The Old Switcheroo

Let's see how this Tuesday publishing goes. This week, we have the same two players as last time, finding themselves in opposite circumstances. Now OpenAI is playing the part of Goofus, while Sonos is Gallant. Sometimes you own the narrative, and sometimes, it owns you. Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down. And all that other crap. Point is, reputation is never set in cement. Just because you won last week doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. And just because you got your ass kicked last week, you don't have to pack it all in and go home. What IS constant is that us comms folks need to get up every morning and put in the work, even if it is a pride-swallowing siege sometimes.

Loser: OpenAI, for pissing off a beloved actress and giving away more good will. After a banner few weeks in which Sam Altman and OpenAI put some major wins on the board, led by the launch of ChatGPT 4o, they really stepped in it last week. Scarlett Johansson penned an open letter voicing her disgust that Altman and the company appropriated her voice without her approval, AFTER asking for it and not receiving it. In addition, Altman decided to be cute and tweet (X?) a one word teaser that one of my favorite writers, former lawyer turned baseball sicko Craig Calcaterra, points out can't be deleted. In addition to violating the universal "don't antagonize an Avenger" rule, OpenAI suddenly became the poster child for two of the major fears about AI itself -- the disintermediation of human creative talent, and the questionable ethical standards of those in charge of this technology. The backlash has been swift. And while this hiccup won't permanently derail the momentum that OpenAI has built, it certainly will make their lives more difficult as DC starts to dig in on policy and Johannson and Hollywood contemplate legal action.

Learnings: Don't antagonize a beloved celebrity with a large megaphone. Don't leave breadcrumbs all over the place that show you tried and failed to do something the right way and then decided to go ahead and do it anyway. And if your CEO likes to use social media to publish cryptic messages, make sure they can't be used as evidence in a lawsuit. I call this the Elon Musk/ Don't Be a Dipshit rule.

Winner: Sonos, for getting back to what they do best -- great hardware that just works. Sonos got hammered two weeks ago for its terrible app update rollout and response. There were some halfway-decent takes on the whole thing, if you're interested. They rebounded nicely last week with the well-executed launch of their new Sonos Ace headphones. Reviews have been uniformly positive. Wired loved them, so did the Verge -- written by the same Chris Welch that panned the app update a week ago. It appears that Sonos gave reviewers full access to the headphones as they would ship, with all the bells and whistles, which they did not do with the app update. Good job righting the ship, Sonos. Now, fix your app.

Learnings: Good old fashioned product review PR programs still work. Influencers are top priorities, but getting your consumer product in the hands of editors and reporters never goes out of date. And if you've had a bad newscycle, try to push something up that will eclipse it and push it off the front page, metaphorically, ASAP.

I'm Hani Durzy, president and founder of Red Dog Strategies, a senior level communications consultancy. We fulfill fractional and interim comms lead needs; handle distinct and specific projects around crisis comms, corporate narrative development, M&A/financial communications, change management, and building editorial content capabilities to augment storytelling; and execute "wellness check" assessments of existing comms programs to unlock the power of the function. If you want to talk, please reach out at [email protected].