Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation

may 2019
Six stories to understand
how to promote, protect
or compromise your online
reputation
Three WINS, three FAILS and five considerations
in order to get by on social media
photo from “Noisedive / Black Mirror” - © Netflix

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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation
About us #1
My name is Dino Amenduni
@doonie
dino.amenduni@proformaweb.it
I’m a partner of Proforma, responsible for political communication
and strategic planning
Political communication Professor at the University of Perugia and Turin
Member of the staff of the Festival Internazionale del Giornalismo in Perugia
Contributor to La Repubblica newspaper
All of my presentations are available for free
(both for consultation and download) at
www.slideshare.net/doonie (personal)
and www.slideshare.net/proformaweb (company)

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About us #2
My name is Daniele Magliocca
@viralmente
daniele.magliocca@proformaweb.it
I’m in charge of media planning and social media management
at the advertising agency Proforma
I have been running for several years a blog and a Facebook page,
dealing with the world of non conventional communication

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Contents
Six stories, six reminders
THE WINS
1. CIA’s first tweet
2. Donald Trump and the “Covfefe” case
3. Di Maio, Facebook and the reimbursement scandal case
THE FAILS
1. The use of hashtags depends on the users: the Trenitalia case
2. Donald Trump and the “Take a Knee” case
3. Toninelli and a concession too much

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Premise
Reputation is the real winning
“algorithm” in the area
of communication.

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Setting aside ‘what’ (the product or service) and ‘how’ (marketing
strategies), the reputation characteristics of ‘who’ affect buying
behaviour exponentially: the higher the reputation of the brand/
politician/communication sender, the more the message receivers will
be ready to pay/use/remember that particular product/service.
Once your reputation is damaged,
any communication effort to promote oneself
will gradually be more and more ineffectual.
(IPSOS Research available here)
Premise

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DISTRUST A
GREAT DEAL
DISTRUST
A LITTLE
NEUTRAL TRUST
A LITTLE
TRUST A
GREAT DEAL
MEMORABLE ADS BELIEVABLE ADS PAY MORE FOR FEEL GOOD ABOUT PRODUCT USE
34%
54%
18%
12%
7%
38%
58%
39%
25%
13%
42%
46%
73%
37%
16%
57%
74%
88%
69%
37%
76%
85%
96%
87%
64%
(maximum distrust) (maximum trust)

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Consequences for the communication sender
• Reputation is the most valuable asset
for any sender, in any context.
More than money, more than networks, more than the
quality of products/services available (of course, these
variables help building an effective communication)
• A blunder damaging one’s reputation
can be very harmful if countermeasures
are not taken (corollary: a single blunder can require
months, or even years, to remedy).

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• ‘Less is more’, but also ‘be the first’.
It would be better to abstain from controversial communication
actions, especially if they are not necessary. Even the Facebook
algorithm tends more and more to favour quality and the ability
to generate interactions over quantity. At the same time, when an
issue is about to blow up, one needs to react as soon as possible,
in order to prevent a small alarm from turning into a wildfire of
unrecoverable extent.
Consequences for the communication sender

WIN 1
We can neither confirm nor deny
CIA’s first tweet: how to turn
a reputation issue into self-mocking humour

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1. We can neither confirm nor deny
CIA’s first tweet (6 June 2014)
enabled their Twitter account to exceed 300,000 followers
in the first few hours following its set up.
(more information here)

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What do we learn from this story
1. Pretending you haven’t got
a public reputation is of no use
(whether this is good or bad), also because
dismissing it would anyhow be ‘punished’ by
disclosing the truth, especially online. When you
come to that, it’s better to manage your image
first-hand rather than let others make up your
reputation.

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2. When you expect reputation issues (and the CIA
was almost certain to have them on Twitter) it
makes more sense to anticipate the first
move: that tweet could have been used as
an ironic answer by followers to a more formal
tweet by the CIA, and this would have created a
completely different effect.

WIN 2
The ‘Covfefe’ case
An unintelligible tweet by the president of the United States
turned into an opportunity for self-mocking humour

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2. The ‘Covfefe’ case
31 May 2017. The president of the
United States posts this tweet in
the middle of the night. What did he
mean to say?
A few hours later Trump (or his
consultants) publish a second post
making fun of his previous mistake.

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1. It’s never too late: a number of hours elapsed and
nothing happened. ‘Covfefe’ was there, on the Twitter
account of the President of the United States.
But (appropriately) they preferred facing it instead of
trying to hide the mistake – after the second tweet was
posted, the first was then removed. Just deleting the
original tweet would have generated a Streisand Effect,
that is an exponential acceleration of the propagation of
the blunder.

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2. Reputation rules are not subject to any
hierarchy: Trump and his staff managed the crisis
exactly in the same way as “any user” could and should
have done. Being the most powerful person in the world
doesn’t at any rate allow you to ignore good practices in
digital communication.

