Public Relations Expert in major client FAIL/WIN

Mr Mashable, Pete Cashmore, caught this interesting exchange between two companies relating to Twitter and I wanted to bring it to your attention. If you ever wanted an example of the power of mobile-enabled-communications, here’s one.

Are you ready?

In the red corner, James Andrews is Vice President of marketing and PR firm Ketchum. They’re a big deal in their industry Ketchum. Most probably in the 1.0 world based on what you’re about to read.

It’s by no means incendiary. Just a little bit … well, it’s not quite in line with standard received wisdom from the PR experts I know.

James Andrews flies out of New York over to Memphis, which, as all us Brits know is in Tennnnnasseeeee. Where they do Jack Daniels and where movie characters go when they want to ‘get the music’.

Memphis is where the worldwide communications group of Federal Express (“FedEx” — you know, the folk from Runaway Bride and that Tom Hanks movie) are based.

FedEx are a not insubstantial client of Ketchum.

James Andrews is not that impressed at heading to Memphis if his Tweet on the subject is anything to go by:

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!

Peter Shankman appears to have got hold of a response to this Tweet from FedEx. Uh oh.

Yeah. They saw it.

Well, not only did they see the Tweet, they were rather annoyed by it. Annoyed enough to compose a response and copy it to most of the FedEx high command.

Shankman quotes the response — from an unnamed FedEx employee thus:

Mr. Andrews,

If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith.

Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.

Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, commercial decay, and a few potholes. But there is a major political, community, religious, and business effort underway, that includes FedEx, to transform that area. We’re hopeful that over time, our city will have a better “face” to present to visitors.

James, everyone participating in today’s event, including those in the auditorium with you this morning, just received their first paycheck of 2009 containing a 5% pay cut… which we wholeheartedly support because it continued the tradition established by Mr. Smith of doing whatever it takes to protect jobs.

Considering that we just entered the second year of a U.S. recession, and we are experiencing significant business loss due to the global economic downturn, many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce the video open for today’s event; work that could have been achieved by internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in television production.

Additionally Mr. Andrews, with all due respect, to continue the context of your post; true confession: many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications.

Arse.

That isssss a bit of an arse to get in your inbox and have plastered across the internet. Especially on a Friday.

Now.

(Keep in the back of your mind — where did this letter come from? Shankman doesn’t say. Wait ’til you get to the end of my text and see what you think then.)

Look how QUICKLY this appears to have happened. Cast your eyes down this screenshot.

You’ll see that at 2.58pm on Wednesday, James posts the offending Tweet. I’m sure most of his followers will have read about it, laughed a bit and got on with their day. But if you live in Memphis, are in a bit of a negative mood already — and you’ve just had a 5% pay cut, you’re probably going to react differently.

Fast forward to the next day. It’s 10:21am in the morning and James explains to a person about his Tweet the day before.

Then 10:23am he’s in good form having ‘a great day with my new friends at FedEx’.

7 minutes later he’s in full flow:

Now getting ready to lead a workshop on social media. Tweetdeck is a must for navigating Twitter I would say. Any others?

Two minutes later, no doubt demonstrating Twitter to the masses at FedEx, he posts:

If you are in the FedEx WTC, come to Tokyo Bldg and let’s get into some social media

Nice!

Another minute goes by:

The question always comes up, “Why would I want use Twitter?” What are your favorite answers?

The speech / pitch / presentation is going down well it seems.

And …

Almost two hours later and this one rockets in for James:

You’ve got all your new Memphis friends worried you’d want to die if you had to live here

It was sent by dnjohn202. I’m assuming a FedEx chap. Or an interested Memphis local who happens to use Twitter.

Another user — FedEx? Maybe — weighs in with a rather cutting:

Nice try at backpedaling, however it comes across as somewhat insincere. Many of us saw this tweet and are offended.

That was from LesliePete. Who’s only following James. And has only ever done one update. A new FedEx employee introduced to Twitter earlier by James?

At this point I sat back and thought, ‘No, that’s bollocks.’

somewhat insincere?

Do you mean it WAS insincere? Or it wasn’t? I don’t think you can be half insincere.

