'The Bubble' Is The Biggest Threat To Your Company's Image
On Tuesday, the NYPD did something incredibly stupid. Someone had the genius idea to solicit user-generated photos of interactions with police officers via a Twitter hashtag called #MyNYPD.
Here's the setup:
Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook. pic.twitter.com/mE2c3oSmm6
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 22, 2014
Everyone can see where this is going, right? Well, apparently not the NYPD. Exactly what you would expect would happen happened, and, as my boss Scott Battishill put it, New York's finest suddenly found itself with a huge PR problem where none existed before.
This wasn't the first time something like this happened, and it won't be the last.
The cause is something we can probably all relate to: The Bubble. It's the cozy protective layer of positivity and optimism about your brand or company that exists within your walls. People like bubbles because they feel good. No one likes being criticized, and no one wants to be the one person in the room to shoot down an idea everyone's excited about.
The thing is, someone needs to do that.
This is where a PR agency like Curator can help. We love the work our clients do, but we don't exist in their bubbles. In fact, it's our job to stay out of them. We do this by being impartial, and brutally interrogating every single idea before it goes public. That may sound bleak, but go look at what's being posted to that hashtag: Would you rather have that happen to your brand in full view of the public, or in the privacy of the Curator conference room?
For the NYPD, they'll spend the next couple weeks doing damage control instead of telling the story they wanted to tell. Their campaign is over, and it didn't even make it out of the gate. All because of The Bubble.