Online reputation management made easy.
Our guest for today is Mick Griffin, Head of Growth and Customer Success at Brand24.
This blog isn’t the end of it though. To know more about Mick Griffin and Brand24, listen to the podcast found above and let me know what you think!
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0:04
What's up, listeners, Morse Code here. Coming to you from HQ. Podhacker has been out in the field since my last incident with the ants so my wounds could heal. Very generous of him. And he just sent me this great audio of Josh interviewing a man named Mick Griffin of Brands24. You're gonna like this listeners.
0:29
All right, Mick. Thanks so much for flying in. I really, really appreciate you coming to the Lair. And now Where are you? Where do you live most of your time? Yeah, you'll
0:40
catch me right now in Poland right on the north coast of Poland.
0:44
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. So flying in from Poland to an undisclosed location here in outside of Orlando, Florida. It's an old, I guess, spy base that they've had decom that we've commandeered. So Mick, I knew that the subject has I'm kind of working on my project here. I want to create some content around developing superhuman skills or superhuman powers, so that you could know what everybody is saying about you everywhere as a business owner. That's really important to know. Like, what what sentiment is what's being said, not just about you, but you know, what's being said about your competitors, your industry. If somebody had those skills, they could do a lot of, well, hopefully not evil things, but they could do a lot of good things. Am I right?
1:53
Absolutely. Josh, this is the future as they would always say with these kind of technologies, right. This is this is what It's around the corner knocking on your door. You know, the thing that's like staring through your window that you don't know about to shift?
2:06
Yeah. Okay, so before, okay, so I happen to know that, that you have your own superhuman layer where you've created these, these skills that are the superpowers that you could outfit anybody with. But before we kind of get into that, and why that's so critical, what you could actually do with this, we will talk about like the the potential uses, you know, that you could do with powers like this. Where were you before? Did you see you started Brand24 right.
2:44
So I'm, I'm a partner Brand24. It started locally just before I joined so we the company thought that the it saw this idea that people wanted to know what was being said online about businesses. And it thought that it was a little Cool thing just here in Poland in in Europe, so they launched the Polish product. And then suddenly they were getting requests from, you know, from Hong Kong from the UK in California that said, Hey, listen, we need this, we need this, you know, these early adopters that kind of wanted to know what was being said about them around the world. And I was fortunate enough to kind of come in and my experiences from email marketing so I did I did six years of email marketing with with companies around the world and then kind of looked and said, Well, hey, listen, like is the social media company knocking on the door we want to help companies stay in touch and and I came in and we kind of went on that kind of try to pull into all corners of the earth.
3:42
And okay, so doing Why did they bring you in? What What did you possess that that brand 24 needed?
3:50
Yeah. So I think it was a couple of things really, one is that obviously I had some experience of taking a product that's very local and sharing it to, you know, to the US to Canada. Australia and, and that kind of internal process but I just spent six years in email marketing so just learning how people wanted to communicate how to share knowledge with people, like you're doing every single day, you know, learning the techniques that how people want to learn about tools about ideas and just a lot of kind of communication experience on, on how to kind of best share something when especially when it comes over as being a little bit futuristic, let's say
4:31
and, okay, so what was what was Britain 24 like in its infancy?
