Tag Archives: Twitter

In a disappointing decision for the UK’s media, and to the apparent relief of much of the legal community, the Supreme Court yesterday opted (pdf) to keep in place an interim injunction protecting the names of a celebrity couple PJS and YMA, one of whom was allegedly involved in an olive oil-drenched ménage à trois in a plastic paddling pool.

Engaged in close combat with the judiciary and much of the legal profession since the Court of Appeal overruled the High Court in favour of the imposition of the injunction in late January, Fleet Street’s finest are clearly in no mood to let the matter rest. The story looks set to run until the allegations go to full trial, and will probably linger for a considerable period of time thereafter, whichever way the court decides.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of the various legal interpretations taken so far, if there’s one thing that can be said with any degree of certainty it is surely that the reputational dimension of the case has been exploited mercilessly by those seeking to make the allegation public, and apparently overlooked or ignored by the couple in their sights.

At least, this is an easy and obvious conclusion to make. After all, thanks to foreign media coverage, interventions by high profile bloggers, an orgy of speculation on Twitter and a mainstream media intent on pushing both the spirit and the letter of the law to their limits (eg. Daily Mail redacted article below), just about everyone knows the names of those involved.

Don’t they?

Perhaps it’s not quite that straight-forward.

It is worth remembering the injunction held fast, at least for a few weeks before the names of those involved were published in the US.

And then geo-blocking ensured (and continues to ensure) that the US article that sparked the media furore was seen by relatively few people – other than those using VPNs – in England & Wales, where the injunction applied.

Google was also ordered to remove numerous links to articles and posts (here’s one list) mentioning the story, thereby limiting further access, at least for those using Google.co.uk.

While these defences proved by no means water-tight, over 60% of people participating in an April 2016 YouGov study stated they did not know the identity of the couple being talked about – a figure that seems unlikely to have changed much since, if online search interest for the term ‘PJS injunction’ is anything to go by.

An important question from a reputational – and a legal – perspective is whether the figure would have been any higher had the media named the couple in January, when the injunction was first applied for.

It is hard to know.

Certainly the story has now dragged out over several months and is likely to have resulted in considerable embarrassment, especially should it come to the attention of the couple’s children. But has it ended up causing significantly greater reputational damage to a pair which has publicly confirmed it conducts an open relationship, and whose ostentatiously flamboyant public life does little to suggest it has much to hide? Will it adversely affect the careers, earnings or image rights of the two?

Perhaps.

There again, reputational damage may not be the primary concern of PJS and co, at least not now. Rather, it may well be about having justice in court, and being seen to have justice in court, irrespective of the brouhaha and the costs and whatever comes afterwards.

My guess is that the PR/communications dimension was indeed initially overlooked by PJS and co. A broader and more proactive approach involving lawyers, PR advisers and online reputation experts would almost certainly have been advisable from the start.

Nonetheless, against the odds, the couple has persuaded the Supreme Court of its case, legally reinforced the privacy rights of celebrities and other individuals, limited some of the reputational downside that inevitably cones with litigation, and successfully jabbed Fleet Street in the eye, not once but several times.

UPDATE: As of November 4, 2016, the celebrity couple and News Group Newspapers agreed an out-of-court settlement on the basis of the latter’s breach of confidence and misuse of private information.

—

Here’s a potted timeline of events to date:

Scène de Ménage
A Play in Several Parts

Dramatis personae

‘PJS’ – husband of YMA
‘YMA’ – celebrity entertainer and husband of PJS
‘AB’ – PJS’ lover, and lover (and subsequently) husband of CD
‘CD’ – AB’s husband former partner ‘AB’ and AB’s then partner of ‘CD’

Part I – Exposition

2007/8: PJS meets AB

2009: PJS and AB start a sexual relationship

2011: PJS messages AB to ask whether CD was ‘up for a three-way’

Part II – Conflict

Jan 2016: AB and CD approach Sun on Sunday newspaper with story about PJS. PJS declines to comment on the record when approached by the newspaper

Jan 15: Lawyers for PJS apply to the High Court for an interim injunction in England and Wales. The judge rejects the injunction on the grounds that the newspaper is entitled to ‘correct the public image’ presented by PJS, issuing a seven day interim injunction for PJS to appeal

Jan 21: Lawyers for PJS lodge appeal for injunction in England and Wales

Jan 22: Court of Appeal rules in favour of PJS on privacy grounds, publishes ruling with names redacted

