The Wrong Way for CEOs to Communicate Online
We love Whole Foods, with their glass cases filled with healthy gourmet fare and their produce aisle teeming with organic delights. And we like their CEO John Mackey, whose blog has always been one that other CEOs could learn a thing or two from. That’s why we feel so frustrated at recent news that Mackey ‘anonymously’ posted rants in Yahoo stock market discussion forums about his own company and others in his industry–including disparaging comments about Wild Oats Markets, a company Whole Foods has since tried to acquire.
From a communications perspective, three thoughts stand out in my mind:
- The organic apple is bruised: Whole Foods has always enjoyed a reputation as a company that cares–a company that cares about your health, that cares about the environment, that cares about its workers. Their trust bank was high, but Mackey’s online shenanigans put the company in danger of going from a ‘company that cares’ to ‘just another company.’
- A fake nose and glasses do make you look silly: Mackey would know better than to have done a television interview while trying to disguise his identity. Unfortunately, what he didn’t realize was that he would look just as silly (and would do serious harm to his company’s brand) by doing the equivalent of that in online forums.
- The lawyers and the PR team must work together: How did this become public? The Mackey rants were exposed because the legal team appropriately and as required by law, put it into the filing to the FTC (link to filing here (PDF); mention at bottom of page 4). Despite the potential for an explosive public and regulatory reaction, it appears that the Whole Foods lawyers and PR people never developed a communications strategy to anticipate such a firestorm. They may never have even talked before it blew up. In this transparent age, attorneys must be sensitive to public relations issues and work hand-in-hand with the communications team before an issue goes public, in the best interest of their shared client. PR professionals should never practice law. Lawyers should not practice PR.
Certainly, Mackey may not have realized the power (and the staying power) of online communication when he started his posting campaign way back in 1999. Today’s CEOs should use the Internet–forums, message boards, the blogosphere–to communicate with their audiences. But they must do it with complete transparency, and they must honor it the same way they do traditional media. If you wouldn’t say it on CNBC with your name and title broadcast in a slick graphic at the bottom of the screen, by all means, do not say it online.