4:36
I mean, you know, we we like, as a company when we had like, you know, 510 people all working in a, like you said in a secure location in a dungeon far away from sunlight. And yeah, I mean, the beginning was was was exciting. It was really exciting because the industry we were entering was an industry that people still to this day, believe is justified. fortune 500 companies, you know, they think that only Pepsi Cola or United Airlines really have money to care about what people think about them online. And we've spent, you know, my time in brand 24, which is just over five years has been trying to say to everybody that this is not just a big corporation thing anymore. This is not just about learning. The money we spend on a Super Bowl was good or bad. This, this filters all the way down now to everyday life, everyday consumers, and it matters to everybody. So it's been, it's been super exciting, because we just thought that the first thing about the product was you want to know when somebody talks about you. And then we've, even as we're using the tool ourselves, we find in all these other kind of cool, quirky usages and benefits of monitoring the internet and learning what people are saying that we didn't even think about when we first made the product. So it's been it's a roller coaster, but it's, yeah, I mean, it's still All I can say is it still as exciting today as it was, you know, five, five years ago
6:01
And so let's talk a little bit about why it's so important for even the smallest of businesses to know what's being said about them. And I'll just kind of start by talking about how consumers have changed the way that that they engage with businesses, the way that they do that they buy products is before they buy anything, or engage with any brand. And this goes for big brands or small brands. I mean, unless it's really just a small purchase, we're going to check stuff out. Everybody today does their research, they do their due diligence. It's just how consumers behave today. And by the way, you know, if someone were listening to our conversation, and I assure you, nobody is because the private conversation. But if someone were listening this conversation and and they serve a b2b audience doesn't matter. And Matter of fact, I would argue b2b people, like businesses that are bought potentially buying products and services are probably even more diligent in in checking out somebody before they engage. And so, I mean, that's kind of the first part that I would start with why this is so critical is you have to understand that if you want to do business in the year 2020 and beyond, you have to you have to understand how consumers are looking at you and they're not just looking at your ads, your ads are, man that's just like, very, very, very, very, very top of the funnel, kind of just awareness, then, you know, it goes into many more places and and where where do you think See consumers checking out brands?
8:03
Yeah, I mean, the kind of kind of just kind of come back a second is that the great thing, the only thing is that you talked about this analogy a lot when you were a business 20 years ago, 30 years ago, their mentality was that even if they had a bad experience with a customer, that customer had almost no power, that all that customer could do is tell the people that they met the next day, or I don't like this, but but the circle of influence that that customer had was so small, that these big companies, they just didn't care. Yeah. And now we know that consumers have way more control way more voice and way more influence, let's say. So they've kind of realized that that power and and that is why now, businesses are now having to adapt to the consumer rather than the other way around. Yeah. So this is the and what's great is I mean, you've maybe experienced this like I have, I mean, myself and my wife, I can't get my wife to go into restaurant front door now without checking the review online first. Yeah, I mean, our idea of a crazy night out is not checking your review very often. Right? And so, you know, that's the only thing. I mean, a lot of people think that this is, like, you know, we do a lot of research at home right on our laptops on our computers before we make big decisions. So when we go on vacation, which hotel or what town we want to buy, but people are doing this on micro decisions. So before they walk into a restaurant, they will be outside checking the Yelp review on their mobile phone. They they can be in a retail store, like a gap or a an Old Navy, checking a product that they've got in their hands, they still don't you know, so even micro decisions now it's so easy to access people's information and people's comments on these products that it's happening all across and that you know, our numbers kind of show that it happens on eight 8% of the time. So you know, you're talking about nine Out of 10 people are checking every purchase that they make online. Yeah.
10:05
You know, it was. I remember Mark Schaefer, talking about a study, I think it was a Toyota minivan or something like that had done some research on the average number that, you know, they they attract one woman's buying decision. And she had looked at over 90 pieces of content before she settled in on the minivan of her choice. And that doesn't sound outrageous to me at all. Like That sounds very normal. Like we're going to watch YouTube videos, and we're going to read articles and we're going to read reviews and we're going to just try and gauge sentiment we're going to try, we're going to look for that user generated content. We're going to look for, you know, what does the media have to say? What do influencers have to say about about a particular product or service, we want to know, how is it working for other people?
11:06
I mean, there's there's two things that kind of come to mind that we've read. we've researched and found out like saying same similar things that we found out and talking to people like Mark is that one, which is really a game changer is that people now trust anonymous online reviews more than they trust them. Yeah. So if a friend comes up and says, buy this, they go, thanks so much. And then they go home, and they'll read what strangers say. And then the second thing is, is that they they don't even trust one review anymore. So people are now on average checking 10 or more like you said, Yeah, because they know that right? One could be a fluke, or they also know that one can be make fake or paid for or advertised. Exactly.
11:45
You know, and I try to share this with people is that, you know, when I go to someone's website, and I see testimonials, I'm like, Okay, yeah,
11:57
yeah.
11:58
testimonials on a website. You know, it's, I appreciate that, I would expect that the company who would have 100% control of what goes on there, you know, I'm just going to take all that with a grain of salt. I'm like, great for you. But yet, but there's, there's, there's better things that I think that that as business owners we can do, just in terms of maybe sharing reviews that are a little bit, maybe a little bit more unbiased, like, you know, embedding, you know, you're having the courage to embed your Google reviews or your GTA reviews or your you know, BBB you know, any any of that stuff. Facebook reviews, I'm trying to think of any others that you can think of.
