Corporate Blogging and Brand Awareness

Last week I wrote a small post about the impending Chrysler/Fiat deal and the need for Chrysler to user their corporate blog for true discussion purposes and not polished PR. Well, along those lines, I came across this article discussing a major PR mishap by Chrysler.

Chrysler took out a very large print ad in several major newspapers thanking America for their investment in the automaker (read: Bailout). Naturally, they posted this ad to their corporate blog which was then inundated with negative comments about gross fiscal mismanagement. Commenters suggested that instead of spending six figures on print ads, Chrysler could have posted on their blog, submitted to news services (e.g. Digg) and spread the word responsibly.

"To make things worse, Chrysler recently pulled the blog post in an effort to get rid of such negative comments. While, the ads were obviously a PR disaster for Chrysler, censoring its corporate blogs could turn into a whole new mess. Rather than issuing a carefully worded response it tried to sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened, and in doing so tried to silence the voices of its customers. However, as Chrysler discovered, such attempts rarely work in the internet world and now it has a new embarrassment to contend with. Thus far Chrysler has not issued a statement on the ads or its censorship of its blog comments."

Once again, they could have used their corporate blog for good but instead took the less favorable path and are now in far worse shape.