Bad Press Damage Control: The Engadget and DAPreview Story - Alternative Small Office Home Office

Mistakes happen. What matters (aside from how large and how deliberate the mistake) is how you handle yourself once the problem is brought to your attention.

Creating Bad Press Is Easy

While catching up on some blog reading, I caught sight of an issue with Engadet not properly crediting DAPreviews for a tip and a photo.

Actually, more accurately, the editor of Engadget took it upon himself to edit the article crediting a different source and crop the DAPreview watermark from the photo.

…the original post on Engadget (as it appeared briefly on the front page) included a link to DAPreview and the picture from DAPreview, including a blue version of our logo. We had no problem with this. In fact, we appreciate the support, since it sends traffic our way and brings new people to DAPreview.

However, on the revised version of the same story, the link to DAPreview was removed and it has a chopped version of our picture with the DAPreview logo cut out.

Seemingly unethical? Yes, and Engadget is definitely paying for it as news spreads through the blogosphere.

Normally, this isn’t something I would write about here, I rarely read Engadget and I’d never heard of DAPreview before today. But I see this as a perfect learning opportunity for business management and damage control.

Looking at the situation as objectively as possible, I believe it could have been easily avoided had Engadget’s editor (Ryan Block) done a little bit of due diligence.

As Mr. Block points out, he thought DAPreview put their watermark on an image that wasn’t theirs in the first place.

The post in question today is one I later edited under pretenses that the watermark was autogenerated — as they very often are — by the wrong party, which I believed to be DAPreview.

It may be commonplace (I really don’t know), however, the logical step in my mind would be to research. Ask the original source of the image who the copyright belongs to or where the photo was originally found.

Possibly, Mr. Block didn’t have the time for such a check and made the executive decision to edit the entry. A mistake? Certainly. Whether or not it was intentional is still being debated.

The lesson taken away from this is to err on the side of caution.

Damage Control Begins

Since we cannot wind time backwards, the mistake cannot be undone so the only options would be to ignore it and hope it goes away or apologize and try to set things right. There are probably other options, but those are the most obvious ones.

Engadget opted to acknowledge the mistake, apologize, and revert the entry (along with photo) to its original form.

The lesson taken away from this is not to fear the mistake or panic. Mistakes are bound to happen, however, accepting responsibility shows that you have some integrity.

Damage Control Continues

Along with reading the blog entries, I took the liberty of reading through the comments. Each site that had comments enabled also had a comment from an Engadget representative letting the blog’s author (and other readers) know of the error’s acknowledgement, apology, and correction.

As evidenced by some of the comments left after Engadget’s, people may not always be receptive to these apologies, but keeping a cool head is key.

Handling yourself with dignity, professionalism, and sincerity will help to shape the opinion that people have of you. If you degrade to behaving like a child, then you and your business may be viewed as childish.

The lesson taken away from this is to get your message out to the masses as quickly as possible. If you’re lucky, news of your contrition will spread more quickly than your misdeed.

At The End of The Day

This situation with Engadget and DAPreview will probably die down. Attention spans tend to be short, and sometimes things aren’t as bad as they seem. If they really are that bad, it’s likely things will get better.

You cannot please all of the people all of the time. Sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, you will have critics. But those critics are not the one running your business, you are. Do the best you can with what you have and always try to do the right thing.
[tags]engadget, dapreview, bad press relations, business damage control, bad press damage control, business management, business marketing, public relations, unethical blogging, unethical attribution[/tags]