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Saturday, January 17, 2009

Damage Control

A company can do everything right for so wrong, but online, a single mistake can cause a whole lot of problems.

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Hulu ran into this problem recently; by removing a bunch of their episodes, at the request of the license holder, they caused a bit of a stir among their fanbase (this sort of thing is not an uncommon occurrence, actually - Youtube takes things down all the time). Yet, Hulu did something that most other companies do not: they apologized, and reversed their action.

Lots of companies actually put out CEO letters, but often times, they are backed by propaganda motives, with the sole purpose to highlight their products. User comments tend to point this out, though the Letter from the CEO is still much more effective and personal than most of the other PR methods used by companies.

What makes Hulu's slightly different is that their letter does not particularly talk about their services - rather, it is almost entirely a letter of apology. This has gone over rather well with their viewers, as the comments are essentially all positive. This is also a good example of giving the user more than they expect - most people who watch videos online are well aware that they can be removed (though some people are more immature than others - see the comments on the right hand side of that page). The letter from Hulu even states explicitly that it is a matter of consumer trust: while it is still propaganda, it feels much more honest and personal than most, and the positive PR has been great (since a show that a lot of people have not heard of has now been posted in link dumps like Digg and Reddit for everyone to see). I doubt that expanding the fanbase was the purpose, but it's a nice side effect.

Full letter can be read here. If you aren't in the US, you can't watch the videos though.

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