Gushcloud's response to Xiaxue analyzed

Merry Christmas everyone. OK many people have pointed my attention to the ongoing battle between Xiaxue and Gushcloud - now whilst I am reluctant to be dragged into a conflict like that and be forced to take sides, I am however, going to look at one aspect of this conflict which is Gushcloud's response to Xiaxue. So for those of you who have not followed this story, I guess it is best for you to start here on Xiaxue's exposé on Gushcloud. Now I was told by some of my sources in Singapore not to rush to judgement after having read Xiaxue's rather intriguing piece. I was told by another Singaporean blogger (who wishes to remain anonymous - and I stress this is her/his opinion, not mine):

Xiaxue on the warpath!

"Don't believe everything you read: Nuffnang could be just as guilty as Gushcloud lah, they are all just as bad as each other - all this crap about inflating numbers, figures and statistics. What Xiaxue did is somewhat unethical because she went out of her way to trick Gushcloud - that's evidence obtained through entrapment. Gushcloud's response may not have been the most articulate - but they were caught by surprise. This came out of the blue, just like that. I'm not taking sides, I just don't like to see an ugly fight like that with no winners. It does the Singaporean blogging community no credit whatsoever." 

Now since Xiaxue drew first blood in this battle, Gushcloud's response is important because silence would tantamount to an admission of guilt - but good grief, when I visited the official response on their blog, I was sorely disappointed. Good grief, it was a super long statement that made Hamlet feel like a pizza delivery menu - it just ran on and on and on with zillions of case studies and examples without actually dealing with a lot of Xiaxue's accusations directly, or at least not without talking about a lot of other good examples of their work first. Now Limpeh is from the world of PR and I would look at something like that and just shake my head. Verdict: epic PR fail. Look, I am not accusing Gushcloud of lying. I am not saying that anything they claimed in their official response is untrue - I'm just saying that they are totally clueless and hopeless when it comes to communicating a PR message during a crisis.

There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with a PR crisis.

When you have a PR crisis, you need your audience to get the facts straight and fast. You do not try to bore them, confuse them or obfuscate with a wall of text - that only suggests to me that you are trying to build a wall to hide behind. No, you cannot count on the people who are undecided on the issue to try to wade through your wall of text to find out what is really going on. Nobody is going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now I counted just how many times I had to press my "Pagedown" key on my laptop in order to get through that full statement. Can you guess just how many times? 37 times. And that's on my large Toshiba laptop with a big screen. Can you imagine what it would have been like to try to have read that piece on an iPhone screen? It is effectively an unreadable wall of text.

So do you know where the problem lies? Allow me to give you an analogy from the world of finance (where we use plenty of clever PR & marketing too). Now here's a stupid mistake that many people in the financial services industry make.They have a brand new product to launch but when putting together the product prospectus (which describes to the potential investors what they are investing in), they think, "ah this has all got to be legally compliant, so let's get the lawyers to write this for us." The lawyers of course, charge by the hour - they don't give a shit whether your product sells or not. And of course, they are legal experts and will produce a document for you that is 100% legally compliant with all the laws in the jurisdiction where you wish to distribute your product. But can your average investor actually make sense of the wall of text that the lawyers have put together? No, they cannot - like, what were you expecting?

Do you think you can leave PR to lawyers?

The way to do it instead, is to get a PR & marketing expert to put together the product prospectus in language that is both professional and accessible, which explains the investment to the investor in a way that is clear and transparent. After the PR & marketing expert has worked his magic, you then pass the final draft to the lawyer to make sure that everything within the final draft is legally compliant and make any small changes necessary to the language at that stage. So therein lies the difference: do you trust the lawyer (with no PR & marketing expertise) to write the main body of your text, or do you merely get the lawyer to proofread a professionally crafted body of text, only to make small changes to the language to ensure that it is all legally compliant? Oh don't be fooled by sexy law dramas like Ally McBeal, some lawyers are just geeks who have spent years memorizing volumes of law books and are actually clueless when it comes to understanding PR & marketing.