12:47
Yeah, I mean, you've got things like trustpilot and a lot of the other one like I know, you know, from I'm originally from the UK, so you've got a lot of things like any kind of public service So a gardener to a builder to a plumber. The review sites that are there now are really big and huge because again, nobody everyone expects a business to say that the business is good, you know, everyone expects someone No one expects a business to put on their homepage, a two star review. right this is this is everyday life. But these these kind of verified organic review websites, like you said where you need to add the social proof now to your websites to your testimonials because they otherwise they just come over is unbelievable.
13:35
Yeah. So make beyond reviews that which we've been kind of talking about here. Let's talk about all of the places like if you had to do this manually without a tool like brand 24 like where would all of the places you'd want to be checking on a regular basis. Be
14:00
Yeah, I mean, this is this is where it even becomes slightly we can say challenging, right? Because it takes, it takes so much time. And that's the that's the thing. Now the internet is so vast. So, of course, we want to check the places you want to check your Twitter's your Instagram, your Facebook, your LinkedIn as maybe just because they're also made very easily to do so. But the next thing we want to do is we're going to do what every public person we would talk to normally after we're going to Google ourselves, right? We're going to do our selves. And we're going to see what is number one, number two, let's say, but still, it's just not failsafe I mean, if you were going to do this and and sleep well at night thinking that you knew everything that was out there. I think that this is this is hours and hours of a day checking every potential place. You've got really big sites now like Quora, you know for questions and answers. I mean, this is this is huge now for where people will go and get advice recommendations and and also So, you know, you've also got to remember that if you are doing this, well, if you are a business that you're doing marketing, well, this is organically going to get bigger and bigger. So if you've actually doing good a good job, you will go from 10 tweets or hundred tweets, which actually, almost will cost you more time. So, yeah, I mean that everyone should also have that sweet spot. Like you said, if I was in it, I would be thinking about things like, if I was in HR, I would be checking Glassdoor. Every every industry almost seems to have its little leader, I'd say. But on the other hand, we were looking just the other day, there is the there is a gaming streaming website Twitch, let's say. And we were even shocked because we were writing a story about this. And there is a Walmart employee streaming on a gaming website, complaining that he didn't have enough hours from his Walmart manager to pay for his new game. Now, in theory, that seems very easy. abstract, but still, it's something that if you walmer and you're in HR, you kind of need to know those things are going on. So there is no stone uncovered when it comes to things like this.
16:09
Yeah. And, and all of this stuff matters. Like, you know, it's, I think some of the most impactful impressions to me are when people are just organically naturally talking about a brand and you could tell they're, they're not going into it like a paid or sponsored thing. They're just like, just making conversation and then they just casually name drop. So, you know, make we've been fans of brand 24 for quite a while. And, you know, when this subject comes up, you know, I let people know, listen, we've tried a lot of platforms for monitoring. Brand 24 is pretty special. You've really created a great solution. And one thing that I really love about it is that you've made it accessible for small business owners. So so the There's an example of By the way, if someone were listening to us, they'd say, wow, you know, it's Well, yeah, he's got that guy on, you know, but you know that that's, that's I share that freely. And you know, I don't get a commission for doing that. But it's it's just, it's just a very natural and authentic like, those are the things like you want to catch those very native. Yep. conversational things on the web. And then what do you do if you're a business owner?