And I think the ‘Many of us saw this Tweet and are offended’ note feels to me as though it was written by someone who’d be offended at anything less than 100% adoration. Being offended by the sake of it, perhaps.

The ‘nice try and backpedaling’ reads to me as someone who’s caught a potential subject to get really annoyed at.

I think the offended are being insincere now.

We move on. A day passes and … woosh! The FedEx email is blogged and posted — and here I am typing about it.

Four hours ago today, James is on Twitter once more with:

This is hard to fit in 140 characters or less so please read here. All about my recent Twitter post http://bit.ly/M7Fud

That link is to James’ own blog where he provides his explanation:

As many of you know there has been a lot of online chatter around a recent situation that has unfortunately spiraled. As an active practitioner in the space, I felt the need to both address the situation and offer my perspective on the practice of social media. Two days ago I made a comment on Twitter that was the emotional response to a run in I had with an intolerant individual. The Tweet was aimed at the offense not the city of Memphis. Everyone knows that at 140 characters Twitter does not allow for context and therefore my comments were misunderstood. If I offended the residents of Memphis, TN I’m sorry. That was not my intention. I understand that people have tremendous pride in their hometown.

He goes on to explain a bit more.

I buy it.

I think he handled it correctly in this age of immediate shock and awe. The fault — if there is one — is to assume that since you only have 140 characters to ‘Tweet’ with, you have to be brief. And thus can’t fully explain yourself. James’ point is that he wasn’t having a go at the city of Memphis — instead he was having a go at one particular person he met.

Defensible yes.

Not brilliantly. Because, alas, that’s not what the Tweet says.

*However* his Tweet doesn’t explicitly say ‘Memphis is a shithole’ either.

If we’re splitting hairs, he could have been talking about any city with this one:

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!

I reckon this situation is a very useful example of just how the social media can unravel best intentions. And how FAST too.

It’s got some juicy ingredients. Ketchum = big agency, FedEx = big company, jilted and unhappy FedEx employees living in a hole of a city…

I dunno. Never been to Memphis. Can’t judge if it’s a hole or not. But if I was living in one of those picturesque gorgeous small villages in one of the home counties of England — and some guy came down and called my village a hole, I’d think him a cock.

And move on. I wouldn’t be offended.

What’s the moral of the story?

Well I always tell folk to imagine everything they’re writing being copied live on to CNN whilst their mother is watching. That way you can be reasonably confident that you’ll avoid saying silly things that can be easily misinterpreted. Or misuninterpreted if you’re George Bush Jr.

Which inevitably gets me thinking. The amount of times I’ve used the word cock. Or the time I went nuts and posted a picture of a huge, huge cock on Mobile Industry Review. (Very SFW)

Quite often I have rants at various companies that, in the cold light of day, might well be interpreted as annoying or offensive to those I am ranting about.

But I’m always careful to ensure that whatever I’m writing is something that I’d be quite content to say to the faces of both the company’s CEO and 500 of their employees.

The rants are enormously popular with the Mobile Industry Review audience. So perhaps I can be excused. Perhaps there’s a get-out-of-jail (er, I hope, literally) because I am meant to be opinionated. Where’s the offensive border? Well, when I think back to the rants I’ve had – I think they’re defendable in context. Like this one where I went nuts at Skype.

The challenge, I suppose, is when the context is lifted and used by others for their own agendas.

What do you do then?

Well luckily we all control our own personal media.

I started this post thinking that James was — bluntly — a bit of an arse for writing that Tweet when he was going to visit FedEx. There are bound to be one or two annoyed/frustrated/cynical folk who could misinterpret and question.

Then I visited James’ site. I read his response. And then I read the full FedEx text. Then I read the two Tweets he replied to.

“Nice try at backpedaling”

That’s what sealed it for me. Having visited James’ site, read the Tweets and thus been able to judge for myself, quite clearly it’s FedEx who come out looking stupid and overreactionary.

Seriously — a whole ‘letter’ from an out of context Tweet? It’s not as if James wrote ‘Shit. Got a whole day ahead to spend with know-nothing touchy frustrated over-reactionary defensive FedEx communications chaps’ on his Twitter feed.

So to the FedEx PR: Fix this one. Your Memphis boys screwed it up.

James, if you’re reading, I reckon you did right. Hold your head up high and move on.