In recent weeks, I've noticed a new theme amongst the social media digerati that goes something like "how do we get the rest of the world to understand the promise of social media? How do we get all those laggard companies blogging and tweeting with us?" I've always cautioned my clients not to jump too far ahead of their customers and stakeholders in adopting any technology, and though I do believe that all companies should factor social media into their outreach and marketing strategies, it is far from appropriate for every company in every situation to use social media as a primary tool. Here's an example of where caution is warranted: the situation facing
CACI in their response to allegations that their employees were involved in the
Abu Ghraib torture scandals in 2004.
Last week I attended an
Executive Biz book signing for the book
Our Good Name which documents CACI's response to what Chairman of CACI's Board,
Jack London, insists are false accusations against the defense contractor. The book is voluminous and detailed and London's defense at the event was impassioned.Shashi Bellamkonda from Network Solutions was there also and blogged about it. Check out his
video from the event (note: I took the picture of him with Dr. London).
Explaining the situation in 2004 when the story first broke, Dr. London portrayed the company as on the defense against a media juggernaut that forced them into a public relations response strategy he characterizes in the book as "Whack-a-Mole". Four years after the fact, despite the book and the company's PR defense strategy to prove its innocence, legal and media
allegations persist.
At the book signing several of us asked Dr. London about the company's decision in '04-'05 to pursue a traditional PR strategy of defending the company, specifically their decision
not to blog about it or confront bloggers in public fora, opting for private communications which attempted to set the record straight. Dr. London's response was insightful. In essence he said that the company chose not to engage in public (including social media) dialog because it did not want to legitimize bloggers and journalists who it perceived were jumping on the attention-getting bandwagon of a hot story based on incorrect information.