17:28
Yeah, I mean, again, I think the good thing is, is that like you said, like even today, we I give consumers and readers and listeners a lot of credit, because I think that their ability to identify something that's an organic recommendation versus a paid or structured partnership, I think that they've got a very good radar for that now. So I think that companies that try to fake this, they come up very quickly and you can see it. Now if you are finding mentions about yourself online, my biggest idea would be that just you Have to get involved now? I don't I think it's I think it's a little bit scary for some businesses. But what's great, and where this becomes a big plus, is that when somebody mentioned you online, the expectation of you is still quite low. If somebody calls your call center, they expect if they have to be on hold for 10 minutes, they get annoyed. Right? They a call center is expected to be a communication platform. But when somebody mentioned your business on social media online, and you engage, they hope you do, but they don't expect it. So when you do, they have actually an elevated appreciation of your brand. So we've got so many examples of a consumer that said that was disappointed with the service. Yeah. The company said, Hey, listen, I'm really sorry. Or hey, listen, this is why you feel this way. Hey, listen, I'm listening. And that person was like, wow, you replied like, Thank you like so instead. The turnaround from disappointment to appreciation was so quickly because this is a field where consumers are not really expecting the engagement yet, which is a big cost for any business that was birthed. And when you talk about this being like a superpower, this is where it really does become a superpower. Because the big players are not doing this that much. So it becomes the great equalizer. So if someone is like, you know, wow, I'd love to go stay in a hotel in New York City. If you got a boutique hotel that you've just opened up, and it's just you and your family and you, you've probably got a better chance of grabbing that business, then the Marriott or the Hilton addition because they are big, slow moving machines, right? So it is a big equalizer in a good way.
13:21
Look, people, people want to understand marketing and plan marketing, and it's really designed to be a marketing 101. And it's, it's the book I wish I had, like I said, I read many books, I went to many seminars, and I got little bits and pieces of value from all of them, but nobody gave me the big picture. Nobody said, right? here's, here's where step one starts, he stepped step two, step three, step four, and so on and so forth. You know, all that, you know, I was just a, an IT guy. And, you know, all I wanted to know is how do I get clients in the door and I was reading all of the all of these weird stuff like weird concepts, you know, branding and all of this stuff. sort of stuff, stuff that I just couldn't get my head around. I just wanted to a guide, like, where do I start? What do I do next? What do I do after that? I'm very process driven. And I think many, many people are I'm not kind of like that super creative type, you know, that people think of when when they think of marketing where you know, you're skateboarding around an office and all that sort of stuff. So, so to me, it was just what do I need to do to get more clients in the door? And so I really wrote the book I wish I had, and I think, coming from a place from that kind of place of someone who's kind of been awake at 3am wondering how am I going to make payroll this week? I think a lot of people resonate with that. And, and that's basically how I've written a book. I've written a book in very easy to understand language, and I don't have weird concepts that, you know, a very, very kind of theoretical and hard to understand. It's very, very practical. At the end of the book, you will literally have a one page marketing plan for your business. That's groundbreaking.
19:50
I think we all love getting those like when there's a Facebook group conversation, and someone will say, hey, I'd like to get more media who knows Somebody that could help me get more press, and then people start tagging me. Like, I know that that's a common that that's common for, especially for agency owners and other businesses like and that is really, really great when that happens when one of our friends thinks enough of us to do that. So Brand24, or any really great monitoring software. That's kind of like having the really, really good friend alert you, hey, Josh, someone's talking about PR you might want to take a look at this. Like that's the kind of thing you can be aware of. And so, you know, as the as the founder or CEO, you might not have the bandwidth to address that personally, although that would be nice, but certainly someone on your team, you could set up, I would say theoretically, I mean, that's a core. It's a core component of Brand24, but you could set up monitoring for You know, keywords like New York hotel, and bam, you get the alert as someone's talking about this, and and how quickly could you respond to a comment like that using Brand24.
21:14
I mean, we we will bring that to you basically what we would call real time. Or you know, as quickly as the internet collects kind of mentioned, we will serve it to the client. And that is a big part of what we do when we plan for the future. Because what we are seeing now is that someone can say something like looking for a restaurant in New York City. Yeah. And a restaurant can engage that conversation a week later, let's say a week, whole week later, and that person will still be like, Wow, awesome. Thanks for the recommendation. I'll try it out. Because again, the expectation is still quite low. And the competition is still quite low. Not a lot of people are doing this yet. So but where do we see this going? Is that in in 20? Four months, 12 months, maybe even six months, someone will write a looking for a restaurant in New York City. And whoever replies first will win the business. And those kind of threads will have four or five recommendations. And we know from you know, even old school sales tactics know that still I think it's the first person to engage a lead is 75% more likely to win the business. So that that kind of old statistic will still carry through to social. So responsiveness will be fast. Now what the great thing is, again, is a lot of the bigger businesses they overthink this so they Okay, what should we respond? Okay, let's ask our PR team, let them get their approval. There were stories that I think you may have even seen them where you'll get people now that will create fake one of the stories was there was a person that created a fake target account and they responded to target complaints 54 times before. It's targeted themselves. So, so so that's the craziness. But what you will see is, like I said, in the future, if you give if you've got if you're a small business, or if you trust your team members, they can be getting these kind of notifications on their mobile phone, right? So, hey, listen, someone just said New York hotel, pull out your phone, jump on Twitter, jump on whatever it may be, and say, Hey, listen, we'd love to have you over at our hotel. So that trust and that ability to say to your team, don't overthink it and react first that will become key in the future. Absolutely.
