Every Misstep You Take, We’ll Be Watching You

Welcome to the world of cell phone cameras, citizen-generated media and instant exposure of supposedly private behaviour .

Whether you represent a company, a non-profit group, a political party or just yourself, the possibility that your off-camera actions will be captured by a camera you didn’t know existed are pretty good.

We live in a world where almost everyone carries a cell phone and almost every cell phone has a built-in camera.

Among CNet News.com’s 2006 Worst Political Mishaps, almost half of the incidents involved videos or photos taken away from the glare of the media.

PR Week’s Book of Lists 2006 includes three video-fuelled top PR blunders.

The Business Week article PR’s Best and Worst of 2006 doesn’t include any video gotchas, but includes some examples of buzz received by bloggers and other social media. Positive (LonelyGirl15 and Borat) and negative (Wal-Mart and Hewlett-Packard ).

Take-away: Employees, board members and anyone else who might do or say something that might be recorded by a camera or microphone need to understand your corporate values and the sensitivity of the organization’s business issues. Those high up in the ranks or close to customers are most likely to have their behaviour perceived as a reflection of the whole organization.

Other Worst PR Lists

• Wired 2006 Foot-in-Mouth Awards
• PR Disasters of 2006 (nominations)

Thanks to Dave Traynor for the CNet link.

Related post: PR Disasters and Bad Pitches: Don’t Become a Case Study

Tags: business, employees, photography, public relations, reputation