Booked: Brand Vandals

This timely and thoughtful book looks at how social media can destroy corporate reputations and how companies can guard against this. The brand vandals of the title include disaffected shareholders, customers and staff, voicing their opinions to a global audience via the web. The fastest way to resolve a customer service issue, for example, is to complain noisily via Twitter, the authors note.

Such brand vandals are forcing a level of dialogue that organisations have never had to contemplate before and it details how some organisations are responding to the challenge by revamping the strategies and techniques used by their public relations and marketing teams. These communication professionals are not only engaging with audiences in a 24/7 conversation to answer criticism but are aiming to rebuild corporation reputation online.

The authors suggest that companies experiencing problems in this area can put their house right in a period of around three months and conclude the book with a chapter on being “battle ready in 90 days”. There is no quick bolt-on fix, they say. It involves a massive upgrade in sophistication, agility and mindset.