AUGUST 2019 | VOL.

02

• Schadenfreude Marketing: The Art Of Benefiting From Other

Brands’ Misfortunes
• Seven PR Factors To Power Your Digital Communications Strategy
• Peer-to-Peer Is the Next Wave of Influencer Marketing
• A Microsoft exec shows how to handle an uproar at work without
shutting it down
 Schadenfreude Marketing: The Art Of Benefiting From Other Brands’
Misfortunes
HALLEY T HEODORE | JULY 2019 | SOURCE: ADAGE.COM

There’s a German word, schadenfreude, that describes one of our basest, yet most satisfying, emotions. Quite
simply, schadenfreude is the pleasure we take in the misfortune of others. (Schaden = damage, and freude = joy).
It has no real equivalent in English.

Off-brand Muppets sang about the joys of schadenfreude in the musical "Avenue Q." Lisa Simpson, forever our
moral compass, espoused the principle in a classic Simpsons episode, in which Homer delights in the failure of
Flanders’ niche retail experiment, The Leftorium.

While you may not recognize the word, you almost certainly know the feeling. It’s watching a flailing Miss Teen USA
contestant flub an interview, bingeing on back-to-back Fyre Fest documentaries, or reading about Johnny Depp’s
financial woes (particularly after learning he spent $5 million to shoot Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes out of a
cannon). Pick your poison; the undeniable truth is it feels good to watch the mighty fall.

Missed opportunity

Recently the idea of schadenfreude came to mind in the wake of The North Face’s Wikipedia-tampering stunt. In
the days following the scandal, I eagerly awaited a response from a competitor outdoor brand. Would Patagonia
slyly incorporate #TeamWikipedia into a series of tweets? Would Columbia make a large donation to Wikipedia?
Surely another brand would take advantage of this bad press?

No one took the bait, though. The conversation quickly faded into the recesses of my Twitter feed, overshadowed
by the next round of cringe-inducing current events. But amid this continuous stream of corporate scandals, gaffes,
and epic fails, there’s a brief window of opportunity—a proverbial door left ajar, awaiting any brand that’s brave
enough to push it open, capitalize on cultural momentum, and benefit from someone’s public slip up.

This is the idea behind schadenfreude marketing—turning this deeply satisfying, gratifying emotion into an actionable
strategy. It’s using another brand’s misfortune for personal gain.

Schadenfreude in action

Outside of the outdoor industry, there are plenty of brands who practice the
art of schadenfreude. Think way back to 2017, when United forcibly
dragged a passenger off a flight (and, consequently, was endlessly dragged
on Twitter). While much of the internet shaming came from the general
public, a few rival airlines joined in on the fun. Two Middle Eastern airlines—
Royal Jordanian and Qatar Airways—subtly highlighted United’s customer-
service woes via pun-filled tweets, effectively getting a free PR boost.

Schadenfreude is used for political gain (and shame), too. Recently Chase Bank
was forced into apology mode after tweeting a fictional dialogue around the
question “why is my balance so low?,” paired with the hashtag
#MondayMotivation. It bombed, hard. Ultimately the tweet was deleted, but not
before Elizabeth Warren had her say, drafting an alternate version that placed
the blame squarely on Chase Bank. Through an aptly timed parody tweet,
Warren garnered national press coverage and bolstered her political platform.

And who can forget Trump’s facepalm-inducing “hamberders”

tweet? Seemingly the entire internet was having a field day with
this typo, and yet Burger King was confident it could stand out
amid a sea of memes. With a two-sentence comeback tweet,
Burger King briefly won the internet, earning over 400,000 likes
and a formal shout-out from the Pop-Tarts account.
While Twitter is the go-to social platform for feuding brands, it’s not the only way to bring schadenfreude to life. For
example, consider Lyft’s calculated response to the #DeleteUber debacle back in January 2017. In the immediate
aftermath of Trump’s refugee ban, Uber found itself in hot water for sending drivers to JFK Airport while NYC taxi
drivers went on strike, to protest the travel ban. Within hours, #DeleteUber had gone viral, and a massive consumer
boycott was underway. The next morning, Lyft pledged a $1-million donation to the ACLU and released a strongly
worded statement from the co-founders, condemning the ban. While we don’t know for sure if Lyft’s charitable act was
triggered by Uber’s PR crisis, the timing was certainly convenient. True motivations aside, Lyft shrewdly navigated the
situation, stole market share from its top competitor, and cemented its “nice-guy” brand identity.

Risk versus reward

Employing schadenfreude as a marketing tactic requires some strategic foresight—staying up-to-date on the
competition, monitoring social media for upticks in negativity and being nimble and ready to engage in timely
conversation.

