Unsocial Media: There are myriad lessons for communicators related to transparency, monitoring the social conversation and when and whom to engage from two recent news items. The first item has the Republican Party being forced to shut down its live chat on YouTube July 18. The party had urged viewers to chat while it streamed its convention live on YouTube. The reason for the shut-down were anti-Semitic comments posted on the live chat as former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle was addressing the convention. Lingle mentioned progress the party was making with Jewish voters. The second incident involves the actor/comedian Leslie Jones, who’s co-starring in an all-female remake of the film Ghostbusters. Commenters have pelted Jones and her cast members with sexist and misogynist remarks on social media for weeks, upset that the main ghostbusters now will be portrayed as females. Jones, who is black, also has received racist comments on her Twitter feed, @Lesdoggg. Often Jones returns serve, tweeting back at the haters. Jones’s retort, July 18, was two-fold: She decided to seek help from Twitter and unblock racist commenters so the public could witness the hate. She tweeted “I wondered why some celebs don’t have Twitter accts now I know. You can’t be nice...with fans cause people crazy.”
The ABCs of Rebranding:Reading requires that you know your alphabet. Nobody said anything about Alphabet, though. Indeed, public perception of Google’s holding company is murky, according to FutureBrand’s new ranking of the world’s top 100 companies by market capitalization, released July 21. Google topped the list 2 years running; this time Alphabet was inserted and it came in at 21. Alphabet needs to create an identity, FutureBrand says. New to the top 10 were Toyota (11 last year), Amazon.com(34) and Facebook (21). Despite tough times for healthcare ( PRN, May 16), abbvie, Gilead and Celegen stayed in the top 10.
Hudson Cutler
People: Barri Rafferty was named worldwide president, Ketchum. The July 19 announcement said president/CEO Rob Flaherty will become chairman and CEO, following chairman Ray Kotcher’s transition to non-executive chairman in January. Rafferty joined Ketchum in 1994 and has led its North American unit since 2012. – Former Cohn & Wolfe U.S. president David Herrick joined Hudson Cutler as a principal. Herrick had a brief stint at Cohn & Wolfe and prior to that was COO at MWW from 2012-15.