23:34
Wow. What are some, give me a couple of other examples if you could have of business owners, you know, maybe kind of like, you know, growth stage, doing pretty well businesses there on their up and up. Are there some clever ways that they've used monitoring to grow their business?
23:56
Yeah, I mean, one that comes to mind is that really like again, like you said, It's almost organic, I love their product which is there is a podcast company from LA called wonder it and they started probably around 24 months ago they started a couple of products one was called business was and they would tell the story of Coke versus Pepsi or blockbuster versus Netflix. But what they were doing is they were using brand 24 to track just how much bows they were around each episode for every single week they launched an episode and they were like, Okay, this content hit the mark did it generate emotion in people? Right? And then they would go all the way back not only to the marketing team but to the content creation team. It's a listen, this topic hasn't really done it for people. So it may have been for example a topic they I think they did um hyzer boss vs Miller, allow people didn't find that story. So cool, but they love Pepsi versus coke. And you can even see that content develop over time based on that just reading rather than what would we do 20 years ago, we would spend thousands of dollars on content focus groups, as you know, pre releasing the podcast. Did you like it, did you not? And now they're able to tap into this whole world of real time reactions to shows and produce more content accordingly. That was a great thing. I thought that was really good, because going down the wrong line is any business developing the wrong product, developing the wrong switch? You can lose so much time and money doing that. So the quicker you get access to feedback, the better oh my gosh, no kidding.
25:33
That's gold. And
25:35
yeah, I mean, and the other one we have is we have a startup company who works with those who I didn't get permission to tell their name yet, but I can tell the story, right. And basically, they're going into the webinar system. They're going to create a webinar software. And what they've done is they've basically gone Okay, well, they won. We we don't have a lot of traffic, we don't have a huge marketing budget. We're going to monitor WebEx we're gonna monitor goto meeting, we're going to see what everybody's saying about those tools what they like what they don't like. Yeah. And we're going to build our product map. We're gonna we're gonna build our marketing based on where we can see, there's still pain points. Yeah, yeah. And that works amazing for them. They grew really quick in the first 12 months.
26:20
So with Brand24, you can monitor social, you can monitor news, you can monitor YouTube, you can monitor forums, blogs, the web, I missing anything.
26:34
No, not really. I mean, the
26:36
monitor pretty much everything you have. It's like, I feel like it's actor x at a, you know, he puts on the little hat as he goes in cerebral surgery. And so it's like all of a sudden, all the all the x men meet all the mutants everywhere on the planet. It's kind of like having a god tier superpowers to be able to do that. Because otherwise, I mean, and I'll just share to let's talk just a little bit about, I think the alternatives where people might say, Well, come on, I sit up Google news alerts and I'm good. That's, I could tell you from experience, like that's, that's kind of a pretty small fraction of what's out there. Even news. That's a small fraction of what what is actually available out there.
