The Nuts And Bolts Of Reputation Management

I was watching Deadliest Catch last week and the Cornelia Marie was in the midst of an engine breakdown. They had replaced a bunch of parts and were on their way to the crab grounds when it blew again. After some digging, they found a loose screw, to which the Captain said, “A $2 nut almost brought down a million dollar operation.”

That quote reminded me of a recent incident I had at the beginning of the year with a rogue freelance social media person, and his boss – possibly the most unprofessional Director of Marketing I have ever encountered. To protect the employees who tried to help me resolve my problem, I’ll refer to this company as X Imaging.

I approached X Imaging to sponsor a local event for $500 (yes, five hundred dollars) via the social media guy – let’s call him Dopey Dave. I followed up with Dopey Dave a few weeks later and he said we were approved. With his knowledge, I sent out a press release with X Imaging listed as a sponsor. After following up several times for payment while sending links to where the release was posted, Dopey Dave said the sponsorship wasn’t approved, and he had never approved it. I asked for contact info for his boss, and he wouldn’t give it to me. I went to LinkedIn and found several employees of X Imaging I was connected to, and one helped me reach the GM of Sales. The GM directed me to Nasty Nancy, the Director Of Marketing who is also a contract employee. After finally being ordered to call me back by the GM she did, despite ignoring my calls and emails for several weeks.

The phone rang. I said “hello, this is Deborah”… she screamed “Take me off speaker phone!” and then launched into a rage-fueled personal attack on ME, on a psychological level I can only compare to an abused animal attacking anything in its path without provocation. She kept asking me who I was and what would it take to make me go away. Nasty Nancy insinuated “my plan” was to extort $500 from X Imaging by putting their info in a press release without their approval. Getting nowhere with her, I asked to speak to her boss, and she said, “Go ahead and try and get in touch with the president of the company – you will never reach him, and even if you did, he wont care about anything you have to say.”

I can laugh about it now, but believe me at the time I was beyond shocked at the sheer stupidity of Nasty Nancy’s accusation, and her unprofessional problem solving approach. For any business, reputation management and customer service should always be top of mind. In this case X Imaging sells printing equipment to printers. Had she spent a few minutes gathering intel before calling me, Nasty Nancy would have found that I am deeply connected to their customer base, and to the press manufacturers they represent. Nasty Nancy also would have found I am a print industry speaker and blogger with an industry related website, a vast social media community, and in good standing reputation wise with the industry and community. In other words, accusing me of extortion for $500 shouldn’t have made any sense to her (assuming she has any sense to begin with), and taking a moment to listen to my version of events would have shown goodwill towards the community, no matter what the outcome. This blog could have been about stellar problem solving by a corporation instead of an example of unchecked and unprofessional behavior from representatives of a supplier within our own community.

X Imaging was just a bug on my windshield, but this tale is an important lesson to always know how your business is being represented. If you are hiring freelancers to be forward facing in any manner, they must be monitored in some fashion. Watch the social streams even if you aren’t contributing to them to make sure the company brand and message is being communicated correctly. Check in with your customers, vendors, partners etc. to make sure their questions/problems are responded to in a timely and respectful manner, that there is professional communication at all times, and there is no potential for reputation damage. Make sure there is someone in your company to take ownership for this. The GM of X Imaging helped me get in touch with Nasty Nancy, and then never followed up although he promised he would.

This shouldn’t need to be said, but if your Director of Marketing cannot problem solve or communicate professionally with the public or your customers, get a new one, and quickly. Nasty Nancy claimed she had no idea who I was during her meltdown. That means I could have been a customer, or a prospect, or someone with 100,000+ print industry connections – none of whom will EVER be referred to X Imaging again.

Once the $2 nut was screwed back into the place, the Captain and crew of the Cornelia Marie sailed off into the dark Bering Sea night, optimistic their troubles were behind them. As for X Imaging, I did a search for complaints against them while writing this blog and found way more than I expected. Most were from employees experiencing the same lack of leadership and unprofessional behavior from management that I encountered. I truly hope the good people over there are wearing their life jackets, because the undisputed and foul reputation being anchored to X Imaging will eventually sink the ship.

Deborah Corn is the Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr, a Print Buyerologist™, Integrated Marketer, Industry Speaker and Blogger, Cultivator of the Print Production Professionals Group on LinkedIn, and host of the weekly industry #PrintChat on Twitter. She has more than 25 years experience working in advertising and marketing, and currently works behind the scenes with printers, suppliers and industry organizations helping with their cross media and social media marketing endeavors.