Eiger II: A lame apology and more trouble coming

Latest update on Eiger saga here

Yesterday the outdoor adventure gear brand Eiger got into a hot mess when its Leagal Eagle went a step too far and dissed off YouTubers reviewing their products. (See post here)

By late afternoon the Eiger CEO Ronny Lukito had had enough and decided to take matters into his own hands. He apologized for his Legal Eagle’s letter with his own letter.

All good apologizing but you have to wonder who is advising him on the PR front because the apology was not really an apology. When this happens it usually invites ongoing resentment and possible future attacks.

He started the latter with an apology to the community. He then admitted that the offending letter that had gone viral had indeed been sent by Eiger and they realize that this was a wrong and inappropriate action. So far so good.

Then he had to say that the original intent of the letter was to provide input to the reviewer so they can improve. Bang! Another shot in the foot. Although he tried to paper over the hole with “we realise that how we conveyed that was wrong”, he had stumbled.

This is what communicators classify as mixed messages. It’s when observations, inferences, feelings and wants are jumbled up.

Here it would have been fine if he said that whet they did was wrong, he as CEO takes responsibility for the act, he’s sorry for all the frustrations and angst caused. Instead he went on to explain their intent which still sounds patronizing, because its an outdoor gear maker telling a YouTuber how to improve shooting review videos.

Lukito also left out a vital element of apologies in crisis-like moments. He failed to say what action he’s taking to make sure that this does not happen again. Without stating this he is giving the impression that the company is not taking responsibility for the incident and not interested to learn from their mistakes. At worst, many would think that they will get back to business as usual once this kerfuffle is over.

All this leaves the company open to more criticism if the opportunity arises.

Lo and behold, the opportunity came this morning when some Netizens uncovered an incident where the legal department of Eiger asked the giant online e-commerce site to take down a reseller’s product posting of a Sritex face mask. And Tokopedia complied!

Now it looks like Eiger has not only shot itself on the foot but is also extending its foot fetish toTokopedia.

Like I said yesterday, I think Eiger makes great products. It has also been quite smart and savvy in its design and branding. It is now the victims of its own success but it is something that it can easily fix by seeking professional help.

It takes skill and experience to communicate well. To entrust it to a legal flunky is being careless with your hard worn reputation as it takes skill and experience to communicate well, with authenticity and ethically.

They should seek professional help in the short term while they look to hire an experienced communicator in-house expressly for reputation all management.

Plumbing the depths with Eiger

I love the Eiger outdoor brand. Their products are affordable and often of good quality. A sandal I bought has lasted me years and looks like it will continue for at least another year or two. Damn comfortable too.

But good as they are in making outdoor gear they apparently suck at customer relations. Here’s what happened:

On 28th January, competitor outdoor gear brand Arei’s issued a letter inviting Netizens to review its products.

Arei’s invite sounded very inclusive and cool. Reviewers could use any method, any camera, any theme or in any location they liked to do these reviews.

Eiger must have thought it could do the same but when netizens began reviewing their products and uploading them on YouTube – and the reviews weren’t flattering – Eiger’s Legal General Manager began to get antsy.

He started sending nasty letters to the reviewers. They began with a faux politesse of “Firstly, we thank you for uploading a review of our product on your YouTube channel…” then quickly drew out the stiletto.

Instead of explaining in a rationale manner whether the review was fair to Eiger, it instead criticized the video’s quality, specifically the angle it shoes to show their products in an unflattering manner.

The Eiger Legal Manager also was an audiophile. Complaining that the sound quality was bad to make it quite inaudible and lastly, he criticized the suitability of the location of the shoot.

With that, the manager hoped that the YouTuber would take down that posting and, a bitchy parting shot: “We hope you will become a better Youtuber in [shooting] review videos.”

That’s a shot in their own foot by any measure but that’s not all. When news of that came out on social media it, of course, went viral and Eiger became a trending topic.

Eiger’s troubles did not end there. It turns out that the manager had sent out at least identical letters to two other YouTubers.

That makes it at least three shots to two legs. How many shots the manager had fired nobody really knows.

Netizens have a habit of digging up interesting information about foot shooters and one of them dug up a poster of the manager giving a talk.

The topic: How to Implement Agile Human Capital in Transition and Shifting Era. Oh irony of ironies.

Makes you wonder the caliber of people invited to give talks these days. And what possessed Eiger to entrust its communications function to a legal person instead of a communications professional

Al manager

Hotman/Maybank’s challenge to Winda

There is the court of law and there is the court of public opinion.

The victor in the court of law is, theoretically at least, the party that has evidence and is on the right side of the law. The scales of justice are tipped by well-reasoned legal arguments and proof.

Victory in the court of public opinion has two paths.

The more difficult path is for the party to persuade the audience with well-constructed legal and moral arguments that appeal to the mind as well as the heart.

Hotman’s challenge, as reported in Detik Finance.

The second is an easier path, that of demagoguery. As we have witnessed with Trump, in such instances facts do not matter, morality and character do not matter; what matters will be the ability of the party to bully, threaten, interrupt, shout down and make all sorts of accusations against their adversary. Force of personality plays a large part.

It is interesting that the famous Hotman Paris — who is now representing Maybank in a case in which e-sports star Winda Lunardi and her mother allege that the branch manager had embezzled them of Rp22 billion, and in which Maybank has refused to take any responsibility to compensate them — now wants to shift the case to a court of very public opinion.

Why is he doing so?

Apart from all the free publicity he would get if a TV station was to take up his offer of having all parties – with their lawyers present, of course – duke it out on prime time, there is the prospect that he could put his powers persuasion to work no win the case.

But which path do you think he will take? That of moral suasion or that of demagoguery?