Simon Blint is the Director of Visitor Relations for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He is also a man who until last week had a very small online footprint. Until last week if you Googled Mr. Blint you might have found his Facebook profile and little more. That exercise now will bring you many, many results all discussing his alteracation with a photographer in the museum. Very few, if any, of these discussions put Mr. Blint in a positive light. IN fact most of them make Mr. Blint appear petty, controlling and absolutely not someone you'd want as the director of visitor relations. I say these conversations make Mr. Blint "appear" because neither Mr. Blint or the SF Moma is talking. He might have a perfectly logical explanation for kicking a photographer who was following the letter of the museum's photography policy but since he isn't saying anything we don't know that.
In other words an interesting and controversial event happened one side
is talking about it and one side is silent. One side has posted his
detailed opinion about what went down and encouraged others to talk about it and share their opinions on the event. They're sharing alright and almost universally folks online have decided that Mr. Blint is a jerk.
From a customer service perspective a whole lot of potential visitors
thinking your Director of Visitor Relations is a major jerk isn't a
good thing. A worse thing is both the musuem and Blint staying silent
when people are salivating for some kind of response. People want to
know why Mr. Blint seemingly ignored his employer's stated policies and
threw a patron out. People are in fact begging for some kind of
response. On a completely non-related post of the museum's blog people are leaving comments wanting to talk about the incident.
The resident blogger has asked folks to stop commenting on the Blint
incident and instead keep comments "on-topic." The rub of course as
commenter torgeuax eloquently points out that the museum hasn't
provided a place where the Blint incident is on-topic.
Personal Branding, Corporate Branding and the Power of Social Media
As I mentioned Simon Blint had a small online footprint. The information available online about him before the Thomas Hawk incident was innocuous. Now should a potential future employer (or even date) check him out online the most prominent and most frequent information that will be returned all label Mr. Blint as a jerk, a control freak or worse. Mr. Blint's personal brand online has taken a sharp and dramatic nosedive. If you are in a position of any kind of prominence you should ask "when" not "if" your behavior and performance will be discussed and critiqued in very public forums. If you act like a jerk or throw a tantrum or are mean to someone in a public place it's very likely going to be blogged or otherwise written about online. This is the world we live in. Protect your personal brand; in other words act like someone is watching and writing it down, or you know, just be nice.
The SFMoma is a large, respected institution. It will naturally be able to survive any hit its repurtation this situation causes but it will take a hit. A completly and totally avoidable hit. If you google SFMoma Photography, like someone interested in photography and modern art might do, only the first two current results actually point to SFMoma's site. The rest, as you can imagine, point to blogs and news sources talking about Simon Blint and Thomas Hawk.
During the incident Hawk told Blint that he'd be blogging about it all. "I'm blogging this" can be a threat, a t-shirt, a joke or a promise. Most of the time people who say "I'm blogging this" probably won't have the audience to do much damage to the person or institution they're blogging about. Every now and then though a blogger will have that power. The Hawk/Blint affair was picked up by a tech blog for the British newspaper The Guardian. This is probably not what the SFMoma wanted our friends across the pond to be talking about when mentioning the museum. Social Media users have power, sometimes individually but always collectively. If Hawk's blog post hadn't been dugg, reposted and commented on so many times it would have been one cranky guy screaming at the gods. Instead it's a virtual army of disgruntled folks spreaking negatively about SFMoma and its staff.
Know What You've Told Your Customers Online
If you've published rules or guidelines somewhere online assume that a customer will repeat them to you verbatim at some point. They're going to know them so you better. Hawk verified where and how he was allowed to shoot in the museum before he went. He seemingly knew the museum's stated policy much better than the Director of Customer Relations did.
Everything You Do is Customer Service
Every single interaction you have with a customer and the general public is an opportunity to do good customer service work, even asking a customer to stop a behavior or asking him to leave is an opportunity to do good customer service. This situation has escalated so much larger than it ever would have had Blint been a bit more customer service oriented in his approach, even if Hawk was doing something wrong.
To distiIl this down: the vast majority of people writing about this week about SFMoma and Simon Blint probably never wrote about either of those topics before, now they're writing about them exactly in the ways you wouldn't want your company to be written about.
"Where is the topic for us to post questions about the incident we're interested in? you say keep it on topic, and I agree, but where do we discuss the topic in question? Your blog seems to have just one topic, clearly unrelated to the Simon Blint foolishness, but how doe we, the public, address this issue to you, the Museum? This blog seems like the right place, but how?"So what can this whole mess teach you about customer service and social media? It can teach us a great deal in three areas.
Personal Branding, Corporate Branding and the Power of Social Media
As I mentioned Simon Blint had a small online footprint. The information available online about him before the Thomas Hawk incident was innocuous. Now should a potential future employer (or even date) check him out online the most prominent and most frequent information that will be returned all label Mr. Blint as a jerk, a control freak or worse. Mr. Blint's personal brand online has taken a sharp and dramatic nosedive. If you are in a position of any kind of prominence you should ask "when" not "if" your behavior and performance will be discussed and critiqued in very public forums. If you act like a jerk or throw a tantrum or are mean to someone in a public place it's very likely going to be blogged or otherwise written about online. This is the world we live in. Protect your personal brand; in other words act like someone is watching and writing it down, or you know, just be nice.
The SFMoma is a large, respected institution. It will naturally be able to survive any hit its repurtation this situation causes but it will take a hit. A completly and totally avoidable hit. If you google SFMoma Photography, like someone interested in photography and modern art might do, only the first two current results actually point to SFMoma's site. The rest, as you can imagine, point to blogs and news sources talking about Simon Blint and Thomas Hawk.
During the incident Hawk told Blint that he'd be blogging about it all. "I'm blogging this" can be a threat, a t-shirt, a joke or a promise. Most of the time people who say "I'm blogging this" probably won't have the audience to do much damage to the person or institution they're blogging about. Every now and then though a blogger will have that power. The Hawk/Blint affair was picked up by a tech blog for the British newspaper The Guardian. This is probably not what the SFMoma wanted our friends across the pond to be talking about when mentioning the museum. Social Media users have power, sometimes individually but always collectively. If Hawk's blog post hadn't been dugg, reposted and commented on so many times it would have been one cranky guy screaming at the gods. Instead it's a virtual army of disgruntled folks spreaking negatively about SFMoma and its staff.
Know What You've Told Your Customers Online
If you've published rules or guidelines somewhere online assume that a customer will repeat them to you verbatim at some point. They're going to know them so you better. Hawk verified where and how he was allowed to shoot in the museum before he went. He seemingly knew the museum's stated policy much better than the Director of Customer Relations did.
Everything You Do is Customer Service
Every single interaction you have with a customer and the general public is an opportunity to do good customer service work, even asking a customer to stop a behavior or asking him to leave is an opportunity to do good customer service. This situation has escalated so much larger than it ever would have had Blint been a bit more customer service oriented in his approach, even if Hawk was doing something wrong.
To distiIl this down: the vast majority of people writing about this week about SFMoma and Simon Blint probably never wrote about either of those topics before, now they're writing about them exactly in the ways you wouldn't want your company to be written about.
Leave a comment