Sarah Lacy - Here’s How to Resuscitate Your Reputation
(Courtesy of Wired)
Here’s what NOT to do in this video interview by Austin360 reporter Omar Gallaga.
Sarah, here’s my PR triage crisis management recommendation for fixing this blunder:
1) Apologize for goodness sakes. Do it formally. You let your audience down. Say “I’m sorry.” Stop justifying yourself. Aplogize to Mark too. You were mean to him.
2) Take a mulligan. Solicit questions from the SXSW audience and do a vidcast interview with Mark in humble service to the industry. Redeem yourself by showing you can rise above your mistakes. ZDNet is already collecting some questions for you.
Everyone will move on if you simply say you truly are sorry. We all make mistakes. You can redem yourself with the industry. It’s not too late. And it’s easy.
Marc said,
March 11, 2008 @ 8:51 am
Rather than tell people what to do, I would very much like to hear your account and detailed thoughts, like:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/03/the-children-ea.html
Alexandre said,
March 11, 2008 @ 4:00 pm
Susan,
Thanks for your comment on my blog. Almost missed it: because of the number of links, Akismet had flagged it.
Our approaches and perspectives are quite different. Unlike you, I have no experience interviewing celebrities. My presentation skills have more to do with teaching and playing music. As a linguistic anthropologist and ethnographer, I felt more comfortable focusing on what people conceive of efficient interviews and what communication dimensions seemed important. I have no idea if the advice you give to Lacy in this other post would work. I would agree, though, that Lacy could probably do some damage control, at this point. (Maybe she has, since then.)
Thankfully, Zuckerberg himself was able to talk with SXSWi attendees and it seems that the result was more convincing than what happened the previous day.
I would still like to use the Lacy interview in class. It should prove rich in learning opportunities.
D. Aristophanes said,
March 11, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
Oh, come on. Zuckerberg was a gormless tool in that interview, too. He shares the blame with Lacy. And ‘redeem yourself with the industry’ … please. She’s actually a microceleb now instead of a nobody. That interview put her on the map.