I commented saying that it was poor journalism considering it was false information, but the shock came when my comment was promptly deleted. What followed, as you can imagine, was a storm in a tea cup of accusation to the writer of the article and the Telegraph when it was clear they were not just deleting but actually EDITING a large number of the comments that people were making.

Of course, we all know how poor this behaviour is, but I want to look at it in the light of another post by Vikki Chowney at Reputation Online the week before, looking at a recent example of crisis management from Starbucks.

Starbucks’ Facebook page was jacked and a large number of offensive messages were broadcast to it’s 7.5m fans. Starbucks got to work and deleted the comments (which took a long time), but then received criticism for removing all presence of these messages without acknowledging what had taken place. Vikki asked me for my insights, but I think our friend Olivier Blanchard made a great comment in which he said what I was quoted as saying better:

Deleting a comment because it is “inconvenient” is a big no-no. You can’t do that in this space, as Nestle found out. However, deleting (or not approving) a comment because it is purposely offensive and malicious is absolutely fine. I wouldn’t bury the deletion though. It doesn’t hurt to state that one or several comments were deleted because they were offensive and violated the the rules of acceptable behavior on the community page. That takes care of the transparency issue. Starbucks shouldn’t sweat it, though. They did the right thing and acted responsibly in this instance.

Here’s my point: Transparency in 2012 will mean documentation of every action.

You can’t just change anything anymore. The Wikipedia model, that every change (no matter how miniscule) is documented is going to become the standard.

For the Telegraph, this means that if you really must moderate and eject comments that touch your brand, then you need to put them in an ‘eject section’ that can be perused if users so wish. (By the way, watch this and tell what is difference between Nestlé and Telegraph?)

For Starbucks, it means and me and Olivier pointed out, you need to acknowledge the incident at the least.

Your Leading Thoughts

• How do you think this will effect bloggers like myself? Like editing pages and posts?
• How do you think this translates into deleting tweets, etc? Does this mean we have to think a lot more before we tweet?
• Most importantly: Why is transparency becoming a big deal?

This is a video response from Qik, which I filmed – naturally – in Starbucks. Unfortunately it goes a bit funny at the end because someone called me, but, you get the point Also, shoutouts to @banksy6  for perpetuating the myth that I live there!

[flash width="425" height="335" flashvars="rssURL=http://qik.com/video/caf83005349245f8b075a04029c8a382.rss&autoPlay=false&polling=false"]http://qik.com/swfs/qikPlayer4.swf[/flash]

My points are thus:

1. Starbucks pioneered western coffee culture as we know it and are leaders in the area. If you go to Italy, they don’t have to-go cups and Café Latte – these things are mostly a construction. Update: Italians do coffee the authentic, pure way which is the way I like it.
2. Starbucks excel at transactional experience, which is why they have been cloned. They experientialised coffee. Admittedly, the situational experience of Starbucks does leave much to be desired.
3. Starbucks personalise coffee. This is a hallmark of the experience economy, which according to the history of economic progression, is a customisation of the service industry. They sell at an experience markup – more expensive then any other high street coffee house.
4. The personalisation is integral to the experience. Drinks are called ‘Hand Crafted Beverages’. The markings of your personalisation are on your to-go cup, making it memorabilia.

Now I will make it clear that I quite readily appreciate the situational experience is lacking, and that the transactional customisation is lacking against most artisan coffee houses – but then those coffee houses are not the world’s number one coffee chain that has been the model for others to follow, are they?

Or, am I just going waaaay over the top here?

UPDATE: I am not being vindictive against Italians here, as someone has suggested. Let me stress the fact that I love Italy and honeymooned there. I studied the language for a year. I plan to live there. I love the way they do coffee and far, far prefer authentic, artisan coffee as it is prepared in Italy. I am simply saying that in the same way ‘Chicken Tikka Masala’ is a constructed curry that isn’t an authentic Indian dish, Café Latte and Starbucks’ ‘Caramel Macchiato’ and Frappucinos, etc, are mostly constructed drinks for our western market that do not actually exist in Italy.

UPDATE: The Qik above was the featured ‘Hot Video’ on the Qik.com homepage today (Friday 24th July). Yes – that’s my ugly mug taking up the whole screen. Insults can be made at my Posterous.com account.

This is the incredible thing about social media – I have genuinely made great connections and even friends through it. My post last month on the Exeter Twitterati detailed multiple examples, and over at the Aaron+Gould blog is an article about Trey Pennington coming from the States to Exeter, through a Twitter interaction.

Today, however, was my interview with Josh, and I had loads of fun. Josh is a bright thinker and socialmediator, so I’d not only encourage you to listen to my interview on Experience Marketing, but also get talking to Josh and subscribe to his blog.

You can listen to the interview over at Josh’s blog here.