Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Could bad PR pose an existential threat to one of tech's highest-flying companies?

If Lyft's fortunes are any indication, Uber might have reason to worry.

While Uber has been dealing with bad headline after bad headline, Lyft has been courting riders and polishing its image. For example, when Uber was facing a #DeleteUber campaign over CEO Kalanick's participation in a business advisory council for US President Donald Trump, Lyft was responding to Trump's temporary travel ban targeting seven Muslim countries by announcing that it would be donating $1m to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Is Lyft's cleaner image winning over consumers?According to Bloomberg, Lyft's ridership and bookings "surged" in the first quarter of the year and according to fundraising documents Bloomberg obtained, the company is beating its internal targets. The documents revealed that Lyft's gross bookings in Q1 grew to $800m, more than double what they were in Q1 2016, and total ridership in February was 137% higher than February 2016....

The Trump era is a rough time for journalists. No matter how much they’re provoked, if they show too much bias and disrespect, they could lose their jobs, even for a single tweet. That’s what happened to Julia Ioffe at Politico, and it’s a revealing case study.

I’ll get to what Ioffe did in a moment. But first, let’s have a look at the email Politico’s editors Carrie Budoff Brown and John Harris sent to their staff when they fired her:

"You will remember the note from John and me a few days ago in which we emphasized that POLITICO journalists are representing the publication at all times and on all platforms, and must present themselves accordingly. We also emphasized that the power of POLITICO comes from our independent reporting and analysis. Gratuitous opinion has no place, anywhere, at any time – not on your Facebook feed, your Twitter feed or any place else. It has absolutely zero value for our readers and should have zero place in our work. Julia Ioffe’s tweet this afternoon about President-elect Trump – currently and understandably racing across social media – is a clear example of the opposite of what we were talking about."

This is as clear as it gets. If you’re trying to make a point, this is how you make it: no equivocation, no jargon, and direct, first-person statements....