The most reliable way to draw more attention to negative media coverage is to complain about it publicly.
Look no further than 1X on X.
The emerging robotics company recently demonstrated this though a social media thread. Its misguided posts amplified the negative framing of its flagship product to 150 times more people than the article earned on its own.
The So-Called Bad Coverage that Caused the Issue
On July 9, Wired published a piece on 1X Technologies, a Norwegian robotics company promoting a new home robot with advanced hand design. The article's subhead characterized Neo the robot as "the soft, weirdly sexualized home-robot [that] has been given some very tactile hands."
Two days later, 1X's Vice President of Product and Design, Dar Sleeper, posted a multi-tweet thread calling the piece a "betrayal." He suggested Wired should have given 1X more positive coverage in return for "the exclusive."
Wired's own promotional tweet for the article attracted less than 15,000 views. Sleeper's complaint drew 437,000 views on day one and 2.3 million within a few days.
The Simple Science Behind the Amplification of Bad Coverage
It's not hard to see why Sleeper's complaint outperformed the baseline by more than 25 times on day one. "Home-robot company objects to sexualized framing" is more interesting than "robot has human-like hands." And a grievance about tone over accuracy might as well be designed for social media engagement. There's no correction to run, no simple way to move readers from one side of the dispute to the other. There's only the framing, and now it has an enormous audience of onlookers.
The incident raises a long list of questions about the relationship between companies and the media, the role PR firms play in vetting outlets and managing client expectations and broader trends in journalism. But there's a simpler lesson for crisis managers: don't amplify what you don't like.
It's possible Sleeper's approach was a deliberate effort to go viral in the spirit of "all press is good press." The PR firm's campaign report is likely to highlight massive engagement numbers and characterize the launch as a success. It also may be true that playing the media "victim" buys 1X some sympathy in the tech world.
The Price of Virality
The catch is that virality comes with a cost that topline engagement metrics can't quantify. The complaint turned the subhead into the story. Then it was delivered to millions more people than would ever have seen it otherwise, drowning out other positive coverage in the process.
A leadership team considering how to respond to coverage they don't like must weigh the long-term costs of an aggressive approach. A public complaint might lead to success, especially if quantity of engagement takes precedence over quality. Otherwise, you're just amplifying a negative story that does more harm than good.
Nathan Burchfiel is Senior Vice President at Pinkston.