Does it sound obvious to you? It should - but you'll be amazed how many seemingly intelligent people make that stupid mistake and pay their lawyers a lot of money to craft anything from unreadable marketing material to wall-of-text PR statements in times of crisis. I am not claiming that all lawyers are hopeless when it comes to PR & marketing - but that's the same as saying "I'm not claiming that all lawyers can't bake a cake...." I'm sure some lawyers are very good at whipping up a cake in the kitchen, but if you really want to buy a lovely birthday cake for your best friend, do you go to a lawyer or your local bakery? The answer is obvious: let lawyers handle legal work and little/nothing else.

Maybe your lawyer can bake cup cakes too...?

You see, in Gushcloud's case, it does come across as a statement that has been crafted by their lawyers. By their own admission, they did say in their statement, "We spent the 36 hours speaking with our investors, clients in the region, influencers and lawyers about this matter to assure and clarify the matter with them and to seek their permission to use and make certain data public." OK fair enough, but did you craft the statement yourself or did your lawyers craft it for you? I don't know, it doesn't matter but either way, the result is poor.

Let's deal with point 1 for example: Allegations about “inflating earnings”.There was a lot of blah blah blah TL:DR then comes the bomb shell:  "one of our employees spoke to the media about our earnings and this was mistakenly construed to be S$170k monthly. This was an honest mistake. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have come out and issued a clarification (I was not aware of the mistake then)." Oh my. That's you admitting that Xiaxue was right and you're wrong. But to claim that this was an honest mistake is questionable: regardless of how that erroneous figure of S$170K made it into print, you still made no effort to clarify matters despite having had ample opportunity to do so and still gladly used that article for your PR purposes? Now that is dishonest at best, if not downright fraudulent.  

So when we you going to admit to that mistake then?

Okay, allow me to use an analogy to illustrate my point. When I was a lot younger, I used to represent Singapore at loads of international competitions as gymnast. I may have been a former national champion, but when competing with better gymnasts on an international stage, I would be lucky to make a final, never mind win a medal. I truly enjoyed the experience though of competing with so many great gymnasts from all over the world and I was extremely friendly, always taking the opportunity to chat with anyone and everyone: gymnasts, coaches, judges, fans, parents alike. So, at the 1993 SEA Games, the best position I earned at that competition was a 4th place in the men's team competition. I had a very mediocre performance and didn't win a medal - but I had made friends with the Indonesian gymnast who won something like 5 or 6 gold medals. At the end of the competition, I asked if I could take a photo with him and his medals. He said sure, then proceeded to take all the medals off his neck and hung them around my neck for the photo. I laughed and said that I can now show all my friends that photo and tell them I was the men's gymnastics champion at the 1993 SEA Games. 

Now imagine if I posted that photo today on social media today claiming, "here I was at the 1993 SEA Games #gymnasticschampion" without actually explaining that those weren't actually my gold medals. Clearly using that photo without any kind of clarification would give the impression that I had indeed won that many gold medals at the 1993 SEA Games - I didn't set out to trick or deceive anyone when the photo was initially taken all those years ago, it was a spontaneous gesture on the part of that Indonesian gymnast. But somehow I had ended up with something that could give people an impression that I was a lot more successful that I actually was at that time. So I would be quite careful about how I would use that photo today, especially since I have no intention to use it to inflate or exaggerate the success I had as a gymnast back in the 1990s. For what it was worth, I would rather be honest about the modest success I had achieved rather than be discredited as a liar who has no credibility. Thus that is why I feel that Gushcloud has made a grave error in judgment in not having issued a clarification when they had noticed the error. 

The next part of their extremely long statement is what I call, "avoiding the question by answering the question I want to answer." Let me show you exactly what I mean by this by sharing with you a classic clip featuring Jeremy Paxman grilling Michael Howard over a politically sensitive issue: Michael Howard refused to answer the question that Paxman repeated 12 times - his tactic was simply to keep talking on and on about what he wanted to talk about instead whilst effectively ignoring the question over and over again.  This is a dodging tactic often employed by politicians. 

