Of course I’ve been reading all the controversy re: Violet Blue and Boing Boing. Who isn’t? It has everything you’d need for a great made for TV movie – ulterior motives, skulduggery, accusations of personal bias, rumors of personal relationships gone sour, people normally used to being seen as the forces of good suddenly thrown off their high horses and faced with accusations of perfidy and hypocrisy. See it here in the NYT. Of course there is not yet the final denouement, but rest assured there will be. Which leads me to this:
1. Boing Boing needs communications help.
2. What they are struggling with is pretty typical.
The first bullet point is pretty obvious; you don’t get a multi-day news cycle like they’ve just gone through without at least considering the idea that just maybe you are not being successful in getting your POV into the market (or in web 2.0 speak, that you are not “participating in the conversation.”)
The second point is more interesting, because it underlies and causes the first. What has happened is that over the last several years Boing Boing and its contributors have not adjusted their self image with the image the rest of the world has of them, and that self perception gap is one of the biggest causes for communication failure. You can see this play out time and time again. Established sports stars who still think of themselves as fighting for respect are suddenly seen as arrogant, companies who keep acting like they are a start up when they have achieved big market success are seen as bullies, and a fun loving web site cataloguing cool things comes across as a bunch of priggish censors.
One of the key roles PR can play is making sure that companies/individuals understand how the rest of the world sees them, and calibrating the communication accordingly. Act as an insurgent when you are an insurgent, act as a market leader when you are a market leader. Don’t confuse the two.
As to Boing Boing, the story is not over yet, because they’ve violated another rule of crisis communications: own your news, and get it all out early so you can declare an end to the crisis. By not getting to the root cause (just why were all those posts pulled?), there is too much room for ongoing speculation. Stay tuned!