Brands no longer get to dom­i­nate news cycles and adver­tis­ing to own the mes­sage they want to share. Search engines and social media are impor­tant and often dom­i­nant cus­tomer touch points. Ensur­ing that brand per­cep­tion and mes­sag­ing is respon­sive and thought­ful is imper­a­tive to Uber’s next steps. One of the goals of Momen­tol­ogy as a resource is to teach mar­keters how to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in moments that mat­ter. This may be the most impor­tant moment in Uber’s young his­to­ry.

Uber has stum­bled into a PR night­mare after their Senior VP of Busi­ness Emil Michael shared a poten­tial strat­e­gy at a pri­vate din­ner par­ty that out­lined spend­ing $1 mil­lion to dig up dirt on sev­er­al jour­nal­ists. The jour­nal­ists were report­ing on a hand­ful of unseem­ly Uber inci­dents, includ­ing a mis­guid­ed response to female pas­sen­gers’ accu­sa­tions of being attacked (respons­es includ­ed the irrel­e­vant obser­va­tions that the women were “dressed provoca­tive­ly” or “drunk”).

The Dangers of Negative Online Mentions

Mul­ti­ple arti­cles by high-pro­file pub­li­ca­tions are opin­ing on the issue, as well as rec­om­mend­ing oth­er apps rid­ers can adopt to aban­don Uber. Those sto­ries are dom­i­nat­ing any search on the brand.

Adding insult to injury, one of their investors, Ash­ton Kutch­er, shared a tweet short­ly after the inci­dent that said, “What is so wrong about dig­ging up dirt on a shady jour­nal­ist?” Now it’s not just one per­son hav­ing behaved poor­ly, but oth­er brand voic­es are defend­ing the pro­posed, though the­o­ret­i­cal, action of attacks and smear cam­paigns on the jour­nal­ists and their fam­i­lies.

Now all of these sto­ries, the pub­li­ca­tions as well as social men­tions, reviews, and influ­encer response, are dom­i­nat­ing Uber’s online rep­u­ta­tion.

Uber is feel­ing the pain as well. Peo­ple are increas­ing­ly search­ing for infor­ma­tion on how to can­cel an Uber account, and their down­load rank­ings have fall­en, from 24 to 41, since the inci­dent, Digi­day report­ed.

How Can Uber Fix This?

When Airbn­b’s recent logo redesign got bad press for mim­ic­k­ing oth­er logos (and for look­ing like lady parts) they were tak­en aback by their cre­ative blun­der but they quick­ly owned it, dealt col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with the affect­ed com­pa­ny, shared why they were OK with it, and moved on. Their cul­ture of cre­at­ing a sense of place and belong­ing trumped a cre­ative mis­take.

Airbnb is known for their enor­mous­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric focus in their ser­vice offer­ings and in their ethos. Airbnb employ­ees are encour­aged to share Airbnb killers, what would dis­rupt and even kill the busi­ness? This activ­i­ty helps them to beat com­pe­ti­tion to inno­va­tion.

Airbnb respond­ed quick­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly, dif­fus­ing what could have been a neg­a­tive issue and began dom­i­nat­ing the PR cycle with a cus­tomer-cen­tric video that bril­liant­ly extols the virtues of the brand, their ser­vice, and their cus­tomers. It’s this kind of speedy and thought­ful reac­tion that Uber is cur­rent­ly miss­ing.

What Can Brands Learn From This?

1. Know Your ‘Why’

Brand rep­re­sen­ta­tives are less like­ly to go rogue in their approach if their why has been strong­ly estab­lished. Align­ing core val­ues to actions is a big part of estab­lish­ing a brand voice.

When Michael spoke as a leader and com­pa­ny spokesper­son, he was the brand. The words he choose, the actions he took, the sto­ries he told became irrev­o­ca­bly woven into the brand real­i­ty and the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence.

Expect every­one on the team to know and do their best to exem­pli­fy your val­ues as a brand. It’s been evi­dent in the days fol­low­ing the inci­dent that Uber has­n’t clar­i­fied their why and that they aren’t uni­fied on next steps.

2. Nothing Is Off The Record

Gone are the days of secret meet­ings and off site issue res­o­lu­tion that lives in a vac­u­um. For bet­ter or worse, your brands’ wins and loss­es will like­ly be exposed to the sun­light.

Make it clear in your copy guides and social media guide­lines and poli­cies how brand rep­re­sen­ta­tives are to behave and speak. Cre­at­ing that expec­ta­tion in the begin­ning will make it less like­ly that some­one strays from your brand val­ues and embraces them at all times, not just when there’s an audi­ence.