The centre of Xiaxue's allegation was about the way she had gathered evidence with the way she had made up a character Doug Chu SL who ran a mock business called SGPrivatetrainers, using the persona of Doug, Xiaxue was able to recount a large number of wrongdoings on the part of Gushcloud which she has outlined on her blog piece. Now just try this: if you don't have the Gushcloud statement already open, then click here to open it in a new window. You got there? Now do a word search for Doug. Zero matches. How about SGPrivatetrainers? Again, zero matches. What is going on here? You can argue that what Xiaxue has done, in 'going undercover' is unethical - but for Gushcloud to completely ignore that whole Doug Chu SL and SGPrivatetrainers episode and just issue a list of things that they have done right and well in response to Xiaxue's allegation? It is hardly a credible response: nobody is saying that Gushcloud has never done anything right or good in the past - of course they have, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten this far as a company in what is a very competitive market. We're not interested in the stuff that you did right - we want you to account for what went wrong with regard's to Xiaxue's accusations: so answer the allegations directly and stop beating around the bush! 

But no, no explanation - just a long list of things they have done well in the past. That's pretty appalling PR. This is as bad as hosting a press conference after the disappearance of MH370 but avoiding any mention of MH370 and instead just talking about how great Malaysian Airlines has been all these years. It's that obvious. You just don't get away with PR gaffes like that. You have got to face the problem square on and grab the bull by its horns. Not answering the question is not the same as lying, listing your greatest achievements instead of answering the difficult question is not the same as lying - but trying to clean you image up with this tactic is clearly not going to work, not at least with people who have arrived at their PR statement looking for answers but have not found any. And as for their #FaithinGushcloud hashtag? What kind of fucking stupid bullshit is that? Who came up with that ridiculous shit?

#leavefaithtothereligionslahyoubodoh

Look this sounds as bad as Kong Hee telling his congregation to have faith him him and his ministry even after the whole saga of Sun Ho's China Wine fiasco has occupied the headlines in Singapore news for much of the last two years. I know it's Christmas time but you do not use language like that in the business world. Real businesses use effective PR and communicate clearly with their investors, partners and customers - Christians have faith in the stories told in their Bible, such as how Jesus can be crucified, killed then rise from the dead. It's impossible to prove, so it takes religious faith to believe in that. But if a company is asking you to have faith in them instead of providing you with concrete evidence such as the facts and figures behind their marketing such as Google Analytics (heck, even I use Google Analytics). This really isn't rocket science, you know. 

I could go on, but I won't. I don't want to take sides, I may have ripped apart Gushcloud's really fucking pathetic PR response to a crisis - but frankly, I don't wish to take sides in a fight I am clearly not involved in. I can recommend a great analysis of this saga here. I have said this before and I will say this again: there simply isn't the culture of spin and PR in Singapore. The government doesn't understand, lawyers don't understand it, even private companies just don't bloody get it. And it's not like there are no PR consultants in Singapore, they just can't be bothered to pull their fingers out and work because nobody has a clue just what to do when they have a PR disaster like this one. 

Why are Singaporeans so fucking clueless when it comes to PR?

Like seriously, this is because PR is not covered in your syllabus at school - you Singaporeans as great at memorizing loads of facts and figures for your maths, history and science exams and you guys feel so incredibly smart when you get your straight As at the exams. But let's put a real Singaporean company in a difficult position when they have to deal with something like public perception to an impending PR disaster and guess what? This wasn't covered in your secondary school syllabus so suddenly, nobody has a clue how to deal with this because it involves soft skills - something that nobody values in Singapore. 

It's easy enough for me to stand back and pour scorn on this mess, of course - but I would have been a lot more apt when it comes to at least dealing with the damage limitation after the shit has hit the fan (and this is Xiaxue you're dealing with). I wouldn't underestimate her - you don't need lawyers when you are up against Xiaxue, you need a brilliant PR consultant. Duh. Xiaxue actually understands PR as she is a self-made social media guru. Gushcloud's response has proven that they are utterly clueless in his aspect. What would I advice them? Huh. Limpeh doesn't give out that kind of information for free - in the words of Kelis, I could teach you, but I have to charge. Merry Christmas.

Enjoyed this? Read on: click here for part 2 on the Xiaxue vs Gushcloud story!