“Whilst your dad is an evil genius,” the scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty tweeted to Aga Bakrie, “the word on the street is that you are extremely DUMB.”
The tweet made the entrance pages of media all over the world as journalists, used to the measured language of company press releases, seized on a seemingly unguarded comment displaying that even highly effective businessmen can descend to playground taunts.
For Rothschild, the publicity was a welcome alternative to revive curiosity in his long-running marketing campaign towards Indonesia’s influential Bakrie household, whom he blames for a plunge in the worth of ARMS’ predecessor company. Within 24 hours, his variety of followers on Twitter had jumped to 1,700 from 200.
But not all enterprise leaders have been so lucky with their apparently off-the-cuff remarks on social media.
Last yr Michael O’Leary, boss of funds airline Ryanair , was denounced by one Twitter person as a “sexist pig” after he tweeted: “Nice pic. Phwoaaarr!” to a girl, whose picture was proven throughout a stay query and reply session.
The former chief government of Britain’s Co-operative Group, in the meantime, laid open the divisions inside the company in March when he accused one or extra board members through Facebook of being “determined to undermine me personally” after his pay bundle was leaked to the press. He resigned a few days later.
Even Twitter boss Dick Costolo has received into scorching water on the social media website, evaluating educational Vivek Wadwha to over-the-top U.S. comic Carrot Top, after the professor was quoted as saying Twitter’s board lacked range.
Little shock then that analysis final yr by CEO.com and Domo discovered 68 p.c of Fortune 500 chief executives weren’t on any social community. Company bosses on Twitter are on the rise, up greater than half from 2012 to 2013, however the quantity stays small with simply 28 out of high 500 CEOs on the location.
For many chief executives, the dangers are simply too excessive.
“Unless you’re happy for something to appear on the front page of a newspaper or on a newswire you shouldn’t really tweet it,” mentioned Mary Whenman, managing director of company, monetary and public affairs at PR company Weber Shandwick.
Activist buyers
While a harmful platform for plain-speaking chief executives, social media has been used extra successfully by activist buyers trying to drum up assist for a marketing campaign.
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for instance, used Twitter for months to urge Apple to purchase again extra shares, earlier than the know-how group finally proposed in February a $14 billion inventory repurchase programme.
Nat Rothschild himself, whereas insisting his outburst towards Aga Bakrie was “instinctive”, concedes he joined Twitter a few weeks in the past for “strategic reasons.”
“I’m interested in Indonesia and my investments, one of which has a serious litigation component to it, and in that respect I want to make sure people continue to focus on the situation,” he instructed Reuters.
Although saying market transferring news over Twitter has been allowed in the United States since final yr, it’s off limits in Britain, the place it should first go although a regulated channel.
But Twitter permits companies to soar into a transferring news story and reply to occasions instantly.
“You can see how slow it is to use traditional emails and press release distribution systems,” mentioned Rory Godson, founding father of communications company Powerscourt, who urged to Rothschild he ought to be a part of Twitter.
“It is definitely not suitable for everyone … but for Nat in this case it enables him to respond very quickly and it also enables him to build global support.”
Know when to cease
Some enterprise leaders do make it work.
Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson are each seen inside the communications trade as masters of transferring minds with 140 characters or much less, though they’re protected by nearly unassailable positions inside their very own corporations. Murdoch has round 500,000 followers on Twitter, and Branson 4 million.
Jeff Joerres, chief government of staffing group Manpower who has over 7,000 Twitter followers, instructed Reuters the social community was an essential approach of giving huge enterprise a human face, although it was important to know the boundaries.
“You’ve got to put a bit of personality and imagination into it, but not go overboard,” he mentioned. “It’s my personal account, but at the same time it is not – I’m speaking as the company.”
One government to have received plaudits for his use of Twitter is Paul Pester, boss of Britain’s TSB Bank, who jumped on to the social community in January to reply to complaints after hundreds of money machines failed. His private tone in apologising and providing recommendation helped to handle the disaster.
For Whenman at Weber Shandwick, social media now has to be seen as a part of being a CEO. “In the same way a chief executive of any FTSE 100 company needs to do media interviews, needs to go into analyst briefings, they also now need to have a social media profile. It’s a normal part of business life,” she mentioned.
Manpower’s Joerres mentioned Twitter, like ingesting, was simply a matter of understanding your limits.
“People only need to worry about it if they do something stupid,” he mentioned. “I go to bars and don’t worry about it. You only go to bars and worry about it if you think you are going to do something stupid when you are drinking.”
© Thomson Reuters 2014