3. Involve The Right Teams For Resolving An Issue

Uber’s staff and cus­tomers are left to grasp at straws as to what this means for their core brand mes­sage and val­ues. Involv­ing the right teams – lead­er­ship, con­tent, search, social, PR, even paid media – to ral­ly around a strong uni­fied mes­sage allows for their sto­ry to become a part of the cus­tomer jour­ney and col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly move pass the mis­take.

How This Affects Their Customers

In 2014 I spent more than $3,000 on Uber. I have lived my whole life in Ore­gon until the sum­mer of 2012. With my kids in col­lege, I embarked on a work/exploration adven­ture that took me to Cleve­land and Atlanta.

As a native Ore­gon­ian I had always owned a car. The small 6,000 pop­u­la­tion town where I raised my fam­i­ly for 18 years was 60 miles from the city. I loved the car and the inde­pen­dence and think­ing time it pro­vid­ed.

Dur­ing my 2 1/2 year trip to the Mid­west and the south, I choose not to have a car, most­ly because I worked close to the office but also, frankly, because I was a lit­tle ter­ri­fied of dri­ving in a city. I loved Cleve­land, great the­ater (largest per­form­ing arts cen­ter in the coun­try out­side of New York), amaz­ing food and world-class muse­ums and sym­pho­ny. But pub­lic trans­porta­tion was abysmal and taxi cabs were unre­li­able.

When I moved to Atlanta I was thrilled to have Uber as my main source of trans­porta­tion (I had expe­ri­enced Uber in Seat­tle years ago and loved it). Uber became not only the way I got to the air­port and to client meet­ings, but how I explored a city that was unknown to me.

Uber took me to din­ners and plays and speak­ing engage­ments. It kept me safe when I decid­ed that, yes, I would have one more mar­ti­ni with extra olives. It picked up friends at the air­port vis­it­ing from out of town who want­ed to see what it looked like for a Pacif­ic North­west farm girl to live in a 31st floor high rise. It intro­duced me to an amaz­ing chef who had moved from New Orleans with his wife and drove for Uber because he had health issues that made it hard to sus­tain the demand­ing long hours of stand­ing required to cook in a large restau­rant.

The Uber expe­ri­ence inspired loy­al­ty in me. That loy­al­ty has been destroyed.

As a faith­ful cus­tomer I want­ed noth­ing more than to sup­port Uber and help set the record straight. They could have shared data show­ing how much safer Uber is than oth­er taxi ser­vices. They could have swift­ly and thought­ful­ly addressed the issues.

So far, Uber has select­ed soft mea­sures and avoid­ance as their mes­sage. They haven’t addressed cus­tomer needs or con­cerns as a cus­tomer so I’m faced with aban­don­ing an app and a ser­vice I had loved and val­ued.

Whether or not they like it, Uber is faced with los­ing me and cus­tomers like me who will take their $3,000 a year some­where else. Ben Smith of Buz­zFeed said he would quit using the ser­vice and he along with many influ­encers are sup­port­ing this action. The rev­enue impact from this mis­step is already emerg­ing and the bleed­ing like­ly won’t stop until they define who they are and align their val­ues with their actions.

Who Will Step Up for Uber?

We’re in love with the tech­nol­o­gy and the ser­vice, but what mat­ters next is which voic­es win in the Uber cul­ture. Is it win at any cost with con­tin­ued aggres­sion and insen­si­tiv­i­ty, or slow down and rede­fine who they are and win in the long run? Who will step up for Uber?

The investors, the dri­vers, exec­u­tive lead­er­ship?

My step­dad, Wal­ly Back­man, start­ed for the Mets in 1986 when they won the World Series and he coach­es their AAA team the Vegas 51s. When watch­ing their play­off games this year he shared some rel­e­vant man­ag­ing advice. “Every­one is a lit­tle scared to step up…you nev­er real­ly know who is going to step up, but those who do define the game.”

Who is going to step up, make amends and fol­low through with promis­es that will fix and refo­cus Uber? The voic­es win­ning today are those rec­om­mend­ing oth­er dri­ving ser­vices.

Find­ing their way to being cus­tomer-cen­tric, earn­ing back our loy­al­ty and being vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in moments that mat­ter does­n’t just hap­pen for Uber when the cus­tomer is in the car. It’s hap­pen­ing all the time – even when exec­u­tive lead­er­ship sits down to din­ner.