WIN 3
When social media prevent further trouble
Di Maio and the way the controversy
about fake bank transfers was managed

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3. When social media prevent further trouble
13 February 2018: while the controversy
about phony bank transfers ordered
by some of the candidates of the M5S
party very close to Di Maio rages on, the
current Deputy Prime Minister decides
to open the doors of his office to the
editorial staff of the TV programme
Le Iene, who are investigating about the
scandal, defusing their report
with this Facebook post, as a
matter of fact.

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1. Defensiveness isn’t (any longer) a winning
strategy: in the pre-social media era, this kind of storm was
often handled by standing still and waiting for a new controversy
to blow, so that the previous one could be forgotten. Nowadays
this strategy is inadequate for two reasons: controversies could
endure on social media, regardless of the wishes of the subjects
involved, and a proper use of social media can often help to
hasten the disappearance of an annoying controversy.

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2. Investing (for years) in the management of digital
communities can turn social media into
“personal broadcasting”. Di Maio’s post
obtained 152,000 likes, 123,000 shares and more than
21,000 comments (latest data as at September 2018).
According to an estimate of the “L’Espresso” weekly,
this post was viewed by nearly 10 million people:
by far a bigger audience than the audience of the TV
programme Le Iene.

FAIL 1
Hashtags belong to the users
Between communication choices and the reaction of users
there is a R variable (reputation), steering their results

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4. Hashtags belong to the users
Trenitalia launched #meetFS,
a campaign aimed at involving Users.
But the hashtag was “overturned” by
users, who used it to communicate the
inefficiencies of the railway company.
(more information here)

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1. If a company, especially one with digital reputation
issues, decides to launch an online campaign and
chooses to do it through a hashtag, people in charge
of communication must ask themselves the right
question before they begin. And the right question is
not “What does the company want to communicate to
consumers?” but “What will consumers want
to communicate to the company?”.

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2. The mechanisms of engagement are “safer” if they are
structured within specific actions. A campaign based
on the absolute freedom of expression by the receivers
equals to giving up the control of the results
to the choice of the community, and this will
produce a positive feedback only if you have an excellent
reputation, for a start.

FAIL 2
Making enemies out of thin air
Donald Trump and the “Take a Knee” case

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5. Making enemies out of thin air
14 August 2016. Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the
American football team San Francisco 49ers, kneels
down during the national anthem of the
United States (which is played before any national
sports event), in order to express his opposition to the
way president Trump deals with ethnic minorities.
Trump, shortly after, demands that all
players who will make the same gesture
should be given the sack. The protest spreads
through all American states and all sports. Kaepernick
has now been chosen as Nike’s global poster child
thanks to his struggle.

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1. David is more likable than Goliath:
Trump’s attack appeared as totally out of place
because of the unbalanced playing field.
A President of the United States cannot confront
a single sportsman on a single act of defiance.
Someone who holds a higher hierarchical position
must take an aggressive stance only “among peers”,
otherwise they will inevitably cause dislike and
arouse sympathy towards the weaker party.

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2. Attacking someone who’s got more
credibility than you is extremely risky:
the world of sports is hugely popular in the United States
and not only. Battling on the reputation field is possible
only if one is really unassailable. In this case Trump has
expressed a subjective and certainly less than democratic
point, generating an immediate reaction effect among
leading and very popular American athletes and losing this
communication battle.

FAIL 3
Toninelli and a concession too much
Inappropriate humour after the disaster in Genoa

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15 September 2018: the Minister for
Infrastructure Danilo Toninelli publishes a
post where he jokes about the revocation
of the concession for the operation of
motorways to the Company Autostrade after
the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa.
The post is first removed and then
published with the same photo
and a different caption.
But it’s far too late to escape controversy.

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1. You can joke about (just about)
anything, but not tragic events:
a Minister can’t make fun of a disaster whose
circumstances need still to be clarified.

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2. Sweeping the dust under the carpet is
useless: not only Toninelli doesn’t apologize, but
he tries to delete the contents and then to repost it:
it’s the best way to make the users who have already
viewed the previous contents even angrier, escalating
its negative viral spread (Streisand Effect).

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Note
The satirical website Lercio.it had posted,
seven days before, the joke “Concession
is revoked for Toninelli’s barber”,
together with a photo of the Minister.

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In a nutshell
1. Self-mocking humour is often an effective tool
for managing online reputation, both for those who
have long-established reputation issues and for those who
stumble over communication blunders. However, this rule has
an important exception: you don’t make jokes during a tragic
event.
2. Long-term investments (in terms of time, human and
financial resources) in the management of your digital
communities prove extremely useful when you have to face
a communication crisis: having a loyalized community and a
large user base can turn an issue into an opportunity.

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3. Real-time marketing = SAY GOODBYE to conventional
office hours!
4. Before launching a hashtag, make sure this choice doesn’t
backfire for your communication purposes (launching a hashtag
isn’t essential, by the way. The world will go on all the same).
5. Errare social non est (“to err is not social”).
Social media management = Chuck Palahniuk’s rule:
No matter how hard you work or how smart you become.
You’ll always be known for that one poor choice.
In a nutshell

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Conclusion
Learn all you can from
the mistakes of others.
You won’t have time
to make them all yourself.
(Alfred Sheinwold)

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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation

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Six stories to understand how to promote, protect or compromise your online reputation