No, the blogosphere won't change the global economy...with sycophants like this asking the questions.

Remember the video that went around in '04 showing how to open a Kryptonite lock with a bic pen? According to business blogger Dave Taylor, it didn't hurt Kryptonite at all. How does he know? He interviewed the public relations manager at Kryptonite.
Q: How long did it take for your company to be aware that there was negative publicity in the blog community?

We were aware of the Internet involvement with this issue from the first day. This included blogs and forums.

[The common "myth" of the Kryptonite story is that the company wasn't paying attention to the blogosphere and that it took weeks for it to learn that there was a problem, but as you can see it isn't true and Donna and her team were aware of the problem from the very first day. --DT]

Q: When you did learn about the negative publicity, did you see it as a crisis management problem, or did it not seem that dire?

Dave, we were working around the clock to research the allegation and create a plan for our customers. We took this very seriously from day one. Contrary to popular belief, the media attention didn't make us take notice of this situation; we were already well into creating a plan by the time the traditional media were publishing their stories. I've seen in print that only after the New York Times article on day five did we come out with a plan and talk to the media. That's not true. We were talking to the media from day one.

[Again, the "myth" of the Kryptonite story, that the company was out of touch and didn't know anything had happened until the New York Times broke the story is completely false. Indeed, it is the desire to debunk the untruths and myths about this entire situation that motivated me to produce this interview with Donna in the first place. --DT]

Q: Did your company ever consider legal action against the person who disseminated the information about how to defeat that particular type of lock?

Need to go corporate here. We don't discuss any legal matters publicly, be they in process or in theory.
Hope you caught that last part: The p.r. person can't definitively say Kryptonite isn't suing the individual who posted on an online bike forum about the lock--a product the company ultimately replaced as deficient, in numbers up in the hundreds of thousands. That's a great way to restore confidence in the brand, leaving the impression that truth can be clouded with litigation and that the truthteller will be punished by an entity with better resources.

- tom moody 2-20-2006 10:52 pm




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