27:32
I just had this conversation on Twitter like a couple of days ago, you could even see it in real time. Basically, there was a freelance journalist who was kind of complaining about Google Alerts, because what she was doing was creating content as a freelance journalist, but she never knew when it would be picked up. Yeah. I'm not an expert in the freelance journalists for it, but I believe that that's how it happened. And I was like, she was like, Oh, hey, listen, it's a shame that Google Alerts didn't say, Hey, listen, you know I totally get what you're saying. I just had a quick second run 24. And I saw that your article was posted today in Vanity Fair, and she was like, I didn't even know about it, you know, and it was her book, because her alternative is just to Google herself. And again, you know how Google works. It's like, if there's an article on page two or three, you're just not going to get there. We all focus on page one. And that's the challenge. So yeah, I mean, I think that my ultimate like thought process and brand 20 fours. theology, let's say is, if anyone I love when people to start doing it. So if you want to start with Google Alerts, if you want to just go into Twitter, and use Twitter search, please just do that at least it's a great start because you will be surprised what you find and that's that first aha moment like oh my god, someone Someone said they love my my product two weeks ago, I didn't even know about it. And then what what normally happens is people quickly go, Okay, I need this with some structure or I need this With some features that will help me and that's where people kind of migrate to a monitoring tool, let's say, but the ROI is so easy. The ROI is like, that's why we wanted to go into that area is like you said, What 111 new client or one client saved or one good story. And this thing, just kind of, you know, they just kind of, they make sense, let's say, yeah,
29:24
you know, yeah, you're right. And so brand 24. So the service starts at Gosh, what was the pricing? I know, you know? I was, yeah, so it starts at $49 a month. And you think about the, you know, if you're just you know, covering your own brand, you don't need the, you know, some of the other features 49 bucks a month, you're looking at $600 a year. You know, if you're able to engage with over the course of a year, you know, 10 conversate, you know, 1020 conversations, and you end up landing One or two sales out of that? Well, depending on your al v. Again, it that's why, you know, we've been using brand 24 forever. And you know, all of our clients. So listen, if you're a PR firm and you're not, I mean, I recognize it, there's some other solutions out there will show up and it should be this is mandatory, like if your social media agency like if you are in involved at all, in amplifying your clients message. So for us, every single one of our clients get this brand 24 reports on a regular basis, because that's how we show way here's the evidence that we're doing, you know, we get our clients, you know, anywhere from five to 15 Media placements every single month, you know, and so, if they rely on Google Alerts, they're only going to see a few of those.
30:51
Yeah, I mean, that that's the beauty of it because one side of his obviously, we strongly believe that you will make more revenue from from brother 24 but what it also does is like, it's a real safety net for you, because I feel like if you're not checking out what's being said about your brand, you know, every marketing dollar that you invest, you're putting at risk. Because if you spend $1,000 a month on Google AdWords or Facebook ads, I mean, this is this number is almost you know, most most brands are at that level around and you this is this is the floor that consumers do they see advertisement, great the advertisement that it's job, they will click, they even like what your product says, then they will check you. So if you're willing to spend $1,000 getting them to the website, but you're willing to risk that they may find something negative organically. It's It's It's almost like yeah, I mean, just just just safeguard all that great investment you're making to bring people to you by just making sure you know what they're going to find the new interact those do the good thing is that if as a consumer like silence is is deadly now so if you check abundance, There's nothing online, or there's a couple of comments with no responses from the company. It's seen as a negative, right? So even just responding to negatives and saying, Hey, listen, I'm sorry, you had that experience, or even backing yourself and saying, Hey, listen, I know that you didn't agree with what we did. But this is our business. Still new consumers will respect that. And they will think it's a real company.,
32:20
Yeah, yeah, negative reviews are not a bad thing. You want to talk more about negative sentiment negative reviews?
