Girl Glove Case Study

Problem:

The CEO of Lancaster-Webb Medical Supply, a manufacturer of disposable gloves discovers that an employee has been blogging about the company’s products without permission of from the communication folks. The marketing team and others in the company have known about this for sometime, even some of the companies that are buying or potentially buying the products from the company are aware of the blog.

The Marketing Department knows of the blog but hasn’t told the CEO until it has a direct effect on his speaking time during a conference. During a meeting to get spun up on the blog, the CEO discovers there is misinformation on her blog which hasn’t been corrected. The misinformation has also been acknowledged by to consumers of the company’s products.

The blog is a mix of work and personal life observations that keeps her readership abreast of the life experiences and work related insight.

Course of Action 1:

Become proactive.

The passing of information to leadership about employees communicating without approval is a failure. This situation is not an anomaly. The legal and communication policy review is now late. The need to be proactive and transparent with leadership about issues like this should be reinforced.

A scan of all other non-sanctioned communications should be initiated to garner the footprint and impact of any other rogue communications.

Bringing the blogger into press conferences and giving her access to information with some type of compromise to allow for a balanced product with inputs from the marketing department should be discussed. I wouldn’t assume that she would want to become the company organ, but giving her the same respect and access a trusted journalist would get should allow for more balanced blogs and give the company influence over topics and content.

If legal and the leadership desire more control over the blog hire the blogger as a contractor, complete with a disclosure form, on a part time basis....