Of course, when a brand decides to enter the fray, it’s immediately more susceptible to scrutiny, increasing the
likelihood of being called out for its own missteps. But is this such a terrible thing? Accountability and self-reflection
are principles every company should strive to uphold. And, given the volatility of our current news cycle, the typical
scandal has a very short lifespan, soon to be replaced by a myriad of political tweets, cat gifs and newly #trending
topics.

The bottom line is—cringe-worthy content isn’t going anywhere, and schadenfreude is the perfect antidote. It’s time for
brands to reap the rewards of this guilty pleasure.
 Seven PR Factors To Power Your Digital Communications Strategy
CARA SLOMAN | JULY 2019 | SOURCE: FORBES.COM

As public relations and other marketing disciplines continue to converge and intertwine, having a comprehensive
digital communications strategy becomes more important than ever. If your purpose is to effectively raise awareness
for your brand and underscore your industry leadership in an increasingly competitive media landscape, what are the
key factors that make for the most impactful strategy?

A Balance Of Paid, Earned And Owned Media

A holistic communications program incorporates a strategic mix of owned, earned and paid media, each playing to its
respective strength. An integrated approach ensures that key messages are comprehensively amplified through each
channel. Thus, measuring and fine-tuning strategy is essential for optimizing efforts and driving business outcomes.
• Owned media refers to web properties that a brand has full control over and that current and potential
customers will interact with the most.
• Earned media pertains to coverage, shares, reposts and reviews on third-party sites, publications and external
social media channels. A strong indicator of progress includes share of voice -- the percentage of a company’s
earned media coverage versus that of competitors -- which provides insights into visibility within a target
market.
• Paid media includes paid content promotion, paid influencers, promoted social media content and display
advertisements.

Influencer Marketing
In our experience, few promotional techniques rival the effectiveness of influencer marketing with respect to visibility
and validation. That’s why working with bloggers, trusted tastemakers and social media figures has become a
powerful vehicle for raising awareness and generating leads.

Building an influencer program starts with identifying respected industry voices, the individuals who show up in
keyword-based searches and have cultivated a strong following within your target segment. Then, evaluate how
effectively their platform and views will inspire action. Next, engage with your shortlist to find synergies and lay the
groundwork for a mutually beneficial relationship.

Content Marketing
Content marketing can be a key way to elevate your company, products and services to stand out among competitors.
Develop educational whitepapers, blogs, industry reports, videos and webinars that offer exclusive information
relative to customer persona interests and pain points. This can help your company become a trusted information
source.

A customer-oriented strategy and well-planned execution provides the opportunity to be found by potential customers
through search engines, grow an engaged audience, acquire new customers, and foster relationships and sales with
existing customers.

Content marketing requires significant planning, coordination and patience. The goal is to develop and distribute
content that will be compelling and useful to key customers. Therefore, the planning process includes identifying key
customer personas and analyzing their goals, challenges and decision making process so you can learn how to best
engage them with content along the way.

Thought Leadership
A key component of a strong content marketing strategy includes a thought leadership program. Establishing your
company’s leaders as visionary subject matter experts within respective industries allows readers to look to your
company, executives and web channels for information, best practices and, ultimately, guidance on products and
services.

Editors and readers are looking for informative articles that provide a unique viewpoint while being relatable. In our
experience, effective thought leadership uses real-world anecdotes and customer examples to establish credibility and
focuses on addressing the challenges and business issues faced by key customers.

Amplification
After content is created and coverage is secured, the work is far from done. A content amplification plan uses paid,
owned and earned media channels to optimize visibility and engage target customers moving through the sales funnel.
After doing your homework on those key customer personas, evaluate the media channels and strategies that will
provide the greatest return on investment and can be easily managed. For example, once a new piece goes live, ensure
that corresponding social media has been developed and sales teams are notified to maximize visibility. You may also
want to consider sponsored posts.
SEO Optimization

SEO is relatively cost-effective and its benefits are long-lasting in comparison to other digital channels. When done
correctly, any effort dedicated to SEO has a lasting impact on a business’s online presence.

However, the SEO environment is constantly changing. Therefore, sustained effort must be applied to ensure that
online content is frequently reviewed and optimized according to the latest rules and practices. For example, link
building, keyword usage and duplicated content across the internet are all variables that affect page rank and the
chance that audiences find and engage with your content.

Data-Driven Metrics
With the plethora of tools and strategies available for digital communications, data-driven metrics are essential for
measuring engagement, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and fine-tuning your strategy.

Google Analytics is a go-to tool for analyzing communications efforts, providing website analytics on metrics including
total referral traffic, traffic sources, session behavior and goal conversions. These metrics provide further insight into
customer touchpoints, which external channels are driving traffic, and the content that best resonates with target
audiences.

