EBay Needs a Top-Gun PR Person pronto!
January 1, 1970
If there was ever a company in need of a top-gun PRstrategist it’s eBay.
Some recent examples of issues the company mishandled from a
PR viewpoint:
Craigslist “battle”: eBay already faced a tremendous
handicap when pitted against Craigslist. Craigslist is cool; eBay isn’t.
Correct or not, Craigslist seems like there’s one guy behind it, it’s friendly,
and less concerned about money than it is about providinga great product. eBay, well, I don’t need to
go there. So when eBay starts making demands of Craigslist, it better be ready
to handle a PR challenge.
PayPal Only: The rumors that eBay will begin to only accept
PayPal as payment for transactions rankled sellers, in particular. No one likes
the feeling that their options are narrowing.Yet what exactly are eBay’s plans here? They seem to change day-to-day
as the company reacts to those rumors.
Sellers Strike: Sellers planned two major “strikes” in
response to announced changes (regarding feedback, default search results, etc.
etc.)The media jumped all over this
story. It was juicy, so that’s understandable. (Incidentally, the May strike
seems to have worked if you look at the numbers. Listings dropped like a rock
when the strike began.)
These are far from the only PR challenges eBay has recently
faced.
If you look at the positive media stories about eBay (and
they’re getting almost impossible to find), they almost always involve cool or
zany auctions, like the bat mobile being up for auction.That’s where eBay has a PR edge. That’s
old-school eBay. So there’s something for a smart PR strategist to hang her hat
on.
While we can’t go back in Internet time to 2000, eBay can
operate more effectively in today’s environment. And one way it could do that
would be by communicating more effectively. Top-Gun PR star, where are you?