MSc Marketing at Salford Business School: One Year Later

Time flies and it seems to move faster when you keep yourself busy. Just what I've been doing ove the last 12 months: Keeping myself busy. 

It was a sunny but windy day of 2014 when Marta submitted her dissertation after a year of sleep depravation and thousands of hours of sitting down reading, summarizing, analyzing, writing, editing, reading and rewriting. Now that I rethink it I don't actually remember how weather was. Most likely rainy (sleep depravation times, remember). 

The day after the DD-day (Dissertation Deadline) I came back to the place I had been working as an intern, now as a full-time worker. For a person who's been living on internship salaries and zero-hour contracts, having a full-time position felt like a dream. Contract, holidays, salary over the minumum wage, travel expenses... the whole lot: the paradise of the postgraduate. 

It's been a year of hard work at Web Shop Direct: Getting used to the company, learning about the tools I use in my everyday, but also learning about the products and the sector. I not only need to choose the best plugin for my blog about tights or knowing how to analyse on Google Analytics the traffic coming to this blog, but also sharing interesting and useful content. So, yes, I've been learning about hosiery and, on the meantime, I've become a little bit of a Fashion victim. Ask me about Fashion trends or celebrities, I rule it. 

Grades came and I happily got a Distinction (Yay). Then Alex Fenton asked me to join the Little Chip Awards on the Placement/Aprenticeship category and (surprise suprise) I happened to win it. Yes, it's an award for being an intern, but I have always been a good intern (References can be provided on request). 

More recently our amazing website for pretty amazing bikinis and swimsuits has gone responsive and, luckily, UK Tights has also moved to a responsive design. Furthermore, a new online store for Fine lingerie sets and lovely nightwearis coming live very soon. As you can see I can't help myself: I like keeping myself busy and I couldn't ask for a better job (or a greater job place). 

I'm going to use my own recipe and creating a calendar of contents with posts for every month. Does this sound good to you? In the meantime, why don't you tell me (and whoever reads this) what did you do on your first year after uni? 

How to destroy your reputation in a single email

Building a brand reputation is a long process. It takes ages to create it and it needs of much careful and patient manners to keep working on improving it. Brand reputation is a must for companies and Social Media plays a key role in building reputation.  

On the one hand, Social Media is great to complement the offline branding strategies of every kind of company, not only because Social Media increases brand awareness, but also because of the positive synergies with social networking and the greater interactivity with users (clients and potential customers). 

On the other hand, a company's mistake can be easily spread online. If PR's reaction takes too long, consequences can be terrible. So, a single tinny mistake, followed by the wrong PR response, may become viral: as contagious as a flu. Then, there we have: an online public lynching against the brand. 

Innwise: A model not to follow

https://twitter.com/abadgz

Alejandro, a Spanish young joobseeker had an interview in Innwise, a marketing consulting company. Hours later, he received the following email, obviously by mistake: The liked ones (...) I'd may be harder to get the candidate from Toledo for 400€ [monthly] than the "pipiolo" (little boy) for free. I'd hire Alejandro for 3 months, trying free or up to 200€ in part time and 400€ to César". As you can imagine, Alejandro was very upset with the email, not only because they used the word "pipiolo", synonim of "little bird" to refer one of the candidates, but, more important: it reveals how some companies in Spain agree with the extended practice of youth exploitation with the excuse of the weak economic situation. A manager from Innwise contacted the candidates to apologise, some workers of Innwise tried to minimise the mistake saying it was out of context and the company apologised on Twitter, too. It was too late: #becariopipiolin had became trending topic. And so, the damage to Innwise reputation had gone viral. Besides Twitter and Facebook, #becariopipiolin has been main topic in Hufftington Post and it has been the most read post in Menéame.

Tweets about "#becariopipiolin"

What to do in this situation?

Well, first of all, a company should not allow this kind of policies and pay more attention to private communications in such topics, where information is meant to be confidential. But after there has been an incident like this, a trust and quick apology is vital. 

The apollogy note should contain: 

- The vision of the company about what actually happened. 

- The name of the person on charge: the company needs a face to prove the apology is not fake. Hidding is not going to help at all. 

- Any way to contact the company: it is always best to face problems than avoiding them. It is going to be a hard day, but an effective response will reduce the damage for the brand reputation. 

- A trust apology (not only "empty" words). 

The PR team should contact the whole staff to let them know what is happening, instead of allowing/promoting their staff trying to minimise the damage. It makes things worse, as users become angrier while interacting with them. It is the company (and its PR department) the one that has to sort it out the issue. 

What would you have done in their situation?