Stand Out
The digital landscape is a relatively level playing field, ripe with opportunity. Aside from paid media, all of your
competitors have access to the same free or low-cost outlets and tools that you do. A strategic digital communications
plan is what enables your brand to stand out above the noise. Use the information above to create a plan that will get
the attention of key audiences and help you achieve your business objectives.
 Peer-to-Peer Is the Next Wave of Influencer Marketing
BARRETT WISSMAN | JUNE 2019 | SOURCE: ENTREPRENEUR.COM

After reality television transformed Average Joes into overnight celebrities and social media took over phones, very
few people were surprised by the rise of influencers. As lifestyle entrepreneurs, house flippers and motivational
speakers took the stage next to the Kardashians, people took for granted that “non-famous” people would start
selling them on a new way to see things (and buy them).

The trick: Non-famous people who grow a massive following don’t stay unknown for long. As these influencers
became famous, they started commanding up to $1 million per Instagram post. With those price tags putting them
beyond most companies’ reach, micro-influencers gained traction. These influencers, with smaller followings and
accordingly smaller fees, were accessible experts in the specific niches these businesses needed. They gave a stamp
of approval without seeming out of reach.

But Millennials and their Gen Z brethren are interested in authenticity, not salesmanship. They have diminished
brand trust compared to past generations, and they want insights from people whose lives are like theirs -- not from
people who have additional privileges. And that’s opened the floodgates for peer-to-peer marketing.

Is authenticity more valuable than a brand name?

Peer-to-peer (P2P) marketing is a method that involves customers engaging other customers through
recommendations. A big component of word of mouth, P2P has long been used on college campuses. Social media,
however, has made P2P into a business game, too.

The crux of P2P’s success: People trust people like them. Nielsen’s 2015 Global Trust in Advertising report found that
friends and family are the most trusted sources of recommendations, with 83 percent of respondents completely or
“somewhat” trusting peers’ suggestions. This is in line with other Nielsen reports, which have showed up to 92
percent trust in peers -- far more than any other group they interact with.

P2P helps businesses because it doesn’t feel like a sales tactic: People who aren’t being paid to shill for a company
wouldn’t recommend it if they didn’t believe in it. As more and more people gravitate away from businesses that feel
too pushy or self-focused, P2P options lend authenticity that literally can’t be bought.
P2P benefits consumers, too -- they can network their way to a better vacuum, a longer-lasting phone or a more
entertaining concert experience without paying for the privilege themselves. P2P lets people take back the
power promised to them by platforms like Yelp and give a voice to others who have nothing to gain but strong reciprocal
recommendations.

Putting money behind P2P

One business that’s investing in the P2P space is Surkus. Expanding internationally, the discovery platform connects its
clients -- brands and organizations looking for more exposure and engagement -- with members seeking access to more
events and services that fit their needs. Assessing attendance rates, engagement via social media and post-event
reactions has helped the platform determine what resonates with a client company’s ideal customer.

Surkus’ approach: People are just as -- if not more -- valuable to brands because they’re real, genuine individuals. Their
friends and family trust them, so businesses should be willing to treat them well and elevate their status as informal
influencers. Free or extended access or exclusive digital offers are all affordable ways for companies to acknowledge
the peer-focused ambassadors in their midst. Surkus has worked with a handful of P2P influencers in this way, helping
them showcase how their interests and hobbies intersect with the platform.

Flixxo, a video platform, is seeking P2P ground like Surkus. A decentralized platform built on blockchain, Flixxo aims to
eliminate middlemen by allowing businesses to directly pay tokens to consumers for watching videos. The opt-in
advertising system means companies are spending their money on ideal customers rather than using the spray-and-
pray method of yesteryear’s advertising.

Sweet, another blockchain-based platform, is also setting its sights on the P2P space. The “first tokenized loyalty
platform,” Sweet enables brands to reward users with tokens for liking, sharing, posting or watching their content. Fans
can then exchange their earnings for rewards specific to their own tastes, including everything from celebrity meet-ups
to cameos in music videos.

Founder and CEO Tom Mizzone explains that fans have “been doing thousands of dollars of work for brands” for free
for years. This is a way to reward that loyalty with something that ensures their word-of-mouth efforts pay off for them,
too. Voluntary enthusiasm, he points out, is much more valuable than the paid enthusiasm we’ve become familiar with.

While they certainly still offer lots of value to businesses, heavyweight influencers may be losing their status as premier
“outsider” advertisers. Recognizing that consumers are more interested in what their peers have to say, leaders would
be smart to invest in the people in the trenches -- without removing them from there.
 A Microsoft exec shows how to handle an uproar at work without
shutting it down
SARAH TODD | APRIL 2019 | SOURCE: QZ.COM

Last week, Microsoft was rocked by the outing of an extensive email chain in which women detailed allegations of
sexual harassment and discrimination they’ve experienced while working at the Seattle-based software giant. In 90
pages’ worth of emails, as first reported by Quartz, women shared stories of egregious behavior—from death threats to
a request to sit on someone’s lap—including incidents that they had reported to management or human resources, only
to be dismissed.

