Blog homeOne common theme that people go on and on about is protecting your brand via (or from) social media.
Who do you need protection against? And are bloggers just being irresponsible by posting things about brands in the first place?
Take for example a recent problem with mice in the InterContinental Hotel Paris (for those who don’t know the story, here is a quick video recap)
Loren Feldman knows exactly what he is doing when he wrote a blog post outlining the mice problem. [Here is the original blog post]. He knows that this is going to have an impact on the brand of that company – he is a social media expert.
Even the blog post title is optimised – “The InterContinental Grand Hotel In Paris Has Mice – A Review”.
Perfect length to fit on a Google results page – and mentions the magic keyword review. Unsurprisingly, that blog post now ranks 3 or 4 for the hotel name search. A lesson for us all.
After Loren Feldman has had his say – Guillaume from Hotel-Blogs jumps in. He has written a nice blog post outlining that the hotel now has a problem – not only with mice – but also with the mice story coming up in Google. [See his blog post]
Guillaume also knows what he is doing. He knows that, in turn, his blog post will hit the high rankings for that hotel brand search (Google organic search). The snowball continues….
Motivation for posting
Neither Guillaume or Loren are motivated by how much brand damage they can cause. Instead both want to create entertaining or informative content. They both succeed in that – the mice video is a classic – and Guillaume’s post informs other hoteliers and begins to discuss how the management can respond to it.
(In comments, Nathan from Travel Weekly suggests the hotel management do a YouTube video response….. which I think is a very sensible idea)
This is the same motivation I had this morning when I posted about the FAIL that Virgin Holidays have had with their new Travel City Direct website. It is informative entertainment – not a brand attack. In the two pieces of Twitter feedback I have had about the Virgin post, one was supporting my post (and classed it as an epic fail) while another suggested I was condescending. Probably both are right 
So the question is – if we know that when we post something we risk causing brand damage – should we self censor and only post positive things? I fully reject that as an idea – I believe we should write blog posts / create content based on what we have experienced – and if that helps or hinders a brand – that is how it is.
I will continue to write both critical and supportive blog posts. After all, that is why you read this blog yeah?
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Just heard from EyeForTravel who are running this conference
http://events.eyefortravel.com/social-media/
One of the speakers is
Cassandra Jeyaram, PhD, Social Marketing Manager, InterContinental Hotels Group
Sounds like InterContinental have someone who knows about social media – will they reply to any of the (now 3) blog posts on the topic?
Alex,
As always there is probably an answer somewhere between the polar opposites of self censorship and tabloid style ranting. Objectivity and insight is what I look for in any review. Sometimes however headlines are used that will clearly damage a brand in a way that is disproportionate to the issue at hand. Clearly there is a motivation to do this because it means more eyeballs but ultimately this can have significant impacts on the companies and individuals involved. Sometimes (not always & not in this virgin case as the fail was fairly obvious) you get the sense of the blogger scouring through a site looking for some bug to highlight to give an angle to their blog or to tenuously support a hypothesised flaw in the subject’s business model.
Anyway what is wrong with poor little furry mice? Id like to to see a statistical analysis of the probability any building of that size doesn’t have mice!
Hi Alex,
The reasons I linked this story were:
1/ This is about Hotels after all (the main subject of my blog)
2/ I found it quite funny when I saw the video
3/ I just find incredible that Google is so quick to elevate that trivial story on the top results
4/ I have my doubts about how hotel managers can really cope with this kind of bad advertising (some hoteliers still struggle with TripAdvisor reviews)
5/ I open the debate and welcome any idea / strategy that hoteliers should adopt to respond to this story (like Nathan’s idea for instance)
Now, more seriously, you have to know that in London and Paris, there are more mice and rats than humans. So the fact that people can see some mice in an old building like the Intercontinental Paris is not a big surprise. I have been trying myself to catch this little mouse I have seen once in my house a year ago. I know it is still there because I hear it sometimes (shame that I don’t have a cat though).
What bugs me in this whole thing is that people seem more keen to comment on this story than my take on the WorldRes story. But that’s life! Sigh…
Guillaume
hotel-blogs.com
Ah….. believe me Guillaume – people have read your Worldres story…. was discussing your post with someone earlier actually…. (he spent some time working for Worldres, but I worked for them for 3 months or so)
At some stage I wouldn’t be surprised to see bloggers being sued for slander or some such for their choice in headlines. It’s one thing if it’s UGC that ranks highly (we’ve had some cases like that where we ended up changing the title but leaving up the posts) but in these cases a blogger is wilfully doing it in order to get those rankings. You could still write exactly the same post but keep the title more neutral and it will not show up at all for terms that are actually searched for.
