Damn. I had the inside scoop two months ago about what REALLY happened last year when bike lockmaker Kryptonite had its fabled run-in with the blogosphere. I decided not to publish my "tell-all" interview with Kryptonite's PR manager, Donna Tocci, and instead save it for my book. Ouch. Bad timing.
Fellow blogging expert Dave Taylor interviewed Donna about a week ago and published the Q & A to his blog. Thus, er, "scooping" me. [Update: see comments below. Neither Dave nor I were the "first" to debunk the blogosphere legend that Kryptonite was "clueless." I was being a bit tongue in cheek by using the term "scooped." Heck it's a blog. I gotta have some fun, right?]
The by-now apocryphal tale goes like this: bloggers revealed that one of Kryptonite's popular U-shaped bike locks could be picked with a bic pen.[Update: to be precise, it was first revealed on a bike forum. Update
to update: the bic pen/lock connection was first revealed back in 1992 on a UK bike discussion
list in a British bicycling magazine. [via] See links below in the comments.]
The story raced through the blogosphere. It was picked up by The New York Times and other big media.
Still, the lockmaker appeared to be oblivious.
The result, according to blogolore? By failing to listen and to respond to bloggers, Kryptonite's brand suffered permanent damage.
Turns out that's not really true, nor is it what really happened.
Donna Tocci knew about the buzz in the blogosphere from day #1. She made a conscious decision NOT to respond because she was too busy organizing the logistics of an international lock exchange. As well as granting interviews with the mainstream press.
Oh, and a minor detail. Not one single blogger contacted her to find out what she knew or didn't.
Kryptonite's side of the story, as revealed by Dave Taylor, is in today's CNN story: The rise and rise of corporate blogs.
What does it all mean? It's still early days in the corposphere. Most companies are just beginning to grapple with how to engage with bloggers vs. MSM. As well as how to handle employee blogging - and whether to allow it. Not to mention what the role of a CEO blogger is.
Be sure to check out the results of the QuickVote survey when you click through to the article. They're interesting. When I last checked, 58 percent of the respondents said their company did not allow employee blogs.
Useful Links
New PR & the Kryptonite Situation by Tom Biro
[Long thoughtful post on crisis communications, the new maxim "you don't own your brand" and more.]
Kryptonite Poster Child of the Blogosphere and Citizen Journalism Does Not Equal Wild West Blogging by Toby Bloomberg
Bloggers did not humble Kryptonite on BikeBiz.com
[See BikeBiz.com's archive of bic / lock articles, going back to September 2004.]
Technorati: kryptonite
>I had the inside scoop two months ago
Any aspects that go beyond what's already been published by Shel Israel (Naked Conversations) in August 2005: http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/07/kryptonite_argu.html or been referenced here: http://www.bikebiz.co.uk/daily-news/article.php?id=6323 ?
Posted by: Markus Pirchner | December 21, 2005 at 03:55 AM
Markus,
Thanks for the great links. And you're right. Neither Dave nor I had the "real" story first. What is notable, interestingly, is that even the Red Couch guys (Robert and Shel) jumped on the "Kryptonite is clueless" bandwagon before checking out the story directly with the Kryptonite folks. I think there's a cautionary tale in here about "blogging" vs. "journalism."
Posted by: Debbie Weil | December 21, 2005 at 08:33 AM
Debbie - We've all seen too many bloggers shoot from the hip when it comes to posting "stories" about what they perceive is a 'blog no-no.' That wild west mentality is a credibility buster - especially for biz bloggers.
Posted by: Toby | December 21, 2005 at 09:39 AM
Very interesting.
I got into biking this year. I bought a new bike to replace the 25 year old dinosaur.
Guess what kind of lock I bought to go with it? Not sure, but I DO know it wasn't a Kryptonite - even though the bike shop recommended it.
Bloglore, true or otherwise, did affect my buying decisions.
Posted by: Ted Demopoulos | December 21, 2005 at 07:56 PM
I still maintain Kryptonite handled his terribly. Any crisis can be mitigated through effective communication. The vacuum of silence will be filled by misrepresentation, drivel and poison (I think Schopenhauer said that).
All the interviews reinforce for me is that as a business they responded well (except it turns out the problem had been flagged years before and they did nothing then). As communicators, they did lousy. If they new about the commentary, but didn't respond, it's pretty much the same as not knowing and not responding. No response is no response.
And for the record, about that time I bought a neat new mountain bike. I needed a lock. The blog coverage specifically caused me not to buy their product. If they had communicated what they are communicating now, I might have done so. To answer the question posed by Kryptonite: "here are millions of blogs, but what are the audiences of these blogs?" - it's me, the bike owner. The interview gets worse, reinforcing further cluelessness about the blogosphere: "We know that lots of teens and college students have blogs and, mainly use them to communicate with friends and family. These are our customers, but are they going to corporate blogs? Not so sure about that."
And then, worse still, they correct the misperception that they only found out about the problem in last year when bloggers started getting into it. Oh no, they knew about it in 1992 - and it would appear they did nothing? That's meant to inspire confidence?
I had the privilege of working around some of the best crisis communicators in my agency days. I once asked why there were so few case studies on this type of thing. I got an interesting response - post crisis, all you want the focus to be on is how the business is moving forward - you don't want to get into the mechanics of the crisis, it just casts further light on your problems. A pretty good idea in my book. Seems like Kryptonite is determined to teach us what not to do pre, during and post crisis.
Posted by: Andrew Lark | December 22, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Hi Debbie:
Please don't be sad about being 'scooped'! I think you and I got into a much more detailed discussion over the phone than is reported over on Dave's site! :)
Ted, while I'm sorry you didn't buy a Kryptonite lock based on a communication issue, I am glad you have a lock! Many people don't. Please do use it properly, which is half the battle in defeating thieves! Happy, safe riding!
Andrew has certainly been busy leaving this same post in at least three different places. Please read my response to him over at Dave's site or on his own. In it I suggest rereading my first comment to a question about that article in the early 90s over on Dave's site.
Thanks to everyone who has weighed in here. Debbie is a smart cookie and I look forward to each of her posts because, most times, I learn something from her!
Happy Holidays to you, Debbie, and all of your readers.
Donna
Posted by: Donna Tocci | December 22, 2005 at 01:32 PM
The challenge about being part of the blogosphere is deciding whether or not information is accurate as it's too easy to make assumptions like this example.
Business blogging is still very new and some of us long-time bloggers forget that. Companies may be listening to the conversations -- but they may not make the best decision in how to handle a crisis -- not on purpose but rather because there are so few examples to learn from.
This story is an excellent learning tool and it tells us that a company should at least acknowledge that it's aware of the situation and is working to address it as fast a possible as opposed to staying silent while you're figuring things out.
Posted by: meryl | December 23, 2005 at 04:39 PM