Given the seriousness of the allegations, as well as accusations that management had allowed the problems to fester,
one might have expected the higher-ups at Microsoft to attempt to nip the email chain in the bud. As researchers Dulini
Fernando and Ajnesh Prasad wrote in the Harvard Business Review in 2018, managers and HR departments have a
track record of attempting to silence women who speak out about harassment at work.

Sure enough, the Women at Microsoft group on Microsoft’s internal messaging system, Yammer, was temporarily
deleted last week, a Microsoft employee told Quartz. The group was later reinstated, with the official explanation that
an employee had uploaded a sensitive document so the entire channel had to be taken down.

Whatever the reason, it wasn’t a good look. But the email thread also prompted at least one response worth
celebrating.

One executive was quick to respond to the email chain with a counterintuitive message. Instead of attempting to cut off
a sensitive conversation, her response validated the original author’s concerns and invited further communication. Her
response, copied below, offers a case study in how managers and leaders at all levels of a company can offer a
productive and respectful response when employees raise the subject of discrimination and other serious issues in the
workplace. (Quartz is not naming the women involved in the emails in order to protect their privacy.)
The email chain began with a Microsoft worker asking for advice from other women at the company. She was having
trouble advancing her career and suspected that gender was a factor. Two other women responded with brief,
supportive messages. Then the executive jumped in, writing:

I was disappointed to read your email and hear that you have not had a good experience. I am going to set up time
with you to follow up and learn more. I don’t want anyone in my organization, Microsoft, or frankly anywhere to feel
this way. I know we have a lot more to do with respect to career planning for datacenter technicians and as a result
recently launched the Career hub. My team is working on how to communicate this more effectively and broadly so
everyone knows what resources are available. We are also in the process of training our Datacenter managers to be
better positioned to lead, coach and mentor.

I want you to know you have my support. Also, any other offers, please reach out directly to [the other woman]. Will be
in touch shortly.

There are several things worth highlighting in the executive’s response. First, she acknowledges that the other woman’s
feelings of frustration and disappointment are valid, and promises to set aside time for a one-on-one to discuss the
woman’s experience of being denied promotions. In this way, her email models the advice from Daena Giardella, a
senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, on how managers should handle sexual harassment claims.
“Learn to take stories about sexual harassment in your organization seriously,” she wrote in a May 2018 piece for
Quartz. “Be careful about snap assessments that a certain story or comment ‘is not a big deal,’ or not ‘worthy’ of being
further investigated.”

Second, the executive declares that while she doesn’t want anyone to feel that it’s impossible to advance in this
particular area, she knows that Microsoft has more work to do. And while she highlights the career resources and
training programs that are underway in an effort to improve advancement opportunities at the company, she does not
suggest that they will offer a silver-bullet solution.

Lastly—and perhaps most importantly—the executive offers her personal support and encourages other women on the
email chain to reach out as well. In this way, she effectively signaled to the larger group of women on the chain that
they would not be penalized for sharing information with one another. That kind of assurance from a person in a
powerful position is an important ingredient for an open discussion, since many women are rightfully wary of the
consequences of speaking out.
Dozens of women on the email chain went on to hit reply-all with a range of alarming reports. As Dave
Gershgorn reported for Quartz last week, “One female Microsoft employee alleged that during a work trip an employee
of a partner company threatened to kill her if she did not perform implied sexual acts … Another said that she had been
called a ‘bitch’ at work more than once, and found it was pervasive in the company.”

Microsoft is not the first company to have its internal communications used to draw attention to allegations of bias or
discrimination in the workplace. In 2017, Bloomberg reported that an email listserv called “Yes, at Google” was serving
as a grassroots effort among Google employees to track and share allegations of problematic behavior. And in 2018,
female employees at Nike teamed up to conduct an unofficial survey about women’s collective experiences of
harassment and discrimination at the sportswear company, the results of which prompted an internal investigation and
the ousters of multiple Nike executives.

The email thread at Microsoft quickly reached the senior-most leaders at the company and drew a response from chief
people officer Kathleen Hogan, who also responded with encouraging language, writing, “It is very painful to hear these
stories and to know that anyone is facing such behavior at Microsoft. We must do better.” Hogan also announced that
Microsoft would be setting up feedback sessions the week of April 22 to follow up on the problems discussed in the
email chain and would plan steps to address them.

But it’s worth noting that the email thread might not have had gained so much traction in the first place, nor gotten
Microsoft’s full attention, without the first executive’s initial encouragement.