@ Sam,
I am trying my hardest not to get sued (or, indeed, to upset everyone). My aim is to write interesting and informative content that people actually want to read
@ Ben
Talking about positive impacts – howabout me reviewing your new site in the new year!
I promise to be nice
@Guillaume: Just wanted to tell you that I received and read both of your stories.. I did not have anything interesting to comment about worldres though..
Now about the other story, I was surprised you mentioned that guy, Loren, as one of the “most famous video blogger” (he’s not, period). I knew him only because he bashed Seesmic in the past..Otherwise I would have no idea of who the guy is.. Except that now, Loic Le Meur (Seesmic’s founder) invited him at his last tech conf in Paris, as Loic is always happy to confront ppl who are not always agreeing with him.
My first thoughts about that story was not about the mice issue but about those BURGERS at 40€ each. I found it v. funny for a foreigner to order a burger at that kind of restaurant, in France! That was just hilarious. Believe me, if you order a burger in that kind of restaurant in FRANCE, you don’t want to tell people about it!
Now about the mice issue; it was quite funny that it happened to him. That guy made his reputation ranting about everything and being rude to everybody.
I was curious of how he could handle that situation with the hotel’s staff compares to how he behaves “online”. That’s funny, he usually plays a role of a “tough guy” in his video and then the same guy, in a real life situation, is not able to convey properly his message to the hotel staff: in the end they both talked about where the restaurant is and who manages the restaurant! Unbelievable..
Believe me, if there is family of mice running in a restaurant where I spend > than 100€, I might not publish a video on youtube, BUT you got to be sure that I will talk to the (RIGHT) person in charge of the RESTAURANT to express my feelings, and believe me, I am quite sure I will get out of the restaurant with a concrete compensation and with the absolute certitude that the mice issue will be the priority of the restaurant for the next days. PS: But, hey, does it really takes place at the restaurant? That seems to be shot at the bar..
Now, what the restaurant (or bar) of the hotel should do?
1- Solve the problem (I won’t go into details here, it’s quite clear). It’s probably already fixed by the time I’m commenting this post, as the restaurant of the InterContinental Paris is not a Chili’s grill or a Taco Bell!
2- 80% of demand of that kind of hotel is not price sensitive (Loren falling in the other 20%) and does not look at youtube videos before they book their trip…! BUT demand clearly has high expectations of service and quality (same for “poor bear” video blogger Loren though).
The mice issue is probably not an issue anymore and I’m sure this youtube video won’t have any impacts on bookings (hotel) and v. little impact on the restaurant/bar.
3- Staff of the restaurant/bar should deal this issue beforehand, with the customer, to show they care about this issue, they care about customers (even customers from the bar).
http://tinyurl.com/6f5gc9 .. no comment..
@Syl
Hence my point. A trivial story like the Mice at Intercontinental gets more attention from the industry (you, Alex and others) than some thorough thoughts about WorldRes.
I thought it was funny as a quick post. I didn’t expect this kind of attention to it.
Now about your suggested ideas about what the restaurant should do…
1/ Will see. But nothing has been done so far only.
2/ 80% of demand in this hotel is not price sensitive!!!!! This is rubbish. I don’t know where you get these stats from. In this crisis we are living today, I can tell you this is much less than 80%. Have you seen recently the RevPar of 5* hotels in cities like Paris, London, Milan?
Having said that, you are right by saying bookings won’t see any impact for the moment. But what about your brand image on the Internet in a powerful tool like YouTube.
3/I agree with you
FInally, about whether Loren is a famous video blogger. It’s all about from which audience you are looking at this. He’s very popular with the Tech people in different conferences.
See you in the New Year.
@Guillaume:
-I can’t tell much. Just guessing. How do you know the hotel still have an issue with mice? I’ll be v. surprised to know that the hotel management did not take any action following this mice issue..
-No, I did not survey any current revpar of any 5* in order write that comment as it was a simple general statement about 5* hotels of major capitals of the world; it did not take into consideration the current crisis at all. Meaning not so many customers of that hotel would come up online to rant about a 40€ burger..
PS: Anyway I’d be glad if you publish current RevPar of Paris and London’s hotel as I’ve heard hotel sales and average prices from those 2 capitals move quite diferently in this time crisis. Are you able to confirm or deny this?
-Look at his current google trend curve and you’ll see that he needed so badly to generate buzz otherwise ppl would have forgotten about his blog existence. That explains that dumb video I’ve pasted in my last comment. Past history of the subject: being racist towards black tech ppl.. Definitely not a blog(ger) I would recommend.