Sep

14

6 CEO apologies on YouTube

Filed Under Branding, Customer Service, PR, Social Media, Videos | Comments

YouTube has had many unexpected uses through the years, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted it would be used for public CEO apologies. Who wouldn’t agree that it’s one of the many great ways for a major brand to respond quickly to negative PR online?

Below are 5 (update: now 6, thanks Consumerist) CEO video apologies that I found on YouTube after doing a quick search. A couple of these examples were also mentioned in more detail in a book called Tactical Transparency (pg. 100-104), which is what led to this post.

Domino’s

In case you haven’t already heard, this video was posted shortly after a unappetizing video was posted by two store employees which quickly went viraaaaaal and led to a PR crisis for Domino’s. The apology by CEO Patrick Doyle currently has 754k views, which is by far the most out of all these examples.

JetBlue

The second largest number of views (currently at 361k) belongs to a video posted by JetBlue’s former CEO David Neeleman after the company had a very bad week. This apology mostly got positive responses because it seemed to be the most genuine and unscripted. This apology letter was also posted on the their website.

KFC

KFC President Roger Eaton had to try and calm people down after a free meal coupon was promoted on Oprah and things quickly got out of hand. The original apology video has been removed since then and KFC did a really good job of making sure the it was off the internet (please let me know if you find it). Since I cannot embed the video, here is a screenshot instead:

kfcscreenshot.

Mattel

It wouldn’t be a toy company if they didn’t have to recall their toys at one point in time. Unfortunately for Mattel it was three recalls in just four weeks. The original apology video by CEO Bob Eckert was also removed but this study on believability below highlights the original clip while showing the results of the study.

Maple Leaf Foods

Summary: a major food processing company that had to apologize for bacteria in their food products which actually lead to people dying. It has only received 74k views so far probably because it’s the lowest profile brand out of these 5 but I’m still surprised because it seemed like a very serious health and PR case.

(Update) American Airlines

The Consumerist was kind enough to point out another apology that I missed from American Airlines’ CEO Jim Goodwin. This one is short.

Other

Two honorable mentions which would have definitely made it to this list if they were also in the form of video apologies: Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos apologizing after the remote deletion of Orwell’s 1984 book from all Kindles and Motrin’s ad targeted toward mom’s that badly backfired. Instead all we got was this short message board post from Jeff Bezoz and a short written apology from Motrin posted on its website.

Any others that I missed? Leave a comment or let me know on Twitter @jsmakr.

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Sep

15

NY Web 2.0 Meetup Live Stream

Filed Under Branding, Videos, nextNY | Comments

I will try my best to cover the presentations starting around 7:15-7:30pm. Click here for event details on Meetup.com. Click on the chat bubble to send me a note!

Update: Unfortunately, I was not able to get it all to Qik because of the WiFi connection. Will hopefully have it figured out for the next Meetup.

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Sep

11

Thoughts on the 2nd Microsoft Ad

Filed Under Advertising, Branding, Videos | Comments

We can definitely start to see the overall theme behind this $300 million campaign is going to be Bill and Jerry doing normal everyday things with comedy thrown in. Of course you’re supposed to associate these ads with Microsoft and think wonderful things like loving, caring, human, etc. This is not the approach everyone expected, which was to fight back against all the abuse from Apple. The fact that they did not fight back in itself is proving to help this become a very successful campaign because everyone is talking about the different approach they took with these ads. By the looks of it on Twitter, you either love or hate them. Just like the leaked internal memo on TechCrunch describes:

The first phase of this campaign is designed to engage consumers and spark a new conversation about Windows – a conversation that will evolve as the campaign progresses, but will always be marked by humor and humanity.

I am sure CP+B knows what they are doing and somewhat expected this type of response. The more obvious product associations will come further down the line in this series so it’s still way too soon to measure if this campaign is actually effective in giving Microsoft a lift. Overall, I enjoyed this second one very much and didn’t mind sitting through the whole 4 and a half minutes of the uncut online version. I’m actually even looking forward to the next one now which I really wasn’t after the first ad. Did you catch the connection they made when Bill Gates is still trying to break in his new shoes? Very clever.

