An executive at Uber Technologies is facing criticism for saying that the mobile car-booking startup should hire a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on journalists who scrutinize the company. Emil Michael, Uber’s senior vice president of business, was speaking at a dinner in New York last week that included BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith, who reported on the comments yesterday. Michael suggested the San Francisco-based company was willing to spend a million dollars to look into journalists’ personal lives, according to BuzzFeed’s article.
Let’s say you run a relatively new business. Your business model, which offers something new and exciting to many consumers, is aggressive, revolutionary, and guaranteed to shake up the established order. That said, do you:
1) Wade in carefully, work hard not to ruffle feathers, and kill them softly with kindness? Or do you
2) Rush in where angels fear to tread, break the fine china, and piss people off by announcing that there’s a new sheriff in town and that anyone who doesn’t climb on board will be dumped like so much bad cabbage?
If you choose door #2, odds are you work for Uber, which could stand to learn a thing or six about public relations. Lesson #1: Even IF you are planning to dig up dirt on reporters who aren’t uniformly worshipful of your mission, DON’T ANNOUNCE YOUR PLANS IN A PUBLIC FORUM. If your plan involves total world domination, WHY would you want to warm your potential targets? Especially when it comes to reporters, who have a way of fighting back when their hackles are up?
I can’t begin to imagine what Emil Michael may have been thinking. Since he’s a Senior VP at Uber, I feel honor-bound to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m going to assume he didn’t get to his lofty position by being an extra on the set of “Dumb and Dumber To.” That said, even I have to wonder what could have possessed someone so ostensibly intelligent to say something so phenomenally, mind-numbingly stoopid.
As hard as this might be to believe (or not), Michael comments did get the required ritualistic smackdown from Uber’s CEO:
“Emil’s comments at the recent dinner party were terrible and do not represent the company,” Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive officer, said in a tweet.
The remarks were a departure from the company’s “values and ideals” Kalanick said, adding that Michael’s duties at Uber don’t involve communications strategy or planning.
I can only imagine what the conversation between Michael and Kalanik entailed. I have to believe the question, “WHAT THE F—K WERE YOU THINKING??” was featured prominently in the discussion, followed by, “PERHAPS YOU’D RATHER BE BREAKING ROCKS AT OUR MAGNITOGORSK REGIONAL OFFICE, COMRADE??” Oh, to have been a fly on the wall, eh??
A very wise person once told me in my angry young man days that I’d catch a lot more flies with honey than vinegar. Once I got past trying to figure out why I’d want to catch flies, I came to understand that she was right. Turns out that gratuitously pissing people off isn’t a great way to win friends or influence enemies. In fact, it will leave some folks with anger management issues wanting to repeatedly back over your lifeless corpse with a forklift.
Personal threats are “often the last ditch resort to try get journalists to dial down their intense scrutiny,” said Kelly McBride, vice president at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Florida. “It’s not uncommon when you challenge authority that authority fights back.”
Now that Captain Obvious has checked in, Michael might want tread carefully (especially since Uber is trying to break into the Portland market). As you might expect from a large city with a well-defined and regulated taxicab market, taxi companies are not at all happy that an unregulated interloper is trying to gain access their domain. While Vancouver, WA, and Portland’s suburbs are getting into bed with Uber, Portland has yet to acquiesce, primarily because of the intense political pressure from taxi companies. That being the case, delicacy and diplomacy might be the order of the day.
Or you could storm the castle and blow things up. Your choice.