32:28
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, without being too like, kind of corny, like the statistics are, you know, like, it even if, if you have 10 negative reviews, then if you reply to all 10, there's a 60% chance that people will change their mind about you. So if you got 10 negative customers, if you talk to 10 of them, six of them are most likely they're going to go are okay, I'm going to give this person another try. So that kind of number is great. But just bottom line is just you know, real life scenarios right? If you can Playing in a restaurant in person, you expect the manager or the waiter or someone to kind of show you some empathy. Yes, right, that rule applies online. The difference is that everybody can see that situation. So all your future restaurant customers will be able to say what they complained and the waiter didn't say sorry, even now, you know, we're so we're just in this transparency world. But there is so many stories of negative reviews turning into positive reviews. So one is even like, there's a there's a food, there was a future of data got a one star review on Yelp, let's say. And it's a great story. If you if you google the one star review song on YouTube, you will get this. And what these spiritual owners did is they they made a song with a little ukulele and a mic and they put it on YouTube and said, saying we're really sorry for the one star review. Please come back. We would love to help you. This video has like 20,000 views. Yeah, hundreds of comments and people go in. We understand that that makes sense. Thank you for putting the effort into saying you know that you want to make it up. Consumers love that. So getting that getting those negative reviews and you know, just just to kind of give clarity to this there was I was we did this today in one of the workshops. There was a restaurant in my hometown in Manchester in the UK that got a negative review on TripAdvisor. Yeah. And what the lady basically said was the service was a little bit slow but the restaurant looked like a freak show because all your waiters have tattoos and piercings now. So the manager replied, saying listen, first of all, let me just say I'm really sorry for the slow service that we can solve. However, we also believe in total freedom expression for our waiters and waitresses. Yeah, we're the Hard Rock Cafe. This is part of us and please just be pleased just be a nicer person when it comes to judging waiters and waitresses. And that manager got a huge amount of good positive press. Yeah, you know, like all the local news plus some of the national newspapers kind of say Awesome manager sticks up for his team. So you don't have to always kind of like, kiss the feet, you don't have to always say sorry. You can also just backup your kind of beliefs as an organization and real consumers, real humans will see that and that's what it's all about being real, right? It's all about being
35:16
honest. And you're doing this. I mean, this is public. I mean, you're, you're doing this in front of the court of public opinion. So, you know, negative reviews are not, you know, people are not, you know, someone's negative review is not always going to garner sympathy. You know, someone's being unrealistic. But again, the much you know, that the real great opportunity is to, you know, is to empathize where appropriate, but also realize, okay, everyone's watching us right now. They just said that, what would be, you know, what would be the best way to handle this situation, knowing that everybody's watching right now?
35:56
Yep. And that's it. I mean, and again, just be Be honest. I mean, because again, as I said, I know we started talking before about how consumers have control. We also know when that control is gone too far. There was a there was a one star review of a restaurant on Yelp lately that went viral because the person said, best restaurant I ever went to. I told them that, hey, listen, I have 10,000 followers on Instagram, I'm going to recommend you guys, you were amazing. And she gave him a one star review because they didn't give her a discount on the bill. Oh, so she was like, This restaurant doesn't know how to recognize a nice thing from a customer and everyone was like, whoa, wait. If it's a nice restaurant, and you want it to just really organically recommend them. Don't expect something for free, you know. So, again, being consumers nowadays have such a good radar for what's real and fake. And every business should just do what they really like you said, Imagine you're having that conversation face to face. Do the same when it comes to social like don't try to change your brand or Don't try to act If it's not the real scenario, just be real. I mean, normally not 99 times out of 100 it will put you in the right direction. I agree. I agree.
37:10
Awesome. Make this was really terrific. This is a great conversation. I've taken a lot of notes here. And yeah, and so this will be part of the top secret project. I feel like if if too many people had the secret the secret superpowers, though, there could be chaos. So it's good thing that there's no way that anybody will hear what it is that we've been talking about, because
37:36
I I'm glad to hear because yeah, I mean, the more people that start doing this, the more money everyone will make. Yeah.
37:43
And we'd hate for that to happen. Exactly. Awesome. Well, Mick, you're a good guy. Thank you so much for flying in. And like I said, I'm just a huge fan of Brand24. And, you know, just a real briefly, you know, when we tried out a lot of different platforms and, you know, there's certain feature sets that we needed. And then we also just want to look at Well, how, how effective is the tool? And I could just tell you that Brand24 finds stuff. I don't know how you do it, but Brand24 finds stuff that we just were not seeing with other tools. And so for us, you know, that's, that's pretty important because every placement that we can show our clients that helps keep them on the books longer. So
38:32
no, I mean, it's a pleasure you know, you know, from the very first day we connected if they froze the if you're being successful, we've been successful. So it's not just a tool we don't we never want to just deliver a tool we want to deliver like the ideas equity. So we learned just as much from you guys as you do for me, so I'm really happy to always have these kind of conversations with you. Awesome. All right, Mick Griffin, Brand24. Let's get you on your private jet. get you back home back to Poland.
39:00
Thanks, friend.
39:03
That was awesome and it felt really good not being the one who had to get that audio this time. I know I won't be kicking back in HQ very long so I'm definitely going to try to milk this for as long as possible. If you guys liked this podcast then please subscribe, and if you want more ways to spy on Josh then check out upmyinfluence.com I'm Morse Code. Over and out