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Oct

22

Standout Jobs to help employers produce recruiting videos

Filed Under Marketing, Videos, Web | Comments

Standout Jobs is one of the first companies that will help employers produce short videos for open job positions or general recruiting. The main idea behind these videos is to illustrate to potential employees what it’s like to work for the company, which will hopefully gain their interest. Before, the only way to know about a great company was by hearing from friends and family or from someone on the inside through word-of-mouth. It is quite obvious that video recruiting will not take off fast because it is a very new type of recruiting, but it should be a steady, gradual growth.

I think being an early entry into this type of job recruiting will be a major advantage for Standout Jobs when they fully launch their service (Fall 2007) and become better established. I will go even further and say that I think they will be successful with creating the tipping point for video recruiting. But, I do not think video recruiting will completely replace online job listings.

I came across the first Standout Jobs video job ad at the FreshBooks website a while back and was reminded of this video when I read an article in Entrepreneur titled Recruiting 2.0. Freshbooks found out about Standout Jobs through their first job ad video uploaded to YouTube. The FreshBooks blog summarized this service and introduces us to how Standout Jobs was started by founders Fred Ngo and Benjamin Yoskovitz. The blog post encourages employers to:

Get away from the 1950s. Use the power of new services like YouTube to tell the human story. Show the quirks and personalities that characterize the company. Expose the culture and the emotional drive and the funny bone to the world. Demonstrate that your company is not your average a 100-person team, but a place where the inspired come to inspire.

What makes some of these videos very attractive to potential employees is the comedy and creative approaches taken in some of them so far to get attention. I am unsure if Standout Jobs is behind all creative development or if it’s a joint collaboration between them and their client. The main idea behind this creative approach is: Who wouldn’t want to work for a fun, creative company? The only problem I can foresee is that some companies might try to portray a “fun” environment just for the video, therefore misleading people about their company. Hopefully it will be easy to see past this by getting the sense that they tried too hard.

What surprised me so far about Standout Job’s strategy, is that it does not look like they will be hosting the videos, but instead they will be hosted elsewhere. Then the hiring company will decide how they want to showcase them, most likely by placing them in their blog or just hoping they spread by themselves on popular sites like YouTube. I think as Standout Jobs grows and builds a name for itself, more people will go to their site directly just to view the new video job ads.

These recruiting videos could be a huge success with similar young entrepreneurial tech companies like Xobni, which has also already consulted with Standout Jobs to help them produce a video. For example, I could also see a company like skinnyCorp (parent company of Threadless) using this type of recruiting. They are a young, successful company with a very cool environment. Connected Ventures (parent company of College Humor) made this video for fun and 4 million views later, their inbox was overflowed with resumes and they are still getting them to this day. Another thing that certainly surprised me was when I saw that Standout Jobs was not even making video ads for their own job opportunities. What’s up with that?

I certainly can’t see large companies like IBM or GE consulting with Standout Jobs anytime soon. If these ads prove to be successful, they might get the attention of other large companies like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon who like to promote their unique work environments. Some more examples of similar types of video recruiting are Yahoo’s video here and Google’s video here.

Check out the Standout Jobs website for their latest work and to get an idea of what video recruiting is if you are unsure. If the video is done right and it spreads successfully, the best candidates will come to you. This is currently an unconventional method of recruiting, but it can be a very effective way to attract great employees in the future. Well, that is if your hiring. If your not hiring, then I would advise against making a video with your employees for fun and posting it online.

Update: I received an email from one of the co-founders of Standout Jobs which points out that their focus will not only be on videos, but to also help market and build their client’s brand through other tools. Something else to look out for in the future.

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Oct

4

Latest TEDTalks worth checking out

Filed Under Technology, Videos, Web | Comments

If you haven’t heard of TEDTalks yet, you should check it out. These are some of the latest presentations added and I think they are a great combination of pure genius, inspiration, and even comedy. TED conference speakers cover many topics including business, technology, design, arts, culture, and global issues. I try to make sure I watch all the business and technology related presentations. These are not very short but it will be time well spent. All these videos could also be downloaded on the TED website.









I hope you enjoyed the videos. Let me know what you thought by leaving a comment.

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