must guard it with our lives. http://savvycapitalist.blog...

Re: George Did a Great Job

richdixon — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:54:30 -0000

Tough to judge a spur-of-the-moment reaction, but I'd say he missed the mark. Good that he didn't just cave, which would have been the easy path, but bad that he responded with the same threat. He "won" because he owns a bigger stick, but if threatening is wrong, then it's always wrong. End doesn't justify the means, because the means modifies the end.

Re: George Did a Great Job

steve_hartkopf — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:39:15 -0000

Another (more agressive) tact might have been to take the woman's info so you can ship her a pair of Crocs. Ship the Crocs, because we are honest people, and then explain to the world what she did, by name. She'd get some pub but who cares. It's like reporting a crime, it can be perilous but it's the right thing to do if we want a civil society.

Re: George Did a Great Job

havilah — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:19:51 -0000

We live in a great world as evidenced by all of us coming here to show our support for making the right choices in business. Pretty cool :O)

Re: George Did a Great Job

Real Life Sarah — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:08:35 -0000

Ridiculous to equate protest against negligent, property destroying behavior with refusal to give free stuff. Ridiculous.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Mike McCready — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:02:55 -0000

That's crazy. I can't believe it. Web 2.0 Blackmail. That's worse than SPAM 2.0.

Granted I think social media is a great vehicle for sharing honest and valid negative experiences with companies. Its a way to help keep them in check - hence all these review sites or even review sections on their own website like Amazon.com. But to attempt to make up negative posts about a company in an attempt to gain something is absolutely nuts.

Thanks for sharing this and opening my eyes.

Re: George Did a Great Job

jlbraaten — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:59:22 -0000

I couldn't agree more.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Chris Brogan — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:55:05 -0000

You commented on the Geoge post, but this is about the service one. That said, I'm writing the HQ instead of just the local manager. : )

Re: George Did a Great Job

Chris Brogan — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:54:05 -0000

Okay, first off, this particular woman George ran into doesn't represent mommybloggers as a whole. MOST the mommybloggers I've met are all top shelf people with great reputations.

This woman was threatening George.

Dave Carroll had a legitimate issue and didn't find resolution, so he made a video protesting the situation. That's far from blackmail. He just wanted his problem resolved.

There. My answer. : )

Re: George Did a Great Job

jlbraaten — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:50:45 -0000

Very interested to hear your reaction to this question, Chris:
Is "mommyblogger" the same as Dave Carroll, the man who posted the United-bashing Youtube video when they broke his guitar?

Re: George Did a Great Job

Angelo Mandato — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 10:25:49 -0000

This stuff happens all the time and at different levels. As an open source developer, I get questionable requests often that I should do this or that to one of my projects. On occasion I've gotten threats like "I'll say bad things about your application if you don't add this", which is way out of line for something that is free that I spend hundreds of hours working on. Some folks are out of touch sometimes with what things cost, monetarily, in perspiration and/or time.

If she was smart about trying to get what she wanted, she would have instead offered her business card and told George to check out her blog in 2-3 days for a very supportive blog post. Anyway, her loss for using social media as a sledge hammer rather than as a bridge.

Re: George Did a Great Job

8corinneedwards — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:38:47 -0000

Dear Chris -
Regarding: this comment of yours -

"On the way out the door, I considered asking for her boss to tell him or her. Here’s where it got interesting for me. I decided, “who cares?” Her boss is busy."

It is important to tell a supervisor, a manager or anyone in authority if you are especially pleased with service. Including airline people, utility companies etc. That usually goes into a permanent file for the employee.

It could make the difference if there is a decision to be made about who may be laid off. They call it an "orchid file" in many companies.

A generous tip is nice. But you could be saving that nice person's job.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Rippleon — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:30:13 -0000

I think George reacted appropriately. The fact that someone would feel comfortable enough to approach him in this manner indicates to me they have a bloated image of themselves and likely of their BLOG's ability to make a difference in the campaign of public opinion. Let them live in their fantasy world and continue to believe they hold all the power. In the end we all know that they don't.

Ripple On George!!!

Re: George Did a Great Job

nateriggs — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:25:58 -0000

Great stuff Chris. Thanks for using your power and social capital for good. Here's my comments. Figured I would chime in via video on my blog as well.

Keep your head up George! You handled it well...

Re: George Did a Great Job

Mike Hamilton — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:15:24 -0000

George acted with good intent. Not so his extortionist. George continues to build trust for himself and for his client’s brand. Case closed.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Justin Parks — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:11:12 -0000

Dear me, what a sad world we live in, although I'm not at all surprised frankly. Still at least you got some free publicity out of it George!