Part III – Rising Action

April 6: US newspaper National Enquirer names protagonists

April 10: Scotland on Sunday names protagonists in print-only story

April 11: top Westminster political blogger names celebrity couple

April 11: Reports circulate that PJS is to be named in the House of Commons

April 11: House of Commons speaker John Bercow bans MPs from naming couple

April 12: Google starts removing links to stories mentioning the story

April 12: PJS’ lawyers threaten UK blogger with Contempt of Court

April 14: UK newspaper names political blog that named celebrity couple

April 15: UK media win right to report on Court of Appeal injunction hearing

April 18: Court of Appeal lifts injunction, subject to appeal to Supreme Court

April 19: PJS applies for permission to appeal to UK Supreme Court

May 19: Supreme Court upholds PJS’ right to privacy

Part IV – Climax

Not achieved

Part V – Denouement

Nov 4: Confidential out-of-court settlement agreed

My book Managing Online Reputation is now available

October 29, 2015

Crisis communications, Digital & social media communications, Online reputation management, Reputation management, Reputation risk management

Leave a comment

Caution, shameless self-promotion: my book Managing Online Reputation launches today.

You might ask – perfectly legitimately – why I have taken the trouble of writing 60,000+ words about something that should now be well understood. Surely it hardly needs saying that Google, Twitter and Weibo make it harder to manage a company’s name and image, opening it to the whims, prejudices and ulterior motives of disappointed customers, aggrieved employees, malicious competitors, enraged activists and recalcitrant algorithms?

Managing Online Reputation, by Charlie Pownall

Yet it remains the case that many organisations (and individuals) remain unclear how best to insulate themselves from trouble online, and continue to mess up their response when things go public.

It has not helped that there remains a dearth of practical, common sense advice in this area. There are many reasons for this, from a tendency to see social media as a business and marketing Holy Grail while overlooking the hazards of the conquest, to the fact that most existing guidance is written from a social media marketing, public relations, technology or legal perspective when effective online reputation protection and defence is about all of these working together. Things have also not been helped by a cottage industry of ‘online reputation management’ specialists selling puffed-up search engine solutions.

Managing Online Reputation draws on what I have learned over many years as a communications strategist, PR practitioner and digital/social media marketer mining the seam where communications and reputation, and the internet and social media meet. Accordingly, reputation is tackled primarily from a communications perspective – albeit a broad one – and I make no apologies for this: if issues are left to fester long enough they will almost inevitably become reputational – and hence PR – problems and must be tackled as such.

However, to understand more clearly the risks to reputation posed by social media, and to appreciate the many different response options, I talked with experts in fields such as media and IP law, social and environmental activism, IT security, digital forensics, crisis management, emergency response, social media monitoring, search engine marketing and Wikipedia management.

Given that the social web impacts so many areas of an organisation it should come as little surprise that online reputation is a complex topic. However, Managing Online Reputation tries not to over-complicate or over-sell the issue. You’ll find it avoids talk of ‘social media crises’ and other hyperbolic marketing phraseology, just as it makes no grand claims about what the many social media business and listening tools now available can do for you. Rather it looks at social media in a broader context, and offers practical, realistic, common-sense advice in plain English.

It is also intended to be interesting. Sprinkled amidst tried and tested ways to categorise, assess and respond to potential problems online, and detailed guidance on how to develop (or update) your crisis plan, you’ll find vignettes about the culture of smears in China and political protest in Hong Kong, the easy and pungent opium of online petitions, the perils of companies attaching themselves to social movements, and what a black swan looks like online. There are also detailed case studies of companies of all shapes and sizes responding successfully to and recovering from fast escalating negative incidents and bona fide crises.

Here’s more of a taster:

More than anything you should come away from reading Managing Online Reputation with the notion that, despite the scepticism in which companies and institutions are held today, and the innate tribalism and volatility of life online, your organisation’s reputation is eminently knowable, manageable and redeemable – as long as you prepare well, keep your head and play it straight.

Managing Online Reputation is available in paperback and as an e-book via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 800-CEO-READ and other outlets.

You can find out more about the book and how to order it here.

Get your tanks on my lawn!

