Hi! My name is Julie. I recently joined the Customer Support team at Scout Labs. I am very excited to be here, as I feel this product has incredible potential. (Obviously! otherwise I wouldn’t be here!) A reminder to current beta users: feel free to send any questions or comments you may have about Scout Labs to me at beta scoutlabs com, as I am here to help you get the most out of using the app. To those of you who have requested access and are still waiting, we will be extending access to you soon! It’s a promise.

I also look forward to blogging about interesting events in the social media monitoring space. So I just had to post about ‘Motrin Moms’ – the most recent ‘big story’ of corporate social-media-mismanagement.

Motrin ran an ad online and in print this fall regarding ‘baby wearing’, which is a term for carrying a baby in a sling, BabyBjorn, or one of those backpack-type devices. The ad claims that it is painful for moms to carry babies this way, and reminds moms that Motrin can help relieve the pain. I’m not a mom, so I do not really know how offensive this could be, but apparently, it was REALLY offensive to A LOT of moms. They banded together with brute 2.0 force, and within days of the ad being aired, there were droves of moms Twittering and Blogging and Vlogging in outrage. Motrin, slow in their response, did not even acknowledge the movement until weeks later. When they did notice, they had no choice but to take the ad offline, but not before serious brand damage was done. They probably lost a lot of current customers, and more importantly, future customers. Mothers, being the major purchasers within households, are not a good group to alienate. (After all, that was why they created the ad in the first place – to try and “connect” with this valuable market segment.) AdAge did a great job covering the episode, here.

This is a great example of why a service like Scout Labs should be mandatory for any company putting messages out in to the world. It is essential to put out these fires before they get out of control.

I received an email today from a friend at a large, publicly held company, begging for access to Scout Labs. His story was so “typical” that I just had to, with his permission, comment on it. It seems the company in question just launched a version of its web-based software that just didn’t work very well and broke a bunch of things that used to work. A scathing article about the flubbed launch was written on an influential blog in their space. The post was seen by a partner to the company and was forwarded to a channel manager which finally made it to the executive team. The last few days have been hectic for the team — the post has been circulating around the company via email, the marketing team is trying to put a response together, they hastily hired a guy to be responsible for managing a “blog strategy”, and so on. Days later, and the company still hasn’t jumped in to the conversation.

This series of events is all too common. Some lessons that this real-life parable suggests:

• Obviously — don’t launch broken stuff. But even if there is a reason that you need to get something into the market that is not quite baked, be ready for it. Make sure your whole team is ready for it. Be prepared to explain why things are the way they are and what will come next. And ideally, be the first to state the obvious — don’t let customers “reveal” something, as if you had no idea it would be an issue. If there’s a problem, they will find it. Deal with it early. Get your team, tools, processes and policies in place now - don’t wait for a crisis.
• Listen regularly, and be prepared to do something about it. Don’t think about customers as people to deal with after your products are in market. They should be involved every step of the way, on an ongoing basis. Many of the complaints aired in this specific negative blog post were not just related to the recent launch, but were nagging issues that this influential customer had endured for months (years?). He would have liked to have been listened to all along.
• Be part of the conversation when times are good, and things will be easier to manage when times are bad. When you are an engaged part of your own community, customers get to know you. If you do it right, you become a trusted resource and you are seen as a real person trying his best. When things go bad, you will have “social capital” to draw on and get you through.
• Know your influencers and what they are saying about you at all times. Make sure you don’t hear this stuff, after the fact, from a customer or partner. And fighting fires days after the event makes a tough situation even worse.

If you have any additional lessons for my friend at this unnamed big company or to share your own painful experiences and lessons, please jump in and comment.

In our Scout Labs application, I am Scouting dozens of things at any given time, but one of my favorites is my PR Nightmares Scout. I like watching for when corporations (and politicians!) slip-up, I must admit. Thought I’d share with you some of the juicy debacles I’ve discovered recently. Enjoy.

Hillary’s latest investment in herself
Compare and contrast these presidential fundraising headlines from The Politico today: Obama on pace to raise $30 mil in February and Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million . Wow.

Apple Russia caught up in PR nightmare
In a turn of events that almost seems too bizarre to be true, Russian journalist and 14-year Mac user Alex Patsay has written an open letter to Apple PR following what sounds to be a disastrous …

The World Bank chops down the Amazon rainforest
Here we go again. The World Bank is busy funding the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, alleges this article in The Independent . The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind …

Is Your Web 2.0 Strategy On Target?
Recently, Susan Gunelius on BrandCurve wrote a post about Target stores dismissing a query from a blogger who objected to their latest ad campaign. It seems that the blogger thought the ad, …