by Walter Naeslund on February 12, 2010
“I did not have sex with that woman… miss Lewinsky” is not a good strategy. Why? Because it’s untrue. If you think back at the Clinton/Lewinsky-affair, the big issue wasn’t really that Bill was unfaithful, but rather that he kept lying himself into a corner. Tiger Woods did the same thing.
In Sweden we have a politician called Fredrick Federley who is using the exact opposite approach. He’s being brutally honest and says precisely what he thinks about anything.
Here are some examples: He has admitted trying cocaine and pot, opposed the FRA-legislation, is homosexual and dates a person from the Let’s Dance jury, has an alternate drag persona called Ursula, parties hard and is pretty open with this in a variety of images. For example this one:

Imagine being a politician trying to get away with all this while lying! Pretty hard, right? Now however, with the brutally honesty approach he has, it all just blows past. In fact, it actually strengthens his brand. Honesty works.
On top of this, Fredrick Federley is a social media natural. He is very active on twitter and on his blog, and does it incredibly well. I you know Swedish, you should look and learn. Also, check out this amazing performance in a television interview. This is how you do it!
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by Walter Naeslund on September 28, 2009
In these times of economic downturn and agencies firing people left and right, perhaps a couple of ideas for job applications could be in order:
I see a lot of people applying for work with us by sending an email with a CV and a personal letter. Most of the time these are people that I’ve never heard of before. I’m sure they are brilliant and everything, but they are missing one thing: We at Honesty are REALLY into communication. We would never dream of recommending our client to send our an unsolicited email containing a sales letter and a spec-sheet. What we WOULD recommend is to build your brand, build interest, engage in conversation, and do interesting and valuable things within reach of the potential customer’s radar.
So. Engage with us. Create value. Move within the scope of our radar. We may not be able to afford you or have need for your particular skills right now, but you’ll become part of our network, our extended family, and our daily reality. That way we’ll have a relationship for the day when we need PRECISELY you, or when somebody else in our network needs you. Or perhaps it will be the other way around by then, and we’ll come knocking on your door. Who knows.
The point is that relationships should be built BEFORE they are needed.
So come on down, get to know us, have some virtual coffee with us on Twitter or whatever other virtual coffee shop, and when we get to know each other better, we’ll have a real cup on Södermalm.
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by Walter Naeslund on September 24, 2009
Here comes a short story on how not to answer customer complaints, a story that I’ve had the benefit to study closely over the past couple of months.
Long story short, my wonderful girlfriend got what we in Sweden call “värdelös service” (worthless service in English) from Elgiganten, a chain of stores selling consumer electronics. She had bought a MacBook there with an expensive insurance program, which Elgiganten didn’t want to honor when the computer died in an accident involving a glass of water. You can read the whole Elgiganten story on her blog. (It’s in Swedish, but hey, that’s why we have Google translate).
Anyway, after being met by rude people all over the place, and finally receiving an SMS where they try to make her pay more than the price of a new computer (!) for the failed repairs…

…she eventually loses her temper and writes the blog post above. But she also tweets about it…

Recently, I’ve had very good experiences with Twitter as a traffic driver. Retweeting of juicy content just works really well to boost a story. And nothing says juicy gossip like bad service. I don’t know why, but this stuff really pisses people off, and makes them really help out with RTs.
And Elgiganten are not there to answer. The closest thing I could find to Elgitanten is this…

…which doesn’t look so good (or genuine) to say the least.
Within a couple of hours, this thing has grown so big that Elgiganten’s head of service posts a comment on my girlfriend’s blog, personally taking responsibility for settling this affair and sorting out what has happened – complete with his phone number (again, foreigners, use Google Translate):
Hej Katja,
Mitt namn är Robert Jensen och jag arbetar som servicechef för Elgiganten. Jag blir uppriktigt sagt ledsen och besviken över att du som kund hos oss har fått en sådan dålig upplevelse. Detta går helt emot våra principer och policy om kundvård inom bolaget. Om du ringer 08-580 866 00 och söker mig och lämnar dina kontaktuppgifter kommer jag att kontakta dig under morgondagen för att hjälpa dig få ett avslut på serviceärendet. Det ska själklart inte behöva gå till såhär, varför jag också kommer att följa upp detta intert så snart jag har all information om ärendet.
Jag beklagar det inträffade.
Mvh
Robert Jensen
Servicechef
Elgiganten
Great response I would say, with one major problem: Being reactive is not a good and sustainable way of working with customer relations. What you (yes, I’m talking to you now Robert Jensen) are experiencing right now is just the beginning. You need to figure out a way to manage how you participate in the discussion about your brand, and you’re among the lucky ones to get an early heads up here. Take advantage of that.
Who did you say your agency was? 
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