April 24, 2015

Digital & social media communications, Political campaigning

Leave a comment

Two weeks to go and with the Tories and Labour in deadlock the closest British election in many years looks a nail-biter. While a(nother) coalition government looks the only plausible outcome, an unusually large proportion of voters remain undecided according to pollsters.

I am one. Formerly a member of a political party, I handed in my card some years ago disillusioned with its leadership and direction. I’ll spare you which party. Despite being resident outside the UK for many years I remain eligible to vote and intend to do so. But making a choice is no easier living thousands of miles from the political melee.

Thankfully I am spared the prospect of Nigel Farage messing up my flowerbeds or crude negative advertising polluting my neighbourhood. Yet candidates should surely be looking for every vote they can muster and with an estimated 250,000 full British nationals in the province (not all of whom may be able to vote), the expat vote is not an opportunity to be sneezed at.

However I, for one, have not been approached by any political party. Not have I seen any party attempt to engage British expats here in Hong Kong in any form; in contrast to, say, Australia’s Labor party efforts during the 2013 national elections.

OK, so posters in central Hong Kong might be overkill. But surely this is where the internet and social media come into their own. A local search marketing or Facebook ad drive. A video ad on the South China Morning Post website. Someone reaching out on Twitter. All are cheap (relative to TV or poster ads), direct and can be managed at distance.

In what is meant to be the UK’s most digital election to date there’s a deafening silence this side of the world.

So come on Britain’s politicians, get your tanks on my lawn. I’m listening if you are.

Blocking internet access is not the solution to information leaks

August 15, 2014

Digital & social media communications, Reputation management, Reputation risk management

Leave a comment

We live in the age of the leaky corporation – one in which the wrong information can easily slip into the wrong hands – be it from external cyber attack or data breach, or from malicious or careless insiders, partners or suppliers.

Some organisations continue to think a good way to minimise the likelihood of data breaches, leaks and losses is to restrict employee access to the internet and/or social media. This may sound sensible, but at what cost to an organisation’s ability to conduct research, share information and communicate externally?

I recently met with the regional communications lead at a major global bank who turned out to be the only person in his company in Asia with access to Twitter. Little surprise that the individual felt highly restricted in what he could achieve online on behalf of his employer.

So it was good to hear business and cyber experts on the HBR podcast argue that cutting internet access is a simplistic, impractical and ineffective solution to the problem of leaky data.

Rather, companies should focus on adopting strong cybersecurity policies, monitoring use of their IT systems and email, and raising awareness about common, insidious threats such as phishing and malware.

Such an approach has the additional benefit of letting communicators get on with the job of managing their employer’s reputation whenever and wherever they need to.

Social media in Saudi Arabia: More is less, less is more?

February 4, 2014

Digital & social media communications

2 Comments

One of the more interesting take-aways from my trip to the Middle-east last week is the extraordinary enthusiasm for social media amongst Saudi Arabians.

Consider the following:

The Kingdom accounts for the highest penetration of Twitter in the world (see chart below)
Virtually half (47%) of the total tweets produced in the Arab world are produced in or by Saudis, despite the Kingdom’s relatively small population of 29m, according to the 5th Arabic Social Media Report (pdf)
Saudi Arabia boasts the highest number of YouTube views (90m per day) in the world per Internet user (source: Google).

To westerners, Saudis’ enthusiasm for social media may seem obvious: where else would they go for the facts when the mainstream media is little more than government propaganda? (This is also an argument regularly trotted out to explain the enthusiasm for all things social amongst Chinese, Malays, Singaporeans, Vietnamese and others living under the shadow of authoritarian regimes.)

Yet it seems this line doesn’t quite stack up in Saudi Arabia:

As The Economist recently noted, Saudi’s media has liberalised markedly in recent years
A huge majority (84%) of Saudis believe mainstream news reporting has improved significantly
Local/regional Arabic TV (specifically Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera) remains much the most trusted source of news and information
According to Northwestern University’s Media Use in the Middle East survey, Saudis appear confident of talking online with little fear of retribution, so long as the regime itself is not seriously questioned.

I am no expert on politics or the media in the Middle East, but the Saudi authorities appear to have struck a reasonable balance between permitting general freedom of expression on the one hand and meeting the enduring conservatism of broad swathes of its populace on the other, at least for now.

(I have not been able to find the relevant data for Saudi Arabia on internet regulation so I am working on the assumption that the below is largely accurate. Please let me know if I am mistaken).