Why is Cleartrip trying to be aggressively defensive?
  • sinhasinha
    Okay. Cleartrip has fired its PR agency because the company was spamming its userbase (blog post by Hrush: http://blog.cleartrip.com/2012/12/05/why-we-fired-our-pr-agency/). 
    While this is definitely a respectable thing to do, maligning the PR company image is definitely not the right way to do it.

    How did it all start? 
    From Cleartrip blog: "We had provided jackerhack’s email to Buzz PR a few months ago when we launched an update to our mobile site. As part of the launch, we had invited a few select bloggers and customers to our offices to give them a sneak preview of the product before it launched. Buzz PR coordinated these invites for us, that’s why we gave them the email addresses of these bloggers and customers."
    --
    Okay. This happened during June/July timeframe and even we were invited for that - the cleartrip team (team = employee + PR agency) even offered to send a cab to pick one of us and have us for the event. We declined as we were busy with UnPluggd, but here is an imp thing to mention : the Cleartrip team (team = employee + PR agency) kept on calling us and requesting us to be at the event. This happened atleast 5-7 times.
    Why am I sharing this? Because fundamentally they weren't able to get a lot many people, I believe. So maybe, the announcement itself was of least interest to media/bloggers and Cleartrip was forcing the agency to bring in 'a minimum number'.
    So PR agency was just doing it's job (i.e. get as many people as you can)- which Cleartrip assigned them to. PR agency (OR the team) WAS SPAMMING even then - and Cleartrip had NO checks/balances regarding that.

    Even with latest email spam, the company had no checks/balances TILL a tweet comes in. 
    --
    Firing/Taking names? Is that the best thing to do? That's one of the ways to earn respect - but how about building better checks/balances in your system when you are so concerned about 'looking good'?
    Frankly, it's unprofessional on behalf of Cleartrip to malign their partners and send a signal that 'hey! we will screw the hell out of you if you don't do business our way'. FIRST, DEFINE your way and build tools to ensure that 'your way' is followed, if you are so serious about it.

    These things should be handled in a more matured/closed-room discussion - unless you want to earn some free brownie points (and ride on somebody else's brand).
  • kunalkantkunalkant
    This post should move to main site with sharing the why media or blogger always give attention to the company shit.
  • williamwilliam
    Don't think taking names is a good thing. The entire reputation (if any) built by hardwork, just blown away. I guess firms should have it in their partnership agreements that even if they are firing each other, they can't do it publicly.

    @sinha: completely agree with your conclusion. Cleartrip should not forget that the world is ROUND.
  • atodatatodat
    @sinha If you read the blog post, they clearly did tell their agency, twice, what their way of doing things was, before publicly firing them.
  • sinhasinha
    @atodat : IMO, it's a qn of 'who owns the email DB'. Cleartrip needs to own it and not its agency
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