If anybody needed a lesson on what not to do when dad loses his job, Sarah Henderson, daughter of General Motors’ ousted chief executive Fritz Henderson, has the answer.
Within minutes of the announcement that her 51-year-old father had lost his job, she posted an angry message on Facebook, the social networking website.
She placed her message on General Motors’ own page on Facebook, describing Ed Whitacre, its new acting chief executive, as “a selfish piece of shift” (sic).
While her language may be questionable, Ms Henderson, one of two daughters, wins all credit for passion and family pride. Most of what she said cannot be reproduced in a family newspaper.
Suffice to say that after generous use of the F-word, she promised to “never buy from this godforsaken company ever again” and signed off with an expletive.
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GM was quick to remove the posting, but not quick enough. It was spotted by the car industry blog Jalopnik.com, which copied the page, reposting it on its own site.
The incident, while apparently trivial, raised questions about companies using social networking sites and blogs.
A number of large international firms, including Dell, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines and Charter Communications, have started using the sites to reach out to their customers, particularly those who have complained about their products or services. A popular Coca-Cola page on Facebook, which has more than four million users, was created by a couple of fans — not the company. Coca-
Cola decided not to force its closure, risking a backlash, but allow customers to use it as a forum for comment.
But allowing the public to comment on your company has its risks — requiring eagle-eyed moderators to weed out the rude and unflattering postings. And if you are doing that, you are not really being open at all.
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While the sites, blogs and discussion forums have provided companies with unprecedented access to their customers, they have opened up a myriad of opportunities for damage to a company’s reputation — as disgruntled customers are able to broadcast their frustration and anger to the world. GM, now a private company controlled by the US Government, has embraced social media and the internet since emerging from bankruptcy in July. It launched an initiative to sell cars on eBay, and invited customers to contact Mr Henderson using his “tellfritz.org” blog — until he lost his job.
Other senior executives have also been encouraged to contribute to various GM blogs, but sometimes the result of the company’s involvement with the fast-moving internet have been criticised as cheesy and not authentic. A recent blog post, attributed to Nick Reilly — the company’s Cambridge-educated head of international operations — was written in colloquial American English, using words like “gotten”, leading to comments that he would never have used such language.
Yesterday, GM would not comment on Ms Henderson’s intervention, insisting that family members of employees were “off limits”.
Embarrassing dad
? Meghan McCain, aspiring political commentator and daughter of Senator John McCain, the former US presidential candidate, embarrassed her father — and possibly herself — by posting a revealing picture of herself on Twitter, which attracted tens of thousands of views and comments
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? A videotape of David Hasselhoff, the Baywatch actor, made by his daughters, found its way on to YouTube. It depicted him drunk, shirtless and slurring, on the floor with a hamburger
? The Alec Baldwin, the actor, criticised his 11-year-old daughter in a leaked voicemail, describing her as a “rude, thoughtless little pig” for missing his calls in 2007