Re: George Did a Great Job

AlexisCeule — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:03:27 -0000

You can't start because then you can't stop. This reminds me of sales. I had clients, perspective clients, tell me "well so and so is giving me 4 tickets to the (insert NFL team name here) next weekend. What will you give me?" WTH? You'll be investing in a fabulous product that will solve all your challenges... I'll give you peace of mind, better ease of doing your job... oh hell the list goes on. But there are just those weasels out there, wanting wanting wanting... for free. It's embarrassing. I'm embarrassed for that crazy cluck of a blogger and I'm very proud of George for not giving in to her pressure and threats. Once you start, others will find out and they will use the same attempts too. Nature of the beast. Even female beasts.

Re: George Did a Great Job

whitneyhoffman — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:44:10 -0000

I haven't met George personally, and as a family, we're frankly fans of the shoes- they are the perfect shoes for my husband who wears them in the operating room at the hospital, and my kids for the beach and pool.
That said, I am appalled by the actions of this one person who was trying to get something for nothing or go nuclear.

Let's clarify the threat thing, just so everyone's clear. This was a threat or blogola/blackmail that potentially could cross some lines.

For example, people use the term "They threatened to sue us" very haphazardly all the time. Even as a lawyer, having to talk to people frequently about unpleasant things like collecting money that's owed, you can't threaten anyone. You may have to tell people that unless they meet their obligations, you will be forced into resolving the matter in a court of law- but that's technically not a threat, because the person was already obligated under law to act and has failed to do so. In this case, George had no pre-exisiting obligation to the individual in question, so this was a classic libel/slander situation where "If you don't do X, I will try to ruin your reputation".

As we're all watching the apartment company who sued a tenant for alleging they had done nothing about a mold situation in her unit, for tweeting about the same, companies are going to start to push back and it may be very unpleasant. (While I support the tenant in this case and think the Apartment company are doing themselves more damage by suing before investigating the issue, it does point out that people are listening in the blogosphere, and bloggers are going to have to start choosing their words more carefully.)

If this kind of veiled threat, quid pro quo, "you give me what I want or I am suing you in the Court of Public Opinion" becomes more rampant, everyone will lose out in the end. No one will ever know what posts are honest, which are not, and the utility of the information will decrease.

As bloggers, we have a bigger stage than we realize, but with great power, as Spiderman says, comes great responsibility as well.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Lucretia M Pruitt — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:39:49 -0000

Thank you. George knew I supported him out there when we talked about it. That people are focusing more on his word choice (the 'nobody' thing) and less on the fact that there was a blogger out to extort product from a Brand using the threat of 'bad press' sounds more like an unwillingness to admit that not everyone with a blog is an ethical person.

I know how stunned and caught off-guard George was by this behavior. Sadly, I wasn't. This isn't the first incident I've heard of. Simply the first where the person on the brand side felt comfortable telling the blogger to stuff it. Unfortunately, there will probably be a few folks who read George's story and rather than being turned off by the blogger's behavior will see it as a way to get "free stuff" themselves.

The world is not always a nice place. The internet, often even less so.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Lucretia M Pruitt — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:31:01 -0000

I disagree. But then, I was there.

The kind of mercenary extortion that George was subjected to didn't start with him. George and I had a long talk on the subject out there. Sadly, the kind of blogger (person) who thinks it's okay to threaten bad press if not given free product is not going to understand a polite, polished corporate response of "we don't accede to extortion demands."

George's was not the first story I've heard of "give me something or I will blog negatively about you" threats in recent months. Unfortunately, he was the first one I know that felt like he was in a position to tell the blogger in question where to go. I haven't written about it b/c I didn't want to give this sort of thing press. Unfortunately, it tends to cause more of the same.

It's sad that it's not an isolated incident. It's even sadder how many smaller companies 'give in' to demands like that because it's less costly than dealing with the negative press.

If two wrongs don't make a right? They don't always make a bigger wrong either.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Lucretia M Pruitt — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:22:34 -0000

Hon? Seriously, you were exhausted. You were unprepared for the blackmail attempt. You were everyone's "oh you're the Crocs guy? Well..." sounding board for the weekend. I can't imagine anyone doing a better job under the circumstances I *know* you were under at that point.

It's a sad day when Brand Social Media reps have to "be prepared" for extortion tactics from bloggers.

Re: George Did a Great Job

Chris Brogan — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:17:14 -0000

The story's a little bigger to me. It's a representative of a larger company confronted by someone who demanded that he comply to her interests waving the threat of bad blog press over his head.

You might see if differently. There are plenty of ways to see anything, so your opinion is definitely another one.