… sometimes departments here have allowed a culture of “duck and cover� to rule them. Personally I think the new idea of “One Click, One Touch, One Telstra� is fine- in theory, but there will need to be more than just a fancy jingo and a series of cool new ads. We need to look at what we rate as important and make it happen.
When big organisations want to look like they ‘get it’ the shareholders’ opinion often gets in the way. This looks like a case of “Shit, what will our shareholders think? Let’s get rid of that blogger, we don’t want him causing trouble.” What a shame for Telstra – the company has lot talent.
Big companies can’t approach online strategy from the same angle as small companies. When you’re small, being transparent and honest is one of the best moves you can make. Throw shareholders and a monolothic management structure into the mix and not everyone will think it’s the best idea. If it’s such a concern, why not get smarter about publishing? What about only giving the ‘Publish’ button to the PR department, so they can proof everyone else’s drafts?
Publishing filtered content is better than not publishing at all – without the above paragraph Tom’s post was still stellar for Telstra’s corporate image.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The ironic thing is that, according to my understanding of how the NWAT blog works at Telstra, Tom’s post WAS approved by PR and Legal before it went up. The Tesltra bloggers don’t get to post themselves. Their posts go into a approval system before they go live. That’s my understanding anyway.
The blog posts on the corp blog site are (from what I coulod find out) checked by PR and legal. Tom’s blog was published so it must have passed.
Where he has apparently run into trouble is with his own dept’s opinion of him doing this. Dinosaurs inside the organisation!!
Very interesting comments guys, thanks for stopping by. From the sound of it his comment has been approved and the backlash came after approval. That’s potentially worse – possibly a case of inconsistent standards? That’s “dinosaurs” for you!