Quantcast
Channel: ReputationPoint » The public dialogue — uncontrolled communications
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 9

Crisis Preparation: What will trigger your Consumer Reports moment?

0
0

In this age of the social media Wild West where a company can spend significant resources responding to the endless chatter, it’s a healthy exercise to weigh what voices truly matter to your company’s reputation, and for that matter, to rank what issues directly affect your company’s reputation.  This preparation of identifying “sources of excellence” will help fight through the clutter when bad news strikes.

A good example of measuring the importance of one’s critics occurred during the recent launch of Apple’s iPhone 4.  Released on June 24th, the iPhone 4 received praise for the entire product experience, but faced criticism by some of its antenna.  On July 2nd, in an open letter to iPhone 4 users, Apple addressed the issue by focusing on a faulty signal strength display — “Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong” – and, in effect, the Company downplayed the antenna design as an industry-wide fact of life – “To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars.”

Ten days later, on July 12th, Consumer Reports came down hard against the iPhone 4:

“It’s official.  Consumer Reports’ engineers have just completed testing the iPhone 4, and have confirmed that there is a problem with its reception.  When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone’s lower left side—an easy thing, especially for lefties—the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you’re in an area with a weak signal.  Due to this problem, we can’t recommend the iPhone 4.”

Cutting his vacation short in Hawaii, Steve Jobs returned to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino to host a 30-minute talk followed by 45 minutes of Q&A with the press on July 16th.  While the conference had some of the signature elements of a wonderfully produced Apple product launch, and took the proper step to offer consumers a solution to the problem, it was certainly held under outside pressure to respond (particularly from the Consumer Reports recommendation to avoid the phone).

New York Times’ reporter, David Carr, writes in an article entitled Post-Mortem: No Hair Shirt for Steve Jobs:

“How did Consumer Reports make Apple blink?  In large measure, the article in Consumer Reports was devastating precisely because the magazine (and its Web site) are not part of the hot-headed digital press.  Although Gizmodo and other techie blogs had reached the same conclusions earlier, Consumer Reports made a noise that was heard beyond the Valley because it has a widely respected protocol of testing and old-world credibility.  Mr. Jobs acknowledged as much, saying: ‘We were stunned and upset and embarrassed by the Consumer Reports stuff, and the reason we didn’t say more is because we didn’t know enough.’”

David Carr continues:

“It was a big week for Consumer Reports and a reminder that media that is unsupported by advertising can often have an impact that more traditional publishing, or even the most tech-savvy, enterprises don’t.”

Whether ad-supported or not, there is still a premium on quality sources, and in the case of Consumer Reports, there’s an irony that a publication that began in the 1930s — before the onset of the Internet and even television — can prompt a corporate titan of the digital age like Apple to swiftly react.

By responding directly to a specific media outlet’s criticism, a company is validating that source.  Apple may have caught a break in focusing its response on the Consumer Reports criticism, as future product reviews will now carry more weight and be read more closely by Apple’s many followers.  And if Apple’s reputation for product innovation and quality weathers this slight bump in the road caused by the faulty antenna, the future noise coming from Consumer Reports will likely be